Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

August 15th 1996, New York, USA

It was raining again.

Percy didn’t take notice of this as one normally would- that is in a factual manner, like knowing that it was Sunday, that the earth was round or that water and electric devices don’t mix (and he would know). In fact, he didn’t know how he knew it at all considering that he was currently in a narrow, dingy room whose only light source was a small, occasionally flickering light bulb covered in spiderwebs.

He knew it in the way people often described being in love to feel like- a deep-rooted conviction in his bones, which told him that at this very moment there was a light drizzle that could very well turn into a fully-fledged storm if need be.

This wasn’t normal, Percy was aware. He had always had a certain affinity for storms and water in general, but never anywhere near to this degree. For instance, it had always been possible for him to tell whether it was raining or not, simply because he had been able to feel the presence of the water. But he hadn’t been able to tell whether it was light or heavy, frozen or warm and he especially didn’t have the ability to tell what it was going to develop into.

It used to be like reading- not that he knew a lot about that. He knew that if he put effort into it he’d be able to tell whether it was raining or not and furthermore could judge depending on the current climate whether it was more likely to be snow or graupel or just regular rain. Now it was more like being read to. Something he had to put effort into turning out, a constant presence in the back of his mind, a constant sense of knowing.

He felt a small kick against his leg. Percy swallowed down another gulp of the nasty watered-down coffee and banished all thoughts of rain from his head. Next to him Annabeth was apologizing profusely to Mrs. what-was-her-name-again about Percy’s inattentiveness. “It’s particularly hard on him, you see? The ADHD I mean, not to mention the war. But we think that going to this university is going to help putting our minds off the last few years. A sense of normalcy if you will. Isn’t that right, Percy?”

Percy sprung to action. “Of course! And I’m terribly sorry, I didn’t mean to zone out, it’s just-" he blinked a few times, really trying to sell it "- it was all so terrible, really. I just hope to start new, have another chance at a normal life, you know?”

The woman seemed appeased at this display. “It was no matter. We often encounter students with attention deficit disorder and we're more than qualified in dealing with them. So, what were you wishing to study?”

“Oh, well actually we were hoping to”-

Sometimes that was what their relationship was like. They were like a well-oiled machine- in perfect synch and perfectly aware of each other’s flaws and desires. Other times it was more like a broken record player, just repeating the same motions day in and day out, unable to do anything else with themselves but continue.

Lately there have been more days of the second kind.

On better days he thought it was just because of what they had gone through during the wars, that they just needed some time and then everything would work out. On the bad days, the ones where Percy would make one hasty move and Annebeth would flinch , he knew that she was afraid. Not for him, but of him. Of what he was able to do. Of what he would do if something were to happen to her. On those days he thought to himself that perhaps the only reason she stayed with him was that she felt obligated to do so. Maybe she thought she had to control him, keep his dark parts away and tether him to morality. On the bad days he resented her for it. On the really bad days he wanted to thank her.

Today has been a good day thus far.

Early this morning they headed out to go to a sort of interview for the NRU. Percy wasn’t sure whether that was common practice or whether it was a half blood-only-thing, but it wasn’t as if he’d ever expected to make it this far.

The meeting itself had been exceptionally boring. Enough so that his mind started to yearn for the hours of sleep it had missed out on last night. He started offhandedly tracing patterns onto Annabeth’s hand which he had been holding, tapping his foot and then out of sheer boredom started to make tiny waterdrops out of the mist in the air and drop them on the woman droning on and on about campus security without her noticing it.

And then, of course, the rain.

It had stopped now for some reason, but he felt that it might start up again soon if nothing else of interest were to happen. Curious weather.

...

Personal growth, Percy was convinced, was the ability to look back on your younger self and think to yourself what an idiot.
Take him sending Medusa’s head to Olympus. Hilarious to put it mildly, but also what the hell had he been thinking?

This wasn’t the actual issue though. It had, after all, worked out in the end. Sure, he was severely traumatized now, but that was all in a day’s life of a half blood. No, his issue was that he used to crave being taken seriously. Whether that craving stemmed from his absent father, or his abusive stepfather or some entirely different childhood complex, he wasn’t sure. All he knew was that he was, that he wanted to be looked up to as someone deserving of respect and by proxy attention.

He didn’t want that anymore.

People often used to forget that he was a child of the big three, perhaps because Percy didn’t seem all that intimidating, especially when he was attempting to do archery. Little by little, that has changed. Now new campers are told the stories of his triumphs during the wars, tales of his powers that weren’t entirely accurate, but which managed to make the younger campers wary if not downright suspicious of him. It wasn’t anybody’s intention, Percy was aware, and even the suspicion never seemed to last long. But there was always an undercurrent of respect in every interaction he had with them nowadays.

The thing was, Percy didn’t want to be reduced to his powers and capabilities as a half blood. Above all, he was craving normalcy. A quiet life with Annabeth and perhaps a few children of their own, her as a successful architect and him as a stay-at-home dad. Best case scenario, Percy would never have to go on another quest again. But that he didn’t even believe in himself. In truth, the realistic best-case scenario was that he gets killed by a monster or some god he managed to have pissed of sometimes in his twenties. Percy wasn’t hoping for a long life; he was hoping for a life filled with friends and family that didn’t want to kill him and Annabeth. And then Elysium where he would be reunited with all his loved ones.

He rather thinks he is owed that.

It was late into the afternoon now, and the rain still hadn’t stopped. Of course, he couldn’t actually know that, since he was at camp, but he knew it like he knew his own name. True to his words, it had temporarily turned into a storm and after raging on for about an hour returned to an almost melodramatic drizzle. What made a drizzle melodramatic, he wasn’t sure, he just knew that it was. It seemed to affect the people surrounding him as well. Everybody was looking a little worse for wear, like they were trying to carry way too much baggage but had long since given up complaining about it. Earlier he had even seen a small girl break into tears for seemingly no reason. A woman, assumedly her mother, had halfheartedly tried to reassure her but looked tempted to join in as well.

Perhaps he should ask his father what was up with that, because depression-rain seemed rather concerning to him.

Camp always felt deserted nowadays. Every absence was a stab of guilt, a feeling of you did this, this is your fault, you didn’t save them, this was your war and yet they paid the price.
It was a silly notion. It hadn’t been his war more that it had been the war of any other half blood, that is it was not his at all, just the war he had been forced to fight in. A prophecy didn’t change shit, no matter what anybody else thought.

He knew that. Of course he did, but he wasn’t feeling particularly rational as of late.

Idly, he played with the sea in front of him, every now and then separating large chunks of water from it and letting them levitate a couple of seconds in front of him before letting them drop again. One particularly adventurous fish swam right into one of those chunks and excitedly took in the sight of the surface world.

Percy nodded at it approvingly, the corners of his mouth minutely being tugged up into a small smile. He let the bubble levitate a couple of seconds longer than he normally would have and took the utmost care in letting it descend back into the water.

Annabeth was in Athena’s cabin, catching up with her siblings and telling them anecdotes about their quests, Percy presumed. She liked doing that, talking about their quests. Once she told him it gave her hope, seeing what they had survived already. For Percy it was the opposite. To him it seemed like he was testing fate merely by still being here. He didn’t tell her that, of course, just nodded and smiled.

Something moved, causing the earth to vibrate scarcely. Percy removed his hands from where he had been gripping into the dirt without realizing it, and stared at it for a second, uncomprehending. Then the scent of grapes reached his nostrils, and he understood.

“What do you want, Mr. D?”

The god in question huffed but looked otherwise unperturbed. It seemed to be more of a habit than an actual indication of his mood “Was just wondering if you’re planning on stopping that temper tantrum anytime soon.”

“What the Tartarus are you on about?” Percy turned around.

He noted that the god looked different. Instead of a middle-aged balding man, with a red chubby face and bulging stomach he looked attractive for the lack of a better word. His hair was thick, lush, curly, and so dark that it looked purple, his complexion was evenly tanned and his body athletic. He carried a faint odor of grapes with him, and Percy knew that if he looked him in the eyes right now, they’d be faintly shining with divinity. This, he realized, was the Dionysus of the ancient age, without the mortal guise he wore around the other campers, madness incarnate and eternally youthful.

He felt sick to his stomach.

“Figures”, the god snorted condescendingly and then sat down next to Percy and dangled his bare feet in the water. Percy suddenly had the strong urge to punch him.

“Well, if you don’t want to tell me what you’re on about, you can just leave me alone. I’d even throw in an offering.”

He thought that was a pretty good deal. There was a plethora of half-bloods for Dionysus to mess with after all, it didn’t have to be him.

Unfortunately, Dionysus seemed to be more amused than intrigued by the notion. Again, he began to snort derisively, but suddenly it seemed as if the sound had gotten caught in his throat and it turned into a hearty chuckle instead. Despite himself, some small part of Percy was marveling at the sound of it. “The great Perseus Jackson granting me an offering! What an honor!”

Heat tinged his cheeks and in his gut a burning made itself known. Hatred. “So, you do know my name then”, he countered, hoping to keep the bitterness out of his voice

“I make a point out of not knowing the names of half-blood brats.”

“How come you know mine then?”

Dionysus snorted again but didn’t deign him with a response. He didn’t get up either though, even though Percy desperately wanted him to. Percy knew that if he stood up himself, he’d let Dionysus win. So instead, he resolved to glare into nothingness and let another water bubble drop with a bigger than necessary splash.

The rain intensified again.

The god seemed to be in an exceptionally good mood, despite most of his shirt and pants being wet now, a fact that could only spell out trouble for Percy. None of them said a word, but nonetheless Dionysus seemed oddly satisfied, as if Percy had met some sort of standard, he wasn’t aware he was being held to. He hated it. Sometimes he hated everything, even the things he loved.

The coin felt heavy in his pocket.

…

August 3rd, 1996, Great Britain, Grimmauld place

Harry was angry.

At what he wasn’t sure. Or rather there wasn’t any definite response to the question. At the world, he supposed. At Voldemort, naturally. At Dumbledore too. Definitely at Dumbledore. And at his friends still, because they got to sit here, while he was stuck for a month at the Dursleys’, and they didn’t even have the decency to write to give him some sort of heads-up. Above all he was angry about the injustice of it all.

His age had never stopped him from being targeted, even as a baby. So why did it stop him from being informed about what was going on? It was his life on the line after all, he had been the one to witness Voldemort’s return, which subsequently had started all of this in the first place. So why did they only send people to shadow him without his consent instead of somebody that would sit him down for a nice cup of tea and tell him “So Harry, I know this whole situation doesn’t look all that good, but fear not, we have a plan that we will tell you all about, because that is human decency!”

But instead, he had been left alone all summer with only Hedwig for company and now he was accused of using magic out of school! Which admittedly he did do, but if it hadn’t been for that bloody Dementor, he wouldn’t have had to in the first place.

Harry had the strong urge to take ahold of something weighty and fragile and chuck it across the room, if only to see in how many splinters it was able to break. He didn’t end up doing it, but not because he thought it was immature or that Sirius would be upset about him willingly destroying Black family heirlooms- he rather assumed that Sirius would be thrilled, actually-, but because of the wind of a conversation he heard.

From the sounds of it, it was coming from an empty broom closet, which in and itself was suspicious, since there were other perfectly plausible places- read the kitchen- in this house where people regularly held conversation- read order meetings- that they didn’t want certain people- read Harry- to be a part of.

Yes, he was bitter, sod off.

The second suspicious thing was that one of the voices, a distinctive oily sneer that was eternally dripping with contempt whenever it was directed at Harry, belonged to Snape while the other, a calm, gently authoritative one, that he could even now only associate with halfmoon-shaped spectacles and chocolate frog cards, belonged to Dumbledore. Neither of them were people Harry would expect to find in broom closets, especially not together.

He tiptoed to the door and pressed his ear against the cool, dark wood, careful not to make a noise, but even then, he was only able to make out a couple of snippets of the conversation. “…letter… Lucius and I… have never seen him like this before… the dark lord… was murdered…”

Harry did not get the gist of it, but he did understand that Dumbledore seemed to be momentarily stunned into silence, something he hadn’t previously thought to be possible.

For a minute the only sounds were bated breaths and Harry’s own unnaturally loudly beating heart. Then, like a knife, Dumbledore’s voice cut through the silence. “Are you sure, Severus?”

“I-" Snapes voice halted for a moment. Then he continued at a normal volume. "I believe this a conversation best to be held in privacy, if we don’t want anybody to accidentally overhear us.” There it was, the contempt. Snape knew he was listening in, or at least he assumed it which was arguably worse, because he was right, and Harry hated proving Snape right.

In the end it didn’t matter, Harry supposed, because the conversation was pretty much finished either way and while he didn’t hear all of it, he had at least more to go off than before. And maybe Snape just always randomly stated in conversations that he thought somebody was eavesdropping and just happened to be right on this instance. Snape, to Harry, seemed like a deeply mistrustful and paranoid person.

Not the point.

The point was that somehow Snape had found out about something so worrisome that it had even managed to stun Dumbledore. Call him pessimistic, but Harry didn’t think that was a particularly good sign. Judging by what Snape had said, somehow both he and Malfoy’s father were involved. Maybe they had found out about something, maybe it was about the weapon. Then there was a letter... That was what Snape and Malfoy must have found. Harry tried to recall the other snippets he had caught …have never seen him like this…. Never seen whom like this? the dark Lord. Him perhaps. Was this connected to what happened last night? Harry thought of the feeling of confliction that had dominated his being for hours on end and that he still felt like the remnants of a particularly awful nightmare, a vicious thing, confused and angry and wounded. Harry was hard pressed to think of anything that might stir these sorts of almost humane feelings in the murderer of his parents.

… was murdered…. In any other conversation involving Voldemort and a dead body he would have come to the same obvious conclusion. But something about this was different. For one, Harry cannot imagine any sort of scenario where Voldemort would murder somebody and feel conflicted about it afterwards. So, either he did murder somebody, and it just wasn’t the key piece to the story, and therefore not what he was conflicted about, or he didn’t murder the person in question at all. But whose death would he feel conflicted over?

Usually at this point he would consult Ron and Hermione, but he didn’t feel like sharing this kind of information with them right now. No, Harry decided, this he would keep to himself.

Chapter Text

August 4th, 1996, Great Britain, Grimauld place

In his dream Harry was walking through a mansion. His steps were intentionally long and purposeful as if to hide his inner discord from an imaginary audience.

The halls looked abandoned, the walls were bare, the wooden floorboards creaked under his feet with every step. Every door he encountered was shut closed and possibly charmed to stay that way. One door all the way at the end was different than the others. Harry didn’t know why, but he felt as if he was standing on a precipice. As if crouching at the back of a column a boggart was waiting for him behind this door, and he could not bear facing it.

But he would need to for he could not live with this uncertainty, worse than any torture imaginable to mankind.

The first thing he noticed in the room was the horrid stench of death. Not the fresh kind either, rather the kind where you knew that whoever was in there had been dead for a very long time. How he was familiar with the intricate difference in the smell of death, Harry could not tell.

The second thing he noticed was its source.

The remains of a woman’s corpse lay in the middle of the room discarded like a two-year-old would discard his toy for a newer, shinier object. It was more bones than flesh and the only way he had been able to tell that it had belonged to a woman in the first place was that the ratty scraps of fabric that clung to her frame looked distinctly female.

The third thing Harry noticed was that this room had once been a kitchen.

Most of the counter, the surrounding cabinets, and even parts of the wall were covered with some sort of dried, dark brown liquid, still shining with stickiness, even after all these years. He waved his wand and the substance returned to its original scarlet color.

The woman lay forgotten as he stepped over her to reach it.

He took two of his fingers, caressed the surface of the counter, scooped some of the goo-turned-liquid up, and brought them up to his face as if to inspect them.
Minutes passed. Then, as if having come to a decision, he opened his mouth slightly and moved his digits towards it. He hesitated, his entire figure shuddering involuntarily.

Mentally, Harry was preparing himself for the taste of iron. He closed his eyes and-

Harry woke up startled. His heart was beating so hard, he feared it might jump ouf of his throat. He did not understand what it was, that could have unsettled him- or rather this dream version of him- to this degree and he did not fully understand what had happened, but it felt like a new kind of understanding was weighing down on him like a blanket intending to suffocate.

There was no blood.

It was just orange juice.

…

August 16th 1996, Camp Halfblood, USA

Percy awoke to the sounds of birds chirping and the Stolls’ giggling. He immediately felt concerned.

Then shrill screams erupted from everywhere. Percy willed his resolve in the ignorance of the world to harden, and to return to a land of peace and blessed quiet.

“PERCY! HELP! THERE’S A SPIDER ON MY BED!”

He crumbled like a piece of paper. When he opened his eyes, he at first did not find anything to be amiss. By further inspection he noted that some of his back up supply of blue food coloring and a small lunchbox filled with his mother's cookies seemed to be missing.

There was worse, he supposed, but that didn’t mean that he wasn’t owed some compensation in the form of a good old bucket of cold water strategically placed on top of a door.

“PERSEUS JACKSON!”

Right after he saved his wise girl of course.

…

“It was gigantic, I swear, like at least this big!” Levi, Annabeth’s newest and simultaneously youngest little sibling, a sweet boy of about four years of age spread his arms wide open dramatically, almost losing his balance and falling over in the process.

Percy barely refrained from chuckling as he saw this, knowing it would not be received well. “I know that, buddy, I was there too, you know?”

Most people had already moved on from the earlier hysteria and they were now all sitting at their respective tables, with the exception of Percy, who had joined the Athena cabin and Will, who was still at the med-bay recovering from the earlier stress by restocking the cabinets, an activity he described as soothing and Nico as nerve rackingly boring.

The latter was sitting at his table scowling at everybody who was so much as glancing at him, sporting an impressive head of bed hair colored a bright flamingo pink, matching the blush he was unable to suppress. Percy thought that this was probably the most color that he had seen on him in quite some time.

The Stolls meanwhile were sitting with their siblings gloating in their victory and practically glowing with triumph. One of them was stuffing his face with what was supposed to be Percy’s cookie. They were getting way too comfortable with thievery, Percy decided. Somebody needed to do something. What would be next? Clarisse’s spear, Annabeth’s dagger or perhaps Mr. D’s diet coke (though he would pay them to steal the latter)?

This called for revenge.

(The rain had finally come to a stop)

…

August 4th, 1996, Great Britain, Grimauld place

Harry thought he might be going insane.

Something big had happened. He knew that, Snape and Dumbledore had had a serious conversation in a bloody broom closet for Merlin’s sake, Harrys scar had burned up multiple times in the last twenty-four hours and just this morning he briefly encountered Dumbledore, the omnipresent twinkle in the latter’s eyes suspiciously missing. And yet nothing had happened so far. Nobody had said anything odd, no sudden mysterious order meeting had taken place, and as far as Harry knew everyone seemed to be oblivious that anything of interest had happened at all.

He needed to get to the bottom of this. At this point in time he knew that anything like this was bound to blow up in his face, especially if it was directly involving Voldemort. Last night’s weird dream popped up in his mind again. It hadn’t been a nightmare, not exactly. There was no doubt that it had been an unsettling experience, it just felt as if it was one that didn’t really belong to him, like Sirius or Professor Lupin telling him about something that he had done as a baby. It was in a way a part of him, but not one he was able to consciously access.

None of this was helping him in his quest to find out what had happened. He didn’t actually know whether those two things were connected at all. He could simply be imagining things, making connections where there’s nothing to be connected in the first place. It would be a natural thing to do in the face of the events of the past months. But still the possibility did not let him go.

He needed something more solid before starting to make assumptions. He couldn’t get further like this. In order to get anything done, he would need reinforcement.

…

August 16th 1996, Camp Halfblood, USA

The plan was simple. Get a bucket, fill it with water, place it onto the door, lure the Stolls into the Big House and boom! Two very wet halfbloods. Of course, he could just chuck a gallon of seawater into their faces without so much as a thought, but Percy needed this to get the message across. Also, he did not think that open demonstrations of his powers would benefit him much in his quest for normalcy (not that being at a camp filled with the children of gods helped much either, but everyone had to start somewhere).

The first three things were simple and he had followed them through easily enough. Luring the Stolls into the Big House on the other hand was proving to be more complicated than he had originally thought. Percy was contemplating getting the bucket down and thinking of something else that didn’t require getting people to be in a specific place at a specific point in time when he heard steps approaching the Big House. Quickly he hid behind a column and waited for whoever had the misfortune of being the victim of his prank.

“-can‘t get this damn color out of my hair. What am I supposed to do, look like Aphrodite vomited on me for the rest of all times?”
This was accompanied by a pang of laughter that- surprisingly enough- belonged to the Stolls. “Well, you see my friend-”
“-that was the point. It wouldn’t do for-”
“-our brilliance to go unappreciated simply because-”
“- you decided to take a shower.”

When Nico resumed talking, Percy could practically hear the scowl in his voice “How come nothing happened to Percy? Was he in on this?”

Nothing? Nothing! Percy wouldn’t describe this callous theft as nothing! It was- well, okay it wasn’t that bad, but that didn’t mean he was fine with it. And even if nothing had happened to him, it didn’t mean that he had helped!

“He wasn’t.”
“We'd colored his hair too.-”
“You should have seen it.-”
“It was magnificent.-”
Every shade of the rainbow-”
“-and then some.”

Simultaneously, they both started weeping dramatically, mourning the loss of their prank. Percy was confused. He would have noticed if his hair had been another color this morning. Sure, he had taken a shower, but the Stolls just said that that didn’t wash the color out and he was sure that his hair had looked like always this morning.

While he was still deep in thought the door swooshed open causing the bucket to crash to the ground. Percy caught sight of Nico’s enraged face and the Stolls were laughing so hard that they were rolling on the floor.

This was a good time to run, he decided.

…

Percy must have scrabbed his knee somewhere while being chased, for his jeans were stained a deep red. When Nico had finally caught up to him, because Percy had quite literally run into a tree, he attacked him viciously, a lot of hair pulling and scratching involved. When he deemed his display of violence to be sufficient, he invited Percy to lay beside him on the ground of the landing and gaze into the night sky, while he waited for his clothes and his still pink hair to dry.

Most of the time passed in complete silence. In the absence of sound, Percy felt strangely restless.

“Odd weather lately, isn’t it?”

“What?”

“Well, I mean it’s always either raining or not, you know?

“Isn’t that the way it’s supposed to be?”

“I guess, but it feels different now.”

“Different how?”

"More random, but also kind of more intentional. It’s affecting the mortals, but I don’t think they’re realizing it.” Percy hesitated a second before continuing this line of thought. Up until now, he had not allowed himself to think about it in depth. “It’s like the rain has become sentient, you know? As if it is operating under a different set of rules than before.”

Nico just hummed.

“Sorry, I’m not really making any sense right now, am I?”

“Not really, you’re not.”

A beat of silence, then
“You don’t have to apologize for being a bit off kilter. You’ve been through a lot. We all have, but you perhaps the most. Nobody will fault you for not being okay.”

None of the campers perhaps, but he would. Percy really, really, really didn’t want to think about it. It was time for him to change the subject.

“You know, you could always die your hair black again.”

Nico craned his neck at an odd angle to face him “Is that what you did?”

“Sure”, Percy lied.

…

August 4th, 1996, Great Britain, Grimauld place

“So, you’re trying to tell us that Snape and Dumbledore met in a broom closet?”

“That's not all there is to it, but yes, they did do that.”

“So, what else is there to it?”

“Can’t be anything more interesting than that, can it?”

“Ronald!”

“Ah shush it Hermione, you’re starting to sound like our dear old mum.”

Hermione blushed, but did not let herself be deterred, instead choosing to glance at Harry, silently begging him to just answer her question, before any more suggestive inquiries involving Snape, Dumbledore and the broom closet could be made.

After Harry told them that he needed to tell them something, they decided to call in a meeting at the same time the order had one. Initially Fred and George mourned the opportunity to try to listen in, but since they already knew that it most likely would do them no good, they had relented. Now they, that is the twins, Ron, Hermione, Ginny and Harry himself, were sitting in a circle on the ground of Ron and Harry’s room. The twins had insisted on drawing the curtains shut and lighting some old black candles they had found in a drawer and that Sirius had confirmed to be safe, for the right atmosphere or so they claimed. The room now smelled like one of these parfums Aunt Petunia liked to wear, and Harry was already dreading having to sleep in there that night.

“As I said they were having a conversation in there-“

“They do that often, you think?”

“We could try implementing extendable ears at every closet in the house-”

“-but perhaps some things ought to stay private.”

“Can’t you two stay serious for two seconds?” This time the voice belonged to an already annoyed Ginny.

“But were not Sirius-”

“If you’re looking for him, he’s downstairs-”

“-but we’ll have to warn you, we think he might be in a meeting.”

Now both Hermione and Ginny were glaring daggers at Fred and George whilst Ron was trying his hardest to look innocent in order to avoid having to face their combined wrath. They were not getting anywhere like this.

“Snape found out about something important. He told Dumbledore about it in the closet because he didn’t want anyone else to know.”

Five heads turned to him simultaneously. It was as if they had completely forgotten his presence and the reason for their meeting. As far as Harry was concerned, they most likely had. The sudden shift of going completely ignored to being the sole bearer of their attention was charring, but not as charring as the look of eagerness on their faces. They were just as starved for information as he was, Harry suddenly realized. A war was about to start that might just cost them or their loved ones their lives and they were treated as if it didn’t concern them at all.

Withholding information was cruel, he realized. It was excruciating, having to live with this uncertainty every day whilst being so close to the solution.

-he could not live with this uncertainty, worse than any torture imaginable to mankind.

He would not do the same.

“I didn’t hear the entire conversation, but I heard snippets of it. I know enough to see that whatever this is about –” he looked into their faces, trying to search for signs of doubt “- it’s something big.”

“What did you hear, Harry?” Hermione’s voice was careful, as if not to frighten a wild animal. Any other time Harry would have taken offense to that, but right now she could have screamed at him while slapping him with all her might for all he cared. He was tired of being left out and he knew she felt the same.

So he sucked his wounded pride up and told them every oh so minescule detail of the conversation he had witnessed.

None of them said anything for a couple of minutes, the silence stretching in between them like a string, incapacitating and drawing them closer to each other at the same time.

“Perhaps” Hermione started tentatively and then broke off again.

“It must have something to do with that weapon the order talked about”, said George. Fred nodded in agreement “yeah, they said that that’s what you-know-who is looking for right now. So maybe they heard that it’s broken, or disappeared, or that the ministry has it, or something.”

“The weapon is unlikely to be something particularly breakable. And I don’t think that it would be that big of a problem if the ministry had it,” Hermione said thoughtfully, “I mean, and correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t Malfoy really influential there? He’d be able to get it if it was there.”

“But maybe it isn’t there and that’s the problem!”, Ron chimed in, “they can’t get it if they don’t know where it is!”

“But if that’s why Malfoy was involved”, Ginny asked carefully, “What’s Snape got to do with it?”

“Perhaps they were just the ones who had to report it to you-know-who”, suggested Fred with a shrug.

“Or they were the ones that found that letter?” Hermione threw in. “what if this isn’t about the weapon, bur rather some sort of information?”

Information, the orange juice, the pain in his scar the night he arrived.

“That's not it. The night before I also had-”

“DINNER IS READY!”

The prospect of food might have been enough to temporarily distract the others, but Harry’s thought raced with unanswered questions. Somehow the dream, the letter and the pain in his scar must be connected, he was sure of it.

…

August 18th 1996, Camp Halfblood, USA

The night befor his seventeenth birthday Percy dreamed vividly, but the dream itself was inherently unclear, shapes and blotches of color continuously shifting and only coming into focus when Percy concentrated on them hard enough.

“Young godling”

The voice was deep and resonated through the cave, the walls it bounced off of giving it an echo-like quality. He knew that voice and he knew this place. He was in Tartarus and the voice belonged to no other than-

“Your soul is untethered, child. You will not be able to hold on to it much longer.” Kronos was looking at him with something very close to pity.

Percy wanted to do something, to shout, rage or perhaps just run, but he felt as if his head was stuffed with cotton and his limbs made of lead. Instead, he just tilted his head sideways, as if asking a question. What question, he did not know himself.

The titan did not respond to it, the only sound emitting from him was a low sort of chuckle tinged with melancholy.

The dream changed after that, but this was the only image that really stayed with him. Him, sword in hand, wearing a chiton and a laurel wreath with Kronos in front of him, torn to pieces and yet still so much larger than life, chuckling for hours and hours on end.

Days after they would still be recovering from the storm Percy knew unfolded.

That day Dionysus sent a meaningful look his way during breakfast. It was a warning and condolences at once.

Chapter Text

August 29st, 1996, Camp Halfblood, USA

For a couple of days after what he had dubbed the dream he had avoided sleeping at all. He forcibly had to give up when he caught wind of Annabeth and Will preparing for an intervention. But when he had lain in his bed that night, the usual nightmares of Tartarus and his quests had given way to a new type of dream.

These dreams he had found himself in were, like most dreams he had, rather peculiar. They felt as if he was walking through a long corridor with a lot of doors, all of them different shapes, forms and sizes. The only thing those doors had in common was that they were either already opened wide or unlocked. Every now and then he would choose a door at random and peek into it. The thing was that actually there was neither a corridor nor doors. In fact, there was nothing at all other than a vague sense of direction and duty.

Behind these doors there was usually nothing that seemed particularly unwonted or significant. It was just people at places, talking or walking, or just sitting. They couldn’t see him, and he didn’t try making them aware of his presence either. Instead, he just sat there with them and kept them company while they were doing whatever they happened to be doing at that specific point in time.

In the mornings following such dreams, Percy felt better rested than he had in what seemed to be years.

…

“Are you cross with me?”

“No.” Percy paused, a little confused. “Why would I be?”

“I don’t know” Annabeth shrugged carelessly, if any gesture she made could ever be described as careless. “It’s just, you’re being a little weird lately. I just wanted to check.”

“Oh, okay.” He did not know what else to reply. Suddenly he felt incredibly stupid, as if all he was ever able to do while conversing with her was give meaningless answers. Perhaps that was the real struggle in being with a daughter of Athena. All Percy could ever be with her was a Seaweed brain.

Self-consciously, he continued doing the dishes. He had been assigned this chore by Chiron after the stunt with Nico and the bucket. Percy doubted that it had been Nico or the Stolls that had told Chiron about the incident, since Nico values his independence just a tad bit too much, and the Stolls would never, as they so eloquently put it, snitch on a fellow troublemaker. The centaur just always seemed to know about these sorts of things.

Annabeth watched him, her gray eyes oddly reminiscent of an owl, but possessing a steel behind them that seemed decidedly ancient. She may be wary of him on occasion, but he is of her as well. She looked as if she could peel away the layers that he disguised himself with and just see him. The thought had once been comforting to him, but lately he had been worrying about what she would find if she were to do so, what would happen if he was deemed insufficient in her eyes.

What an odd pair they made; she feared his power and he feared her judgement.

He preferred not to think of it.

“Do you really need to be doing that?”

Percy barely refrained himself from answering with yet another stupid inquire like “do what”. Instead, he looked up from polishing the glasses and desperately tried to look for context clues.

Without a thought he had formed a little whirlpool in the sink and let it wash away the leftover scraps of food left on the plates. Annabeth was watching this subconscious display of power with furrowed brows.

“I- I didn’t know I was doing that?”

“Don’t you think that that’s a bit-” she hesitated a little, as if she was searching for a word that was easy enough for him to swallow “-concerning?” She did that a lot, toning down her opinion to make it seem digestible for him. Percy wondered when this habit had started.

“Why?”

“It’s just-”, she bit her cheek and looked away troubled. “Don’t you think you’re relying a bit too much on your powers these days? “

Percy did not think that. These days he feared that they might bubble out of him at the most inconvenient of moments if he didn’t use them enough. They were a part of him, always had been and there was nothing he or anyone could change about that. He picked up another glass, one that he had already polished and started rubbing it profusely as if it would wash this conversation away.

Yes, he wanted to tell her. It is concerning but what was he to do? Just wait until something snaps? Some days he longed for the feeling of being depleted of his powers, of letting it all out, but he did not know how to do it. Some days he reveled in the rush of power but had to hold himself back for he did not know what destruction it could cause. Somedays he felt too aware of his surroundings, of every drop of mist, every raindrop sinking into the earth. He felt too big for his skin, yearned to pour himself into the sea or the ground or the sky, to scream and hear the elements join in, a perfect symphony of misery and elation. He resented himself for his power, for finding comfort in it even if destruction was all it was good for.

But he couldn’t tell her any of that. He did not want her to worry any more than she already did. He did not want her to peel away more layers than she already had.

“It’s just dishes. It’s not that deep.” He shrugged, shifted so that he could mimic her stance, downcast look but back ramrod straight, tried to play it all off as being unbothered and not a sign of his own fear.

Annabeth looked irritated at this.

“Well, it isn’t normal, is it?”

Percy looked up again at that. He wanted to rage, yell at her of course it is not normal! When have things ever been normal for us!. He did nothing of the sort. He just stared at her, slightly unbelieving. At the lack of reaction she huffed, muttered “forget it” and walked out.

Over the sound of the door slamming shut on he could barely hear the glass he had been holding shatter.

He looked at his hand. A glass splinter has made its way into his left ring finger. Blood swelled up from the wound and dropped profusely onto the otherwise immaculate marble floor.

He was so tired.

...

August 12th 1996 Great Britain, Grimauld Place

The morning of Harry’s hearing was a hectic one.

At first, when he woke up, for a blissfully peaceful few seconds he did not realize what day it was. Then he did remember, and his insides cramped and twisted anxiously. Quietly, as to not disturb Ron, who was still sleeping, the lucky bastard, He walked down to the kitchen. There, most order members residing in the headquarters were already up and at it. Mrs. Weasley was frenetically preparing breakfast while Mr. Weasley was sitting at the long table reading that day’s edition of the daily prophet. At the front cover Harry could make out his own face and the words “criminal tendencies caused by muggle relatives?!” “Did you hear, Love? Celestina Warbeck’s supposedly bringing out another single.”

Opposite him Sirius was rolling his eyes at the sight of the headline so hard that Harry feared they might fall out of his skull. “I honestly don’t know why you’re still insisting on reading that bull crap, Arthur. At this point it’s just gossip and the ministry’s latest propaganda. I think I even once saw an article saying I had an affair with my cousin.” He rolled his eyes once again, for good measure Harry assumed. “Where do they think I am right now again?”

“Brazil”, Mrs. Weasley chimed in while magically flipping a pancake “And don’t you dare using that kind of language in front of the children.” She said this in an almost casual, conversational tone as if it was already a habit deeply ingrained into her.

“I’ve heard them use worse” Sirius retorted without missing a beat, shrugging with one shoulder and gesticulating with one hand as if to say “what can you do” while accepting the kettle Remus was handing him with the other. The latter was glaring at him halfheartedly, clearly used to his antics.

It was no hardship imagining that this exact interaction had probably taken place at least a hundred times before.

Normally Harry would revel in this easy domestic, but right now he had a hard time thinking of anything but his oncoming hearing that was beginning to feel more and more felt like an execution.

“Harry dear, good morning! What do you want for breakfast?”

Harry did in fact not want anything for breakfast, but nonetheless forced himself to smile, even though he already felt it twisting itself into a grimace while it was forming. “Just some toast would be fine Mrs. Weasley.”

“Had any trouble sleeping? Merlin knows I would, what with the wizard jurisdictions these past few years” Sirius laughed bitterly.

“Sirius, you aren’t helping.”

“It’s fine. I mean I haven’t done anything wrong. Either they see that, or they don’t. And if they don’t, I suppose I could always just stay here, right?”

Out of the corner of his eyes he could make out Remus frowning lightly “You’re awfully calm about this Harry. This could have very serious consequences for you.”

Sirius barked out a sincere laugh at that “Who’s not helping now, huh Moony?”

Arthur coughed awkwardly trying to get the conversation back on track. “I’ll take you to the ministry, Harry. I need to go there anyway. But you needn’t worry about the trial, I’m sure Dumbledore has everything under control.”

Harry, who had the in the meantime claimed the chair opposite to Remus and was currently subjected to Mrs. Weasleys attempts to tame his hair, a fruitless endeavor which was regarded by both Remus and Sirius with barely concealed amusement and a reminiscent look in their eyes, did somehow not feel reassured by this.

…

The hearing itself had been an awkward but blissfully quick affair.

On a surface level he was aware that the ministry’s blatant disregard of what had happened were concerning and that their ignorant stance could lead to many future problems, but this knowledge was easily overwhelmed by the sheer relief he had felt at not being forcefully evicted from Hogwarts.

This relief too, however, was quickly pushed to the back burner of his mind since Dumbledore approached him after the trial. This in and of itself was not particularly worrisome since Harry had quite literally just barely avoided pulling a Sirius, but the headmaster did not seem jovial or relieved in any way. On the contrary, he seemed to be at his most serious Harry had seen him since the event at the end of his fourth year.

Perhaps Harry could find out more about the closet incident as the twins had taken to calling it.

Even as the headmaster had reached him did the thin line his moth had tuned into not diminish. Instead, he took Harry by his shoulder, gently but determined and steered him away from prying eyes towards an abandoned chamber. Once he had reached his destination, he let go of him, as if he had been burnt.

“Harry, my boy, I’m sure you must want to return to your friends and celebrate the ascertainment of your innocence, however I wish to ask you for a favor. The circumstances are rather dire, I’m afraid.”

“A favor, sir?” Harry echoed dumbly. He had not expected this.

Dumbledore nodded meaningfully “Nothing particularly time-consuming, I assure you. Merely a small test, you could call it, performed by the goblins of Gringotts. It will require nothing more and nothing less than a drop of your blood.”

…

A drop of his blood. What kind of test would the gobbling be performing that required a drop of Harrys blood? What did Dumbledore seek to accomplish with this?

These questions refused to let him go while Dumbledore calmly but steadily led him out of the ministry and onto the streets of London. They did not talk much, however, not for a lack of trying on Harry’s part. For the most part their interaction consisted of Dumbledore walking onward with a speed that seemed uncanny for a man of his age, while Harry hurried to keep up. The streets were filled to the brim with parents and students on their yearly shopping trip for Hogwarts. Whispers seemed to follow him wherever he went, and Harry suddenly desperately wished to just be one of them, excited for the new year, but dismayed at leaving his family, having no expectations or responsibility except for passable grades. For a second he allowed himself to sink into the crowd and tried to look at Diagon alley the way he had when he first entered it, back when he was eleven and the names Voldemort and death eaters had meant nothing to him.

The illusion did not hold particularly well.

Once they had reached Gringotts, Dumbledore stopped abruptly, causing Harry to very nearly walk into him.

The building was just as he remembered it. It was crooked as if a giant had lent on it and left it slightly aslant but seemed to possess an almost imperceptible quality of perseverance. Though it should look as if a strong breeze could knock it over, Harry had no trouble imagining it standing her long after he had perished, untainted by time.

He shook himself out of his musings and finally asked the question that currently weighed the heaviest on his mind.

“Professor if you don’t mind me asking, what is the test for?”

Dumbledore was not surprised by Harry suddenly breaking the silence. He answered it in a tone that would have sounded reassuring if it had not been for the tension that still corrugated his figure whilst leading him towards one of the goblins.

“Tests, my boy, are nothing more than a necessity of life itself. One should always seek to find out more about oneself. This test in particular however pertains more to your family than yourself, I must admit.”

“But is it-”

The goblin interrupted harry with a cough. He smiled, displaying rows of yellowish teeth that would seem more befitting in the mouth of a manticore.

All of the sudden Harry had the treacherous impression that Dumbledore had expected the question all along and purposefully dragged it out so as to not grant Harry enough time to gain a satisfying answer.

“What can I do for you today?”

“A simple possesguinis potion for young Mr. Potter here.”

The goblin simply nodded and directed his gaze towards Harry. “With me, Mr Potter” he croaked and walked away, not once looking back to check whether Harry was following him. Dumbledore did not go with them, seemingly incredibly distracted by the ongoings in the wizarding bank.

Harry suddenly realized that throughout the entirety of this conversation, Dumbledore had not once met his eyes.

...

August 31st, 1996, Montauk, USA

Percy’s mother was nice, pretty, caring and terribly unlucky.

Percy knew that. He knew that his mother had been through a lot, and he also knew that the tale she had told him, about parents that died in plane crashes and uncles that died of cancer, was not the truth. Or at least not the entirety of it anyway. He still remembered the one time he had found this book squashed somewhere in the last nook of the bookshelf. It was a deep green and when he opened it the name Saffine Riddle was written on the upper left corner in neat letters. It was undoubtedly his mother's handwriting. Once his mother caught sight of him she practically ripped the book form his hands and returned it to it's original place. He wanted to ask her what that was about, but he saw how it hurt her to talk about it, saw the tension in her body whenever he asked her about her own childhood, so he did not mention it. It would be hypocritical of him anyway, accusing her of being untruthful while he himself was keeping so much from her.

The next time he looked for the book it was gone.

Percy’s father was a whole other story, entirely. He seemed a bit boastful sometimes, like most gods do, only wore Hawaiian shirts and flip flops and could kill a mortal without batting an eyelash.

They were like oil and water, Percy’s mortal friends and family and his immortal relatives. They were not supposed to mix. The existence of demigods was in and of itself a contradiction. There was not supposed to be such a thing as half mortal and half god and sometimes Percy thought that that was why they were doomed to die young most of the time; nature was trying to fix its mistakes by avoiding recreation. A morbid thought, but one Percy was unable to resist having.

Oil and water, ichor and blood.

And yet, Percy was still here. Eventually something is going to have to give.

His mom wasn’t aware of a lot of things that had happened to him over the course of the past few years, and he did not wish her to know.

Of course, his mother knew the basic facts. She knew about the wars, about how they had been caused and how they had ended. The messy details in the middle, however, were largely a mystery to her. She knew about the prophecy. She knew about Gaia. She also knew that Percy had been in Tartarus. She did not know the excruciating details of what had happened down there. She did not know of his gamble. She did not know the numerous occasions people have targeted him to prevent the fulfillment of the prophecy. Nobody knew all of what had happened. Some experiences were simply not meant for sharing.

She kept things secret from him too. She had lied to him about the identity of his father. She had lied about the reason she had married Gabe.

She still lied about her childhood.

It was not a small lie either. It was the life changing kind, the kind that could rival the lies she had told him about his father.

Percy’s mother might be nice, pretty and caring, but she was not honest.

Chapter Text

There had been an old tree in the front yard of the orphanage he grew up in.

It did not have a definite purpose- he strongly suspected that the only reason it had been planted in the first place was that there had been space and space ought to be filled- but the purpose it served for Tom was that of a safe-haven.

The other kids at the orphanage did not like him, which was okay because he did not like the others either. He did not yearn to earn their goodwill, nor did he want to gain their ire- he simply did not care for them. They were orphans, children unwanted or bereft of their relatives with no means to a proper education or anything that made them stand out from the crowd.

At least he was different in the last two aspects. He did have something that made him stand out, something that made him extraordinary. A sort of power, at first hidden even to him, tendrils of intent in his stomach that unfurled and reshaped whenever they were needed into whatever he needed, short bursts of light, levitating objects, the disappearance of unsavory evidence.

He did not care for the others because he did not belong to their world. He was a wizard.

The tree for him was what others would call a hiding place. It was not, of course, since he did not desire to hide and therefore did not require a specific place for him to do so. But Tom had found that enacting his abilities was substantially easier out in the open where he could not be seen. He liked the thoughts of others not being able to see him coming. It made him feel powerful.

…

His daughter had appreciated the tall trees in the grounds of the mansion as well, but for a very different reason.

She liked the shade the leaves gifted her, the sounds they made when the wind tousled through them and the way they changed color when the weather turned colder and the seasons changed.

It was a sign of the passage of time in a place where everything was stagnant.

She loved climbing the trees, love the birds that made their nests there, loved watching a new generation hatch, mature and leave their nests once fully grown. On more than one occasion he had watched her staring wistfully at their retreating figures, her eyes only ever straying long after they had left her line of sight.

It was her entire world, the mansion and the grounds surrounding it. It was the only place in the world that could keep her safe.

Until it wasn’t.

…

August 31st, 1996, Long Island, USA

Percy felt Annabeth’s eyes on him the entire time during breakfast the morning after their argument.
He was afraid of moving even an inch, of every oh so minuscule twitch, afraid of giving her something to feast upon, to take apart and analyze with her calculative wisdom.

So he looked away.

Later he caught her looking at him while he was practicing sword fight with Clarisse. It distracted him enough for Clarisse to land a hard punch- why she always insisted on punching him during swordfights he would never know- against his abdomen. For a second, he felt the pain that spread through it. Then his world was once again reduced to slashes, ducking and attack patterns.

Then, sometime during the early afternoon while he was sitting at the shore gazing wistfully into the blue depths, he heard her approaching.

Therefore, he jumped into the water.

Listen, he knew it was cowardly, running away from a conversation he had long coming, but it was a conversation he did not want to have. He did not want to see the disappointment lining her features, did not want to argue with her once again because of what he was.

Now the sun was slowly disappearing beneath the horizon, and he felt more than heard the rain pounding against the crown of the tree he was leaning against; there wasn’t much of it, but just enough to warrant the usage of an umbrella. The rain felt more resigned than anything else. From the red maple tree, he was sitting under, Thalia’s tree was only barely visible. In the distance he could hear the other campers singing while sitting at the fire enjoying each other’s company.

He wished he could be there, but he could not muster the energy to pretend anymore.

“You’re avoiding me.”

He did not flinch, nor did he turn around in order to find out who was seeking him out. He knew her voice better than he knew his own.

“It‘s dark. You shouldn’t leave the property on your own this late.”

“Look who’s talking”, she scoffed, but from the sound of her voice he could tell that there was no malice behind it. Of course, there wasn’t, it was Annabeth after all. “And don’t try to distract me. We cannot keep on ignoring this.”

The leaves next to him rustled as she sat down beside him and even though they weren’t touching he could feel the warmth emitting from her. Suddenly he felt both anchored and lost afloat at once. It was killing him. He felt alive.

Upon his lack of response, she sighed.

“The others are worried. I’m worried.”

“Everything’s fine.”

“So you keep saying, but-” a sob escaped her. Percy looked at her for the first time since her arrival. She looked tired, as if she hadn’t sept well last night and her hair was tied in a messy bun. He wanted to brush away the lock falling into her face, wanted to hold her until he felt like the person he used to be, wanted to kiss her until all their problems faded into background and they could just be them again, whoever that was.

He did none of those things. Instead, he grasped her hand and held onto it as if it was the only thing connecting him to reality. He couldn’t function without her; he would be better off on his own.

“Something‘s changed while we were down there. Sometimes you look as if you’re not really here, as if you can’t see us. And you always disappear, doing something and then I feel like I’m loosing you again and I can’t help but feel as if I failed you somehow and then I-”

“You didn’t.“ he cut her off abruptly. He knew she hated being interrupted. „It’s just” - he blinked hard, tears blinding his vision.

Annabeth waited a long time for him to continue. He didn’t. He didn’t know what to say. He couldn’t begin to think up the words he needed to describe to her what he felt for here. He didn’t think he would need words, not when it was her he was talking to.

“And then there’s your power,” she was whispering at that point, her voice barely audible over the music still echoing through the woods, “you’re always using them. And I feel bad for it, but sometimes I’m afraid. Afraid that one day you will take it too far and never return. Afraid that you will leave me. I’m scared of how much I need you.”

She looked at him, once again waiting for him to speak. For him to say something, anything at all. Perhaps she wanted him to reassure her, perhaps she wanted him to explain, perhaps she wanted an apology. But he didn’t know what she wanted, so he did nothing at all.

She sighed again, loudly, bracing herself for whatever it was she was about to say.
“I don’t think we can keep on doing this.”

“Doing what?”

“Pretending as if everything is fine. I love you, Percy, so much, but it hurts.”

“So this is it?”

“I think it is. At least for now.”

Neither of them moved. It felt like an eternity they were sitting there, bating their breaths, holding hands. He couldn’t bear another second of it. He wanted it to last forever.

“Do you want to dance?”

She looked at him, sadness marring her smile, the tearstains on her cheeks glistering. A nod, barely detectable and suddenly they were both standing there in the middle of the clearing, giggling quietly to each other, silent tears running down their faces. He lay her hand on her shoulder and she reciprocated in turn, their other hand having never separated in the first place.

For a second the only sound they heard was the music still resonating through the forest.

She took the first step and what she had at first dictated to be a slow Walzer tuned into something else entirely, chaotic with a lot of twirling and stepping on each other’s feet involved, stepping out of tune more than not, stumbling without direction until they caught their footing again.

He lay his head on her shoulder, his nose brushing her collarbone. “I love you too.”

She was right in the end. He did love her, so much that he couldn’t breathe sometimes, but it wasn’t the comforting kind of love. It was the kind that scared.

He would give up everything he had for her, but it would not be enough.

Love was not enough.

...

August 12th 1996 Great Britain, Gringotts

Compared to the grandeur of the entrance hall with its chandeliers and glistering marble columns, the hallway the goblin led Harry into was almost shockingly bland in its simplicity. This was not to say that it was unostentatious, but something about the sparingly lit, slim hallway that seemed to stretch into eternity gave Harry an impression of self-effacement.

After what felt like an hour the goblin stopped at an unremarkable auburn door that seemed practically squished in between two paintings depicting grand battles. He took one of the keys dangling from the pouch bound to his hip and unlocked a series of increasingly complicated locking mechanisms with a couple of practiced gestures. Then he led Harry inside and motioned for him to sit on a stool before he himself occupied the chair opposite it, a wonky construction of books similar to what Professor Flitwick liked to use. The only thing separating them as the goblin took out a dusty roll of parchment and started writing was a sturdy desk that looked to elegant to be stationed in a room like this.

He tried hard not to fiddle with the holes of his hand-me-down jeans in order to maintain some impression of control over the situation he had clearly lost long ago if he had ever had any. Instead, he decided to stare intently at yet another painting. It too depicted a battle, which one he wasn’t sure, he never had been good at history of magic after all, but something about this one piqued his interest.

On the right stood a group of wizards in what Harry could only describe as ancient wizard chic; excessively decorated fabrics wrapped around their bodies in a fashion that resembled a chiton, thick leather straps slung around their torsos decorated with a seemingly endless number of tinctures with and pouches with powders Harry had never seen before. Wands drawn and faces settled into a deep frown they still seemed reluctant to strike against their enemies- something wizards had never been known for. They were wary of them, a phenomenon that normally never occurred in confrontations against non-magical enemies.

Therefore, it were the enemies’ forces that really intrigued him. From the first look it was obvious that they weren’t wizards. They were wearing armor made of what looked to Harry like bronze and instead of wands they had swords, bows and lances drawn. For all that matters they seemed to be muggles, but something about them felt other, for the lack of a better word. The longer Harry watched them as their chest expanded and contracted, it looked to him almost as if the elements were favoring them; the sun was luminating their impressive figures and waves licked at their heels. In contrast the group of wizards seemed to shrink further and further, one of them even dropping his wand out of nervosity.

Why such a painting was not displayed prominently at the entrance hall was obvious, though it still confused Harry immensely that such a thing would be displayed in an institution like the wizarding bank at all.

For a second, he cursed himself for not listening more attentively to Professor Binns lectures about the goblin Wars until he recalled what exactly those entailed.

Thank Merlin for Hermione and her habit of excessively taking notes.

In the meantime, the Goblin had crammed out yet another piece of parchment, this one significantly smaller and more official looking, along with a thin long needle, like one of those acupuncture needles aunt Petunia had once been obsessed over. “Wand hand”, he inquired in the same gruff tone all goblins seemed to possess.

Harry shifted a little on the uncomfortable chair and drew his right hand out of where it had previously been situated. It had angry red lines ingrained on it from where his jeans’ seams had pressed into his skin. The goblin took ahold of his wrist and drew it up higher into the air right above the parchment as he once again took the needle and made a fluid motion. A sharp pain spread across Harry’s palm, and he flinched violently. Blood swelled up immediately from the long thin scratch the goblin had slashed into his palm. Flabbergasted, Harry stared at him.

“Make a fist”, the Goblin instructed unperturbed.

“What?”

“You need to drip blood onto the parchment for the potion to work.”

“The potion?”

The goblin seemed hard pressed to keep himself from rolling his small, black eyes “The parchment, of course.”

Harry wondered what had happened in his life that made this lacking elaboration seem reasonable to him. The cut was solely superficial, but it was done in a way that made it bleed a lot. Still, the sting that erupted from it caused his vision to be blurred slightly by tears. Maybe it was because of the lack of adrenalin in his system, he contemplated while pressing into it. He had sustained countless injuries over the course of his life, but all of them had been connected to a dangerous, oftentimes even life-threatening situation.

This type of pain, the kind that left no distraction be it a fight or an emotion, was something entirely new for Harry.

He disliked it, he decided.

He watched with a sort of morbid fascination as the blood sunk into the parchment. A beat later thin lines started to emerge from it, spreading across the paper in an almost playful manner – addresses, he realized, written in his own handwriting, the letters gleaming a vicious red.

…

Sunken in thought as he was, Harry barely noticed the passage of time during their walk back. His hand, now wrapped in an ordinary gauze bandage stained with his blood, was dully throbbing but he paid it no mind.

Dumbledore was still standing in the entrance hall where he left him now talking animatedly with another wizard with a fedora. He didn’t notice the pair immediately, but if the goblin took offense to his degree of distraction, he hid it quite well.

“The documentation you requested, sir”, he said in the same gruff tone he had been using during the entirety of their interaction.
Dumbledore nodded, seemingly satisfied, thanked the goblin profusely and briskly led Harry to the door.

They had not moved three steps from the door that Dumbledore suddenly started talking.

“I assume you’ve never apparated before, Harry?”

“I thought you had to be seventeen, sir?”

“That is absolutely correct, but that isn’t to say that another person couldn’t simply “bring you along”, so to speak.”

“Professor?”

“Yes, Harry?”

“The goblin said the potion was the parchment. How is that possible? And what is it used for?”

“Well, my boy, you must understand that the goblin didn’t mean that the Parchment itself is a potion, but rather that the parchment was infused with a potion during its production. It’s a simple and yet revolutionary idea. It has spread the field of application immensely and it is practically untraceable. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if you had encountered it many times already without ever realising it. It always pays to be careful.”

He came to a halt in an abandoned alleyway. “Now I must advise you to hold onto my arm as hard as you can. It isn’t a pleasant experience; I must warn you.”

Suddenly the sensation of being squeezed into a tiny rod and twisted into multiple directions at once engulfed Harry. Distantly he could still feel Dumbledore’s arm tethering him, guiding him toward their destination. He focused on that with all his might and before he knew it his knees hit the asphalt.

He opened his eyes; they were back at Grimauldplace.

“How are you feeling?”

“I’m okay,” he rubbed his eyes and was suddenly overwhelmed by an onslaught of dizziness “but I think I prefer brooms.”

Dumbledore chuckled for a moment until he seemed to catch himself. “I must leave you now, I’m afraid, but do greet the others in my stead.”

Harry had turned his back and already started moving toward the door when he suddenly remembered the original question he had in mind.

“Excuse me for asking Professor, but what’s that parchment for anyway?”

No answer. Harry turned around; Dumbledore was already gone as if he had never been there in the first place.

This had something to do with “the conversation” as they had taken to calling it. There was simply no way it didn’t.

…

August 31st, 1996, Montauk, USA

The stairs creaked loudly with every step Percy took.

He didn’t know why he came here. Maybe he did not want to be there, at camp where in every corner something would remind him of her. Maybe he was looking for something else to anchor him to his past; something unconnected to her. Maybe it was the quiet he yearned for; a place that would allow him to scream and rage and cry until he couldn’t.

Whatever it was, it was pulling him forward, step by step, giving him a direction.

The cabin was smaller than he remembered it. There weren’t many personal belongings of him or his mother inside it, even though Percy knew he had once lived in it for a short period of time when he had just been born; his mother didn’t have the means to afford anything other than this cabin and despite their continuous money issues she never sold it.

Later, when Percy had already started his long streak of being thrown out of every school he attended and Gabe was already molesting their couch with his stench, his mother insisted on cleansing Montauk of every trace of them. She had been quite insistent about it, and it seemed to be important to her, so Percy helped her with only minimal grumbling (quite the feat for an eight-year-old)
Still, he was sad about it. The cabin was home to most if not all his happy childhood memories. It didn’t feel like it now though the only thing filling it being the furniture that had definitely seen better days.

The ground under his feet shook.

Somebody- or rather somebodies- was in here. And they certainly weren't being quiet about it.

As quietly as he could he sneaked to the sound’s origin. He hid behind the doorframe leading to the kitchen and silently prayed to Artemis that he wouldn’t be discovered until he wanted to be.

“Well, what now?”

“I’m afraid I don’t know what you are referring to.”

“Of course, you don’t” the man snorted, sarcasm dripping from every syllable as if they were animals caught in some sort of oil incident.

After it became clear that the other man was not going to answer he continued, though it sounded frustrated now, almost panicked. Percy wondered what could provoke this kind of reaction from a man that, judging by his mannerism at least, seemed to generally be very composed.

“She isn’t here. We have looked at every property belonging to the Potter line now and she hadn’t been in any of them. So, what are we going to do? She has long since left if she even had been there in the first place. We can hardly stay here. We’ve already risked enough by coming here!”

She? Who is she? Who were the Potters? Who were these people looking for?

Deep down he felt the need that had previously compelled him to come here ebb away. Whatever this was, he had been supposed to discover it.

Time to find out why.

Chapter Text

May 20th, 1978, Montauk, USA

Saffine Riddle had been raised in a golden cage and was taught to call it a sanctuary.

Part of her longed to return to the mansion, to see her mother and assure herself that she was okay, yearned to be comforted by her fathers embraces and his soothing voice. She knew she couldn’t. She knew her mother was dead. She knew her father was a murderer. She knew he would kill without remorse in order to return her to him. She knew she could never live with the knowledge of who her father really was, knew she could never again look him in the eyes and see anything but a monster.

She knew she could go everywhere she wanted now, just not home.

But that was okay, or at least she would make it okay. She would build herself another home, one she could actually leave at that, another family and another life, this one free of lies and deception and filled to the brim with freedom, independence and joy.

She was somewhere else now, a place she had heard of only in heavy tomes or her father’s stories. It was a place both intimately familiar and wholly new. This was America, to the wizards a place made completely uninhabitable by monsters lusting for their blood, to her and every other squib or muggle the land of opportunity.

Still, she was alone now, but perhaps it was better that way.

…

It was only a couple of days after her first arrival that she met him. A stranger, the first person she had ever gotten to know closely that wasn’t related to her. The way they orbited around each other was simple and unforced in a way that made her feel warm in every crevice of her being. He smiled a lot and made her smile a lot as well. His hair was always windswept and slightly damp as if he spent every second of his free time lounging in the ocean. He smelt of sea salt and always wore Hawaiian shirts and sandals.

She told him her name was Sally and he told her to call him by whatever name she wanted to call him. She laughed in response and told her that he looked like a Julian, which he on the other hand took offense to for some reason, which made her laugh once again and left him pouting and grunting in dissatisfaction from time to time. Sulking didn’t do him any good in the end. The name stuck.

It was only later that she found out that he was a god.

It was around the same time that she found out she was pregnant with his child and that he would have to leave her at the time of their son’s birth.

Ancient laws, he explained, eyes soft but endlessly ancient. She did not have much a reason to worry, he added clearly in an attempt to reassure her. Demigod children with mortal parents that came from magic were not known to be particularly powerful. It was unlikely that their son would inherit any sort of abilities that went above the rudimentary instinctive call to water.

Still, she worried day and night. Her son would be cursed to be hunted by the same monsters that hunted wizard, mythological creatures that couldn’t be truly killed. The only way for him to survive was him leaving. The only way her son could be safe was if she let him go. There was nothing she could do about it.

(Or could she?)

…

The day Perseus Achilles Jackson was born was a tumultuous one. Rain, hurricanes, storms and earthquakes rattled large parts of the country only to be immediately replaced by sunshine and a light summer breeze and vice versa. As the midwife handed the squealing bundle of blankets over to her she caught her sons’ eyes shining faintly golden around the edges and knew that her son would always be different.
And he was.
When he was mad lightbulbs started flickering, when he cried, he occasionally flooded the cabin and when he laughed flowers spread and the room brightened. When she cut his hair it immediately grew back to his preferred length, when she bought him clothes that weren’t blue the washing machine accidentally dyed them and when she tried to feed him broccoli it flew directly out of the window.

She was not stupid. She knew her son had inherited the magic she lacked. She also knew that he could never find out the truth about it.

…

It was a couple of years later- Percy was four at the time and still causing unnatural accidents left and right- that she met Gabriel Ugliano. Same as with Poseidon, their first meeting was simple. Two pairs of eyes meeting each other on a desolate street by chance. Sally did not believe in fate but she did believe in opportunism.

His eyes were so different from the sea green of her former lover, the eyes their son had inherited, soft and playful, ancient and powerful, but neither reminded they her of her fathers, dark, intelligent and sharp like the edge of a knife. They just were.

The rest of him did not look like much either, but even from afar she could sense the stench of alcohol radiating off him in thick waves. His eyes glistered as they raked over her figure, not so subtly leering at her with unwarranted possessiveness.

He was repulsive. He was her only chance.

All her life she had been a bird caged by her own fathers’ wrongdoings. Now she was free to choose a prison of her own making.

…

August 2nd, 1996, abandoned Black estate, Great Britain

Firstly, it had to be stated that Severus Snape was a man that prided himself on his immaculate composure and self-control. Therefore, he did not flinch and he did not shed a tear about the nature of Lily’s death either, thank you very much. He was simply surprised since this revelation had put certain actions of the dark lord in another perspective. That was all there was to it.

It being a letter.

For reference it had to be said that this was a routine mission, nothing meant to be particularly impactful or life changing. Both he and Lucius, sometimes even in combination, were sent to these more often than not. This was not because the dark lord had an overflow of easy low-risk tasks that he had to tick off his to-do list (a muggle concept Severus had found to be quite useful), but because he didn’t trust either of them at the moment for obvious reasons. Lucius, because he had claimed to have been under the imperious curse after the first wizarding war and denounced both the death eaters and the dark lord, and Severus, because he had been working at the school of the enemy for quite a few years now and was known to be a textbook Slytherin and a talented occlumens (something he prided himself on as well), not to mention the affair with Lily.

He understood the dark lord’s reasons since he was, of course, right about both of them. Lucius would once again publicly denounce their cause if he even got half a chance to do it and Severus had been a spy for the order from the get-go. Nonetheless, he would be lying if he said it didn’t become tiring after some time.

On this instance the objective was the inspection and assessment of an old Black estate the Malfoy family had inherited after Black’s truly unfortunate imprisonment. It had apparently been the only one Black had ever inhabited personally after his unfortunate parting from his family. Officially, the Dark Lord wanted them to gather intelligence about the order’s doings. A fool’s errand, since every participant knew that such intelligence would not just be left lying around on a kitchen table.

Or so they had thought.

It was clear that the hose had been left without knowing one would never return to it. Except for the stench of stale food dominating the air and the thick layer of dust that had settled on everything, it looked as if Black with his infuriating grin would walk over from the next room and send a stinging hex his way. He did not appreciate the thought.

Lucius has kept complaining throughout the entire affair. He thought that as a Malfoy he should be spared the embarrassment of having to go through a blood traitors and a werewolf's (for they all knew that those two had definitely lived together) belongings swearing profusely whenever he stubbed his toe on yet another piece of furniture and on one instance even dramatically falling into an armchair before disgustedly springing up again and loudly declaring that it must be infected with mudblood-vermin.

All in all, not a pleasant visitation.

While he was cursing Dumbledore and all heavens above, he suddenly heard a half triumphant half absolutely shocked yelp. There Lucious was standing holding a cream-coloured covert inscribed with a familiar scrawl in dark red ink in hand. “You might want to read this”, was the only thing he said. Severus reached for it, opened it with barely shaking hands and-

Merlin’s beard.

“Where did you find this?”

Lucius grinned “The kitchen table.”

…
August 3rd, 1996, Grimauldplace, Great Britain

It was no secret that Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore valued knowledge and logic above all else.

Which was why such a grave misconception on his part was highly unusual if not unheard of.

Though statistically speaking it had been bound to happen sooner or later.

Tom Marvolo riddle had never pecked him to be the kind of person to tolerate any kind of intimacy and appeared in no way keen on gaining a possible rival in his nefarious schemes which was why Albus had not even briefly entertained the notion of him having produced a descendant.

A possibly fatal misassumption that had come back to haunt him.

The letter shed light to a variety of reasons for Tom’s unusually rash behaviour concerning the prophecy, though it could in no way be called detailed. The woman, Aurelia, is likely Aurelia Lacau, a pureblooded French witch from a long line of muggle hating wizards.

After having graduated Beaubatoux with top grades she moved to England in order to further her studies in transformation and the usage of charms affecting the human mind. Later on, she became a prevalent ally in Toms ambitions to create a wizarding society fit to his own ideologies until her sudden disappearance winter 1959.

Other than that, there wasn’t much documentation on Aurelia Lacau’s life except for her own death certificate. The cause of death was unknown and her remains never discovered though she was presumed to have died in an accident tied to her studies.

Albus had a slightly different theory.

But what was most important was that Toms daughter, Saffine Riddle had apparently never shown a spark of magic and was therefore unlikely to have ever been of any merit for the dark lord.

Which inevitably led to the question of why Tom had left his daughter alive these eighteen years in the first place. Perhaps he had use for her blood because of her ancestry to him?

This was a likely scenario considering the girl had decided to flee to a place where her father was at least according to the letter unlikely to look for her.

This testament could be referring to a variety of places, most of them located in the muggle world. The Potters were known to be a very muggle friendly family and were sure to be in possession of a variety of estates located there.

This of course left one issue. Figuring out their locations. Harry was after all unlikely to be aware of such possessions and therefore could not simply give him the addresses of these estates.
But he was in possession of something else that could tell Albus.

Composed in a retelling one would assume that he had in no way been fazed by this revelation.

One would be horribly mistaken.

The impact of this information had him gasping for breath. Eyes devoid of their usual twinkle and blinking rapidly he couldn't for the life of him remember the last time any news has had caused him to lose his composure like this.

"And he knows, you say?"

From opposite the table Severus nodded mutely at him.

"When?"

"Yesterday, late in the evening to be precise. Though I doubt he will do anything soon, he seemed rather out of it to say the least." He hesitated for a second and then went on to explain as if to justify himself "It could not have been avoided. Perhaps if I had been the one to find the letter, but alas, Lucius would use every opportunity to get himself back into the Lords good graces."

This- this was bad for the lack of a better word. This information could cause all his carefully laid out plans to crumble to the ground. A daughter, whether a squib or not, is unpredictable, is an unknown variable that cannot be afforded when going to war against a ruthless adversary such as Tom, especially when her role in it was a mystery to him.

They would need to find her.

…

August 2nd, 1996, Great Britain (precise location unplottable)

Lord Voldemort was not a wizard easily surprised. On the contrary, from his early childhood on he has made it his mission to know as much as possible about the people around him. This knowledge he collected could prove its usefulness in a variety of ways, if it was to endear a person to him, to threated them, to predict their actions or to influence them however he needed to, knowledge was a form of power and he was very proficient in the art of obtaining it as he strived to be with all kinds of it.

That is to say that despite this proficiency he was still as vulnerable to the power of knowledge as every other person.

alivealivealivealivealivealivealivealive

His daughter might be what one could call a failed experiment, but what mattered to him was that she was his and that nobody had the right to take her from him.

notdeadstolentakennotdeadalivealivealive

He had never anticipated forming a bond with her that went above the connection he had to his followers. She was supposed to act as a failsafe to his followers and an extended hand of his, somebody that could keep them in check whenever he happened to be unavailable.

But she couldn’t. She was fragile, powerless, something to be protected and hidden away somewhere nobody could harm her.

She wasn’t there anymore, but at least she was not gone either. She would have to wait for he would not be able to afford any distractions during the war, and he could not bear endanger her ever again. She might have betrayed him, forsaken her own father, but that was understandable, she simply did not know any better. Once the war was won, he would return her, safe and sound.

…

August 31st, 1996, Spinners-End, Great Brittain

The possesguinis potion was an interest piece of magic. It had the ability to reveal a person’s belongings and inheritances whether he was aware of them or not. Harry, who had not gotten to grow up with his parents, was largely unaware of the large number of properties that went along with the Potter name, but the potion had not been deterred by this.

The scroll of parchment in hand he strolled along the pavement humming jovially a tune to himself. On his right Professor Severus Snape was scowling and trying his hardest to catch up to him without looking as if he was exerting himself. He was decidedly not dressed for the occasion with his usual all-black attire that was certainly about to make many a muggle shake their head in confusion. Then again, he had not been made aware of the destination of their little trip- in fact he had not once in any of their recent excurses even been made aware of the fact that they would be having one.

In the end it was no matter though. The helping hand of magic could solve many problems and unsuited clothing should not prove to be a serious issue even if they were to be seen. Truthfully even Albus himself could not possibly know what was considered appropriate clothing in the place they were about to visit, even though he doubted it deviated much from the norms of Muggle-Europe. Still, it was a place that had not been ventured by any person of magical descent in quiet some time, and even those that dared breach these foreign lands were unable to inform them of deviation in clothing habit for they seldomly returned. The ministry did not bother sending search parties after them- the only thing to be retuned were the occasional bone shards- that is if the party even managed to make their way back.

Among wizard kind the American continent was infamous for its monsters that lusted after magical blood and magical blood only. Most Muggles could not see them, no curse or concoction could affect them, and an encounter ended deadly most of the time.

It was the ideal hiding spot for a squib on the run from wizards.

Despite the glaring dangers this place housed the risk was worth it. A lot depended on this visit. This would be their last, the last address on their list, a small summer home on Long Island near Montauk village that Lily had inherited form her parents.

Still, Albus doubted Severus would be very happy about their small excursion.

With minimal explanation Albus took a sharp turn the right into a playground and pointed towards the discarded remains of a plush bear.

Their portkey.

Simultaneously they reached out and grabbed a hold of the matted fur and -

…

“Where are we?”

Albus did not respond right away. Instead, he scanned their surrounding for any signs of monstrous activities and put every ward he could think of on the areas surrounding the building. They shall not be disturbed in their venture.
At last, when it became clear that if he did not respond soon Severus would do something decidedly unwise he answered.

“We are on the eastern site of Long Island, near the village Montauk. The Evans used to keep a summer home here.”

Severus’s eyes widened “but that is in-“

“The United States.”

It was not exactly what Severus had wanted to say. Most witches and wizards treated the USA as they did Voldemort- that is with the belief that if they did not dare utter the place’s name it could not possibly harm them. “Names”, they whispered in hushed tones as if giving up an invaluable secret, “have power.”

Albus was aware were these beliefs stemmed from, but he did not think too highly of them.

Still, wizard kind had found another name for this continent. They called it the lethal lands.

The cabin- for it was the only term that could be given to the small building at the beach- was sparingly furnitured. From the second they entered it Albus could tell that it hadn’t been lived in in a while.

Despite this they inspected it thoroughly. Severus, who was by now an unwilling expert with these expeditions, both from his order and death eater missions, methodically took the cabin apart. It was not warded, but that was to be expected, anybody that could have warded this cabin was long dead and the trace of their spells had faded long ago.

They did not find anything.

After their search had ended, they stood listlessly in the middle of what was once presumably a kitchen and did not say anything for a couple of seconds. At last Severus spoke “Well, what now?”

It must be the wind, Albus mused, that rattled the cabin, for none of the wards were triggered. Still, he precautiously began searching his pockets for his wand.

“I’m afraid I do not know what you are referring to.”

“Of course, you don’t.”

He remained silent, on guard.

“She is not here. We looked at every property belonging to the Potter line, and she hadn’t been in any of them. So, what are we going to do? She has long since left if she had even been here in the first place. We can hardly stay here.”

“Why not? Let’s chat.”

Leaning nonchalantly against the doorframe was a boy. He was tall and handsome with aristocratic features and windswept dark hair that fell onto his forehead with casual elegance. Despite his age he held himself with the air of someone who was used to being the most powerful person in a room.

There was no doubt about it. Before him stood a young Tom Riddle.

Chapter Text

August 31st 1996 Montauk, USA

Percy did not often think about what was going to happen on a day. It probably brought bad luck and the last thing Percy wanted was more of that. But still if he had thought about it, he would have never anticipated being broken up with and then having two strangers pointing sticks at him all within the same hour.

“Well?” he asked fidgeting with his pen in what he hoped was an unthreatening manner.

One of them, the younger one with the oily voice, shook himself out of his stupor “What are you doing here?”

“What are you doing here?” Percy shot back. “And who are you anyways!”

The older one blinked rapidly or at least Percy assumed he did. The afternoon sun was blaring into the kitchen from right behind them and the only thing Percy could make out from his position at the doorway were their weird silhouettes and unusual clothing. Then, as if having heard this thought the lamp flickered to life. Percy knew for a fact that that particular lightbulb had been out of commission for several years.

But this was not what he should be focusing on in this moment.

Now that Percy could properly see the two men, their oddness became even more apparent. The younger’s dark hair matched his voice in its oily quality. He wore an all-black attire that possessed so many buttons that Percy seriously wondered how he had not yet lost his sanity buttoning them all up. At first glance he seemed like the closed off type and did not allow his earlier outburst to show. His companion on the other hand looked like Gandalf. Long white hair and a beard that was stuffed into his oddly patterned robes, halfmoon shaped glasses and an honest-to-the-gods matching pointed hat.

He smiled in a way that was supposed to appear reassuring or grandfatherly, but beneath this display Percy could still somehow sense his unease. Whatever Percy’s arrival signified; it unsettled him greatly. “Excuse me, young man,” he said, “it appears that we were simply surprised by your sudden arrival.”

“That actually doesn’t explain anything at all”, Percy retorted keeping his tone purposefully light, “So I’ll ask you again; Who are you and what are you doing here?” The lambs light intensified. “And also, what’s up with that lightbulb?”

“My name is Albus Dumbledore, and this is Severus Snape. We have come here in search of a woman. We believer her to be in great danger. You might know her. Her name is Saffine Riddle, but I believe she might be going by a different name now.”

Percy nodded dumbly “She does. Her name is Sally Jackson.”

The other man, clearly the more paranoid of the two, stepped forward “And how do you happen to know her?”

“She’s my mother.”

Severus stopped abruptly. A beat of silence then-

“And the lamp?”

“Magic.”

“Prove it”

Gandalf, or Albus as he was apparently called flicked his stick. The wardrobe caught fire and for an instance it burned so brightly that it will forever be etched into Percy’s retinas. Then the fire died, and the wardrobe stood there unharmed as if nothing had happened.

“Huh”, Percy said eloquently.

…

Percy sincerely hoped that this situation felt as awkward to the others as it felt to him. Judging by the jovial humming exuding from Albus as he summoned three plush armchairs along with a round table and Severus’ now relaxed stance that spoke volumes of how used he was to such antics by now his chances with that weren’t very good.

“Please do sit down.” Albus gestured towards one of the armchairs, fortunately the one nearest to the entrance and sat down on the one opposing it himself. Severus took his stick and turned his armchair into an uncomfortable dark wooden chair. Percy thought that single action just about summed up the vibe he got from the guy. He reminded him of one of these teachers that would always sigh in mock-annoyance when they told Percy to read something out loud to the class. Albus on the other hand seemed more like the type to smile encouragingly at him all the while and then just say something like “Now I’m sure that with a little bit more practice-”

Percy did not voice any of these observations out loud, but rest be assured he hated both types. Still, it did not feel fair for him to dislike a person based on what type of teacher he thought they would be, especially if he did not even know them.

Albus did not seem perturbed by his companion’s blatant distaste towards armchairs. Instead, he once again flicked his stick- and Percy should really stop calling it stick- through the air and let a cup of tea appear in front of him. Then he summoned a bowl filled with sugar and dumbed two spoonsful into the cup before magically stirring it.

“How do you like your tea?” he asked in the same grandfatherly tone he had used before, but a little more settled now, more in control, as if he had assessed the situation and is now just trying to make the best of it.

“Oh, um I don’t really like tea, actually.”

“Coffee then perhaps?”

Percy thought back to the time the Stolls convinced him that drinking coffee was a good idea. The nymphs still flinched whenever they caught sight of an arrow and come to think of it, Percy never did get his sweater back. It was safe to say that it stayed at that one time. “I don’t think that is a good idea.”

“Wise decision. I have heard that it can be quite damaging, especially to such a young mind. Perhaps something else then? I really do insist. I’ll suspect we’ll be sitting here for quite a while.”

Percy, sensing that he will not get out of this, decided to just go with the best option available “Just water is fine, sir.” With water he would at least be able to sense if anything had been added to it.

“Splendid. And you Severus? Black as usual?”

“I suppose that will suffice.”

Albus started humming again whilst summoning the requested beverages. Percy took his glass of water decorated with a slice of lemon and tentatively took a sip. Nothing. It was just water, chilled to the perfect temperature. Reassured, he took another sip. Neither Albus nor Severus were deterred by his initial hesitancy if they had even noticed it.

Albus’ cup clinked a little as he put it down on the table “Well now that that’s settled, young man, what did you say your name was again?”

“Oh- uhm, I didn’t say actually.”

Names have power

Now both Albus and Severus stared at him expectantly. “It’s Percy. Percy Jackson.”

“Percy, you say?”

He nodded mutely.

“Does that happen to be short for Percival?” Was Albus trying to get him to relax by asking him insignificant questions? If so, he was clearly failing since Percy was now more paranoid than ever.

“I- I mean it is short for something but it’s not Percival. To be honest I don’t like my full name much, I prefer to go by Percy.”

Albus nodded but it seemed as if he was reminiscing, as if when he looked at Percy, he saw somebody else entirely.

“May I ask why?” He asked after half an eternity had passed.

Why would he ask that?

“I don’t know is that important? It is just an unusual name is all.”

“Unusual how?”

“Well, I thought my full name Perseus Jackson, but if you are to be believed it seems as if my real name is Perseus Riddle.”

Neither man said anything in response, but with some satisfaction Percy detected a twinge of guilt.

He decided to press on “You said my mother was in danger. Why?”

The older one looked into his eyes. Percy glared back. Nonetheless when Albus appeared to have found whatever he was looking for, or didn’t find, whatever the case was, he leant back, though he still looked at Percy as if he was expecting him to set something on fire as well. “Ah yes, well you see, Perseus-”

“Percy”, he corrected him.

“-to understand this, we will have to explain this story from the beginning.”

“I’d appreciate the short version, thanks.”

“It is vital for you to understand the severity of this situation.”

Percy sighed, long and suffering. “Fine let’s just get this over with then.”

“A couple of years ago there was a dark wizard who went by the name of Lord Voldemort. He amassed a following of many other wizards who believed in the supremacy of wizardkind over muggles- non-wizards if you will- and terrorized our world and yours, that is the muggleworld. Well, until his sudden downfall Halloween 1981 that is.”

He hesitated a little and then went on to say “The reason this concerns you is because this man is your grandfather. We do not know why he sired your mother, but it stands to reason that he intended to use her for nefarious purposes. Still, your mother is what we call a squib, a person with magical parentage that is unable to perform magic themselves. It is unclear why he would choose to let her live let allow take care of her for so long.”

Wow, this man really did not think to highly of his grandfather. Sure Percy knows of more that one parent that could not care less for their children (cough the gods cough), but none of them were human.

Albus seemed to misinterpret his troubled expression “We do not think your mother was actively involved in his rampage. Or source indicates that she was not aware of her father’s deeds and had along with her mother been basically imprisoned for the first eighteen years of her life.”

“But why does any of this matter? I mean you did say he was dead, didn’t you?”

“The circumstances of his downfall are rather mysterious to say the least. He did not die, not truly. And about a year ago he returned and is working in the shadow to rebuild his followers- the death eaters- to their former strength.”

This seemed oddly familiar.

Albus continued, choosing his words just as carefully as before, “We have only recently found out about him having sired a daughter at all and that was through the accidental find of a letter; the wizard and the witch who rescued your mother did so by faking her death and sending her to this cabin the witch had inherited form he mugglefamily in the United States, a country uninhabitable to wizards. Later, they had reason to believe Voldemort was after them, so they wanted to notify their friends of her existence through a letter in case of their death. They were murdered shortly after, and several circumstances led to the letter never being discovered and read. Well, that is, as I have already said, until recently.”

At this point Percy would have to admit that he was only half-listening to the man’s story. His heart was pounding so hard he feared it might jump out of his chest and he would vomit it out, a tiny little thing staining the creaky wooden floor a deep red. In his head there was only one though blaring through his brain on repeat.

notagainnotagainnotagainnotagainnotagainfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuck

“Are you doing well, Perseus? You’re looking a little pale.” Albus asked.

hecan’tbreathe

“No, no, everything is great. Everything is just fantastic I just need some more water I think.” Percy replied, the world tumbling out of his mouth without real meaning behind them. He wondered whether Albus would be able to discern them, whether he would be able to tell where one word ended and the next began.

“Oh, well that can be arranged, young man!” And once again Albus flicked his stick- for the gods sake what was that thing called- and his glass filled up with the same crystal-clear water as before. Percy gratefully chucked the thing down in one go, skillfully avoiding Severus’ disapproving glance. Immediately he felt the liquid rejuvenate him and the panic ebbing away. Once again Percy felt grateful for the effect water had on the children of Poseidon.

“Okay, so,” he began after he finished wiping the spilt droplets from his chin, “just to summarize, evil grandfather who is also a powerful dark wizard had a daughter that cannot do magic but is important for whatever reason, she was found by some wizards, the wizards helped her escapes, then they were murdered, my grandfather died-not-died, came back and finds out what actually happened to his daughter and is now looking for her.”

“Yes”

“That is correct.”

Percy sighed. Okay, he could probably find a way to deal with this mess.

“But that is not all.”

Of course it is not.

“What else is there then?”

“I fear that your existence has changed things.”

“How so, I mean I’m just a- what did you call it? Squib? Muggle? Some other weird magic word? I would hardly be any more useful than my mom.”

“That is precisely the problem. You are neither a muggle nor a squib. I’m afraid the lamp earlier was your own doing.”

The window shattered and the kitchen descended into anarchy.

…

It took about twenty minutes and the two men’s combined effort for the window to be repaired, the furniture to be pushed back to their rightful places, the lights to cease flickering and for the cat that had snuck into the cabin to stop attempting to violently murder everything within sight and Percy could not in full confidence claim that he had regained his composure by the end of it.

But he can pretend. Fake it till you make it and all that. Whatever he did, life would just keep throwing its curveballs anyway and in Percy's case they were usually on fire or poisoned or something equally annoying.

So yes, he was fine.

“So, what’s the plan now?”

Albus, who was expertly hiding the fact that he was still breathing hard from chasing that cat around the table- an image that Percy would forever remember fondly- folded his hands on the newly fixed table. “Originally, we were just intending to inform your mother of the situation and take her back to England so that she may hide somewhere where we can keep an eye on her. Had you been a muggle yourself we would have just done the same thing with you, but you being a wizard yourself puts an even larger target on your back. There is no doubt he would try to use you for his own gain. Therefore, I propose you come with us and hide in our own headquarters where you can be taught to control your magic.”

“Wait, did you just say back to England?”

“Yes, there is no magical society in the American continent.”

“Why?”

Albus spoke the next words slowly as if he was weighing every syllable “I’m afraid they would not be able to persist for long. The birth and upbringing of a wizard or witch in the US is not something that was thought to be possible. It is simply deemed too dangerous.”

“What, is the atmosphere toxic for you or something?”

Neither Albus nor Severus seemed willing to respond to this.

Suddenly the way Severus was eying every possible entrance point for a sign of danger made sense. Perhaps that was why Percy was seated nearest the door. They were nervous. They were expecting something.

In that moment Percy resolved to push later for answers.

“Fine”

“Fine?”

“Yes, I’ll go with you.”

“Fantastic, then we will just have to-”

“But I do have one condition.”

Abus motioned his hand for him to continue. Percy heaved a sigh.

“I do not want any of you to involve my mother in this.”

“Perseus you must see that-”

“It’s Percy and I’m being serious. You said that this place is dangerous for wizards. I do not think my grandfather would risk coming here, especially since he cannot even be completely sure that she is still alive.
Tell her I got a scholarship to some boarding school or internship or something like that, put some spells on her house to hide her, anything, do whatever you need to do to protect her, but swear to not tell her. Then I will come with you.”

Dumbledore sighed as if Percy was a small child being particularly difficult and not a battle-hardened demigod that was making an entirely reasonable demand. Not that Albus knew about the battle-hardened demigod part, but the point still stood. Severus looked at him with an unreadable expression.

“Fine I will grant you this request.” He finally amended.

…

Severus, or as it turns out he preferred to be called Professor Snape wasn’t the most talkative of people.

To be fair the only thing he did say this far was that they would spend the better part of the night and the following day on their travel since this thing called a portkey had expired. Albus had a “private discussion with Severus about the logistics of their travel” and disappeared to deal with matters on Percy’s mum’s side. Percy wished he would have been able to have a proper goodbye, but he figured he could always send an iris message.

“Wait can we stop here?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Have you not listened to anything I explained? Every second spent here increases your chance of an untimely death.”

“Oh come on Sev it’s just a convenience store. I’m hungry!”

“Do not call me Sev.”

“Come on. Pretty please?”

“No.”

“Pleeeeaase?”

“The answer is and will remain-”

…

“I will not be paying for this.”

Percy rolled his eyes “I did not ask you to.”

He held up two bags of gummy worms and compared them to each other. The left was a bit cheaper but the right one contained more blue worms. He chose the latter.

“Do you want a sandwich too, Sev?”

Severus did not deign him with a response instead choosing to glare at everything that moved, fully expecting them to tun into a horrendous monster at a moment’s notice, which was not an entirely unfounded fear as Percy was well aware. He noticed how Severus was with one hand still holding the stick so hard that his knuckles tuned white and then for a second almost felt bad about the whole situation. Still, needs must, and Percy was sure Severus would rather deal with a bloodthirsty monster than a hangry demigod.

“Come on, at least take a granola bar or something. I heard they can improve heart health.”

The gods knew Severus needed a bit of good old heart health with the way he practically jumped on the ceiling earlier when some child started crying because his ice cream cone fell down.

Severus still didn’t say anything, so Percy just took a few off the rack and took two bottles of water before walking off to pay.

A sudden thought entered his mind.
“Hey, Sev?” he called out.

“I believe I already told you not to call me that.”

“Were not going to get there by plane, are we?”

“No, there weren’t any tickets available on such short notice and apparating from such heights is virtually impossible.”

Percy breathed a sigh of relief. At least he won’t get blasted out of the sky tonight. Small mercies and all that.

“Sev?”

“What?”

“What’s apparating?”

“Teleportation and now stop asking questions.”

Severus was still turning around at every small noise and casting everyone surrounding them suspicious glances. The other people in the store were making a wide berth around them, possibly because of Severus weird wizard clothes or his glares or a combination of both. He looked really done with the world and everything inhabiting it (an emotional state Percy was intimately familiar with) and once again Percy felt an onslaught of guilt for something that was not actually his fault. Or not entirely anyway.

Something was in here.

Shit.

“You know what Sev, if you’re so paranoid you can just go outside and look to see if there’s anything lurking nearby. I think I heard something from outside.”

Severus ashen face turned even paler if that was even possible. Still, he drew his stick out of his pocket and hissed a vague threat toward Percy “to stay where he was or else”. He did not have to worry; Percy was exactly where he needed to be.

He did not turn around until after he heard the telltale swoosh of the door closing.

Then, he drew his sword.

…

“I told you to stay where you are.”

Percy shrugged, purposely unbothered and trying his hardest to hide the gash the monster had left on his arm. He would need to tend to it later. “Well, I had already paid and everything so I thought it would just look stupid if I stood around and waited for you.”

“How you have survived thus far is beyond me.”

Percy shrugged again and tried not to wince at the stabbing pain it caused. „Did you find anything?”

“Nothing.”

“Huh, must have been the wind then.”

“Must have been. Hold my arm and don’t let go until we stop.”

“What?”

“Just do it.”

…

“I’m so not doing that ever again.”

“You will have to.”

Percy vigorously shook his head and tried not to throw up again „What was that anyway?”

“Apparating.”

'Well, it sucks. Is it supposed to feel like having all your vital organs stirred and poured into a washing machine?”

Severus did not answer that question. Instead, he decided to finally explain their further plan “Once we board, we will both retreat to our respective rooms. It shouldn’t take us more than twenty-four hours to be close enough to England for apparition. Do use the time to rest and replenish yo- are you even listening?”

Percy did in fact listen, but he was rather distracted by the gigantic ship swaying gently in the harbor.

“This is so cool” was all he said and then descended into a state of shock-glee again.

…

It was okay. The ocean was great and all and Percy liked that Severus stopped being so paranoid once the coast disappeared from view. But then he thought about the Princess Andromeda which led to him thinking about camp and then he remembered the fact that he did not say goodbye to any of them. He just kind of disappeared, just like that.

Then he just thought of Annabeth.

Percy retreated into his room soon after.

He poured half of his bottle of water he had brought at the store over his arm and then made some makeshift bandage for it. Afterwards he paced a bit through the room, restless despite how tired he was. Then he just sat there leaned against the door of the tiny room he had been assigned and listened to the waves crashing against the ship. He was mourning he realised. Annabeth wasn’t dead, nor was anyone else, but still the thick atmosphere of misery and grief lingered around him, poisonous in its nature and intending to choke and now that he didn’t have anyone to convince that he was okay his composure bleed out of him and made the floor all slippery.

If he fell now, he wasn’t sure he would ever be able to get back up again.

He was mourning the death of a future, the happy ending he had always strived after but fell through his hands like quicksand, nonetheless.

It was a future he would never get to have. A normal life.

Perhaps, all this time he had been in love with a life he could never have, a dream that could never become reality.

It had never been his fate to die happy.

He felt as if something inside of him cracked at the notion

With nothing better to do his body started to rack with suppressed sobs until he finally gave himself over to the waves of grief rolling over his body.

Outside the storm was howling.

Percy was sick of being sad.

…

If Severus had noticed that Percy spent the night and most of the morning hysterically crying, he didn’t mention it. He just handed him half the granola bar Percy had to practically wrestle him into accepting and walked away.

Maybe, Percy thought to himself, Severus wasn’t so bad after all.

Chapter Text

August 13th, 1996, Grimmauld Place, Great Britain

Gathering evidence about the conversation was easier said than done, especially since Harry had not caught sight of neither Dumbledore nor Snape ever since the blood incident.

That however did not mean there was nothing to be discussed.

“I hereby declare the second official meeting of the Super-Secret-Extra-Order, where we discuss everything the order does not deign to discuss with us,” Freds voice rang out. Next to him George blew thrice into a horn he had gotten from Merlin-knows-where as if to underline this statement.

“Who made you the leader?” Hermione was the one that said that, obviously.

“We did. Thought we could use some more flair.” George blew into the horn again.

“Flair? We don’t need flair. We need to be taken seriously.” Ginny this time.

“And how do you want to achieve that?” Fred, but with an undertone that implied that he thought Ginny was being very stupid.

Ginny spluttered. “Well- I-”

“Exactly. Ergo flair.” Another blow into the horn.

Ginny’s cheeks reddened but Harry doubted it had anything to do with embarrassment or her proximity to him. On the contrary, somebody ought to take the horn from George before Ginny did and uses it to blow their brains out.

On the other hand, he really did not want to cross Ginny right now.

“Could we please just get this over with?” Hermione, unsurprisingly.

“Ah, yes well-” Fred shuffled through a stack of paper lying in front of him as if trying to sort his notes. From his viewpoint next to George Harry could see that all the papers were blank. “As I have been trying to say before I was so rudely interrupted-” here he glared at Hermione, “was that any and all members of the Super-Secret-Extra-Order or SSEO for short are naturally sworn to secrecy and are strictly prohibited from telling any order members of our meetings.”

“Wait so this is actually a thing we’re doing now?” Ron shook his head, “but how are we going to keep having meetings? I mean, mum has us cleaning the house every waking moment and somebody could get suspicious when we keep disappearing like that.”

“Simple, my simple brother, we only meet when the order meets, and only when there is something to discuss. Once we’re back at Hogwarts it will be much easier to meet and we’ll probably have less to talk about anyways.”

“We need a code” Hermione said, “and somebody needs to write a protocol during these meetings.”

“I’m glad you offered” Fred winked at her while sliding one of the blank sheets of paper her way.

“And-” Hermione added, apparently not done yet “this is a democracy. That means no leader and we switch with taking notes. And the only way we’re admitting new members is if the majority agrees.”

Fred shrugged “As long as we can keep the horn.”

“So,” Ginny said, “what has brough on this meeting anyways?”

Most people turned to Harry. “Uhm well-” he coughed- “there was something that happened after the hearing. I think it might be important. It’s probably connected to the conversation.”

“Well then” George said twirling the horn, “Shoot.”

…

September 1st 1996, the Atlantic Ocean

As he was standing on the railing of the ship, Percys mind felt strangely scattered. Whenever it was too silent, he heard voices talking to him, whispering, yelling, bargaining. Perhaps, he mused, it was the sea that was talking to him, the waves communicating with yet another child of the sea since he happened to be near, but at the same time this didn’t feel like his father’s domain. On the contrary, standing at the railing and listening to the waves clashing against the ship helped him tune the voices out and momentarily reduce them to passive static. The sound of rolling waves clashing against each other was familiar, comforting even, but these new sounds, these voices were different. They made him restless, instilled the desire in him to do something. Denying them felt like denying an integral part of his being.

Idly he coaxed the wild currents into moving the ship faster towards their destination, gently cradling it like one would a small child and easing the swaying. It was the least he could do after leaving it to the rage of the unforgiving storms last night. The familiar tugging sensation in his stomach helped take the edge off his conflicting emotions and tethered him back to his body.

He plopped another gummy worm into his mouth and reveled in the absence of chatter. At this time of the day most people were inside the dining room eating lunch while the rest were still recovering from the storm. He wasn’t hungry, thanks to yesterday’s sandwich most likely, and fully intended to make the most out of this rare opportunity for peace and quiet.

“Son.”

He almost dropped the gummy worms into the agitated waves. “Dad! What are you doing here?”

His father stepped forward from where he had been standing and joined Percy at the railing. “Do I need a reason to visit my favorite son?”

“No, I guess you don’t.” He fiddled with his hands and shifted from foot to foot uncomfortably. Interactions with his father were few and far in between and despite his father’s attempts to make up for the years he had missed, Percy had a hard time believing that he actually cared for him because of him and not his feats. On the other hand, Percy thought that was an unfair assumption to make. After all his dad was like all gods bound to ancient laws and had never been allowed to interfere much with his life, let alone casually visit.

Which brought him back to the situation at hand; How come his dad decided to spontaneously stop by?

His father hummed a strange tune, something ancient and forgotten by time and Percy felt him gently calming the currents that Percy had accidentally worked into a frenzy with his shock.
“How are you feeling, son?”

“Uhm good, I guess? I mean there’s been worse, right? I’m mostly just worried about mom and Paul and”, he swallowed, “I mean at this point, what would I even do without a murderous grandfather who is out to kill everyone?”

His father regarded him with an amused expression, before sobering up again “For the record I hadn’t intended for you to be a wizard. It has been a long time since the magical folk had had any contact with the divine. You are unique in that aspect.”

Percy audibly snorted. They both dwelled in silence for a couple of minutes, reveling in each other’s company that was such a rarity. Percy already knew the next word that would leave his father’s mouth before he even made up his mind about them.

“You know, you are always welcome down in Atlantis.”

“No, I’m not. Thank you for the offer though.”

It wasn’t the first time his father had offered, and it wasn’t the first time Percy had refused either. They both knew why. It was one of those things that didn’t need to be spoken aloud to be understood.

His father was looking at him with a strange look in his eyes. It was different from the one he was used to, where it seemed as if he was trying to commit Percy’s face to memory before Percy inevitably died a tragically early death. It wasn’t sadness marring his expression, but it wasn’t joy either. Percy did not know what it meant. He was unsure whether he wanted to. Some things should not be spoken aloud simply because they shouldn’t be understood.

“Brace yourself.” The god said in the end, “Not many a mortal has possessed the powers that you have, especially not one that is of the sea.” He paused again and looked away. “The sea does not like to be restrained by the confinements of mortality.”

Percy gazed into the roaring waves below and wondered whether Severus would bother searching for his body if he threw over the railing never to return. He wondered whether his father would attend his funeral once he died, wondered if he would deign himself to be surrounded by the beings, he considered inferior, even if it was just for a couple of hours. He wondered whether Annabeth would have fallen into Tartarus with him if the situation had been reversed. Once he had been sure that she would. It had been a long time since he had been sure about anything. Life was fickle like that. Everything kept changing. One day Percy would look around and everything would be different, but he would be the same. Or maybe he wouldn’t. Maybe the change would take him too. Maybe it didn’t matter.

“Perseus!”

A hand roughly shook his shoulder and Percy was pulled out of his musings.

“What!” he snapped without any real bite to it. Sev was looking at him with an expression that was half annoyance and half badly disguised concern. “Get inside. You’ve been out here for hours.”

It was only then that he realized that the sun had already settled deep on the horizon. The waves had grown tumultuous, and it was raining so hard that Percy could barely see what was right in front of him. His father had long since left.

…

September 1st, 1996, Grimmauld Place, Great Britain

“Guard?” said Harry. “We have to go to King’s cross with a guard?”

“You have to go to King’s cross with a guard”, Hermione corrected him.

It was early in the morning of the day of their departure to Hogwarts and all hell had broken loose in Grimmauld Place. Downstairs Sirius’ mother was screeching the usual, something about blood purity and shame upon the house of Black while Mrs. Weasley was still scolding the twins about their attempt at efficient luggage transportation.

“Why? I thought Voldemort was supposed to be lying low or are you telling me he’s going to jump out from behind a dustbin to try and do me in?”

“I don’t know, it’s just what Mad-Eye says,” she glanced at her watch and anxiously bounced Crookshanks who was lounging in her arms up and down, “but if we don’t leave soon were definitely going to miss the train.”

“WILL YOU LOT GET DOWN HERE NOW, PLEASE?”

Hermione practically started sprinting down the stairs. Harry was just about to follow her down when he caught sight of a silvery body making its way through the hallways, Sirius trailing closely behind.

By now Harry is pretty good at guessing when something fishy is going on. He stealthily followed them behind and watched as they entered a room and locked it behind them.

It was that bloody broom closet again. Why was it always that closet?

He did what anybody would have done in his situation. He watched everything through the keyhole.

The silverly body he had seen earlier was a Patronus in the shape of a phoenix; it belonged without a doubt to Dumbledore.

Then something strange happened; The Phoenix opened its beak, but the sound that emitted from it wasn’t the song he was used to; it was Dumbledores voice. He had recorded a message through his Patronus.

Severus will arrive with an American wizard tonight. He will be staying with you for the foreseeable future. Further plans will be discussed at the next order meeting.

“An American wizard? But how-”

“ARE YOU COMING, HARRY?”

Harry stood up from where he was crouching in front of the door and ran as quietly as he could downstairs.

An American wizard, huh?

…

September 1st 1996, the Atlantic Ocean

Percy was watching Severus make nonsensical movements with his stick. Outside on the deck night had fallen and darkness was shrouding everything from sight. They were sitting in Sev’s room waiting to reach the point from which Sev could safely transport them to England. Distantly Percy could still hear the sea roaring. “Bloody weather” Severus muttered under his breath. But they both knew it worked to their favor. Nobody would see them when they disapparated outside and the loud bang it made could be attributed to the storm.

Percy was dreading apparating again. It was cool in theory, after all who wouldn’t want to be able to vanish from one place and appear in another? In a way it reminded Percy of the gods’ way of travel, just a lot louder and more nausea inducing, but something about it filled every crevice of his being with a sense of wrongness, it felt unnatural, grotesque, twisted. He shuddered even thinking about it.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m tracking our location. Don’t disturb me. You don’t want to end up in the middle of the ocean, do you?”

Percy shrugged and said nothing, not because he wanted to avoid ending up in the ocean, but rather because he figured that Severus would.

Five minutes later Sev looked up from his spell work and nodded at Percy. Percy just sighed and mentally congratulated himself that he hadn’t eaten anything for lunch or dinner.

…

“So, this is England, huh?”

“We’re in London to be precise.”

“Huh” Percy turned around and tried to gauge his surroundings.

It didn’t look like anything special. It looked, well, English. Percy hadn’t expected for a secret magic headquarters to be obvious, but he had expected to sense something. There was a hollowness inside of his stomach that he had never felt before, the absence of the ancient and divine he had been surrounded by for years. He had never realized that it was something to be felt before it had disappeared from his senses.

The street they had arrived in was sparingly lit. The houses looked identical and seemed to stretch on for eternity, brownstones with window bars and dark wooden doors.

“Read.” Severus handed him a slip of paper. The font was small, and the letters were squished together, blurring in front of his eyes. He couldn’t read a single word of it.

He wordlessly handed it back and prayed it wasn’t all that important.

They stood there for a couple of seconds waiting. If Severus hoped for something to happen, he did not let it show. The only sound was that of car engines roaring in the distance.

Percy was still standing there and waiting for something of interest to happen when he noticed something. On his left was house number eleven and on his right house number thirteen. He turned around to see if number twelve was built on the other side of the street, but the only thing he could see was a small park that was primarily filled with trees. He looked at the identical row of houses in front of him again and suddenly saw a faint flickering at the border between the two houses.

The flickering felt oddly familiar, but distinctly different at once. It wasn’t mist, it was more like its distant cousin that lived abroad (and wasn’t that a great metaphor).

He stared at the border and with all his might concentrated on seeing, just see you idiot, when suddenly the enchantment gave way and another house appeared out of thin air. This one looked different, but only slightly so. The layout was the same, but it was black instead of brown and more run down than any other building in the street.

Severus began walking towards it. When Percy didn’t follow immediately, he pointedly looked at him and said, “I do not have time to wait here all day.”

“All night.” Percy corrected, just to be annoying. Severus wisely elected to ignore him.

He opened the door with a sharp flick of his stick. The hallway that lay behind it looked like the outside, dark and run down with accents of sapphire green. It was a strange mix of opulent wealth and decay.

“This is the headquarters of the order of the phoenix, the organization that is working against-”

“Snivellus.” A man with long dark brown hair and a pale complexion stood at the end of the corridor, leaning nonchalantly against the doorframe, eerily similar to how Percy had been doing before he got himself into this mess. Percy distantly thought he might have seen him somewhere before. “I see you have brough our mysterious guest.” He nodded at Percy in acknowledgement.

“Black” the newly dubbed Snivellus replied coldly, and Percy decided that he definitely needed to find out what happened there.

Wait.

“Black as in Sirius Black? As in the guy that killed like fourteen people and then broke out of prison?”

“I was innocent actually” Black threw in. “I was betrayed and set up by the one I called a friend. Turns out he was working for the enemy all along.”

Percy shrugged. “Happens to the best of us.”

The man smirked and Percy saw the tension flooding out of his frame. He seemed relieved that Percy didn’t make a big deal out of it. Percy on his part was too used to abnormality to stay shocked at anything for more than three seconds. This was by far not the most insane thing that had happened to him these last two days.

Sirius reached out his hand and Percy took it to shake it. “Sirius Black, but you’ve already figured that out.”

“Nice to meet you, I’m Percy. Percy Jackson.”

“Pleasure to meet you as well, Percy. What brings a guy with a weird accent such as yours to my humble abode?”

Percy snorted. Sev grunted. Sirius’ eyes glinted with mischief.

“I see you have all in order then.” Severus said condescendingly with a bite that hadn’t been there before. With that he turned around, his cloak swooshing dramatically and walked right out. Before the door had even fully closed one could already hear the loud bang of an apparition.

In the distance a woman began screaming profanities. Sirius let out a string of curses and ran toward the entrance hall. Percy didn’t pay much attention to it.

Severus was gone.

He was alone again.

…

The house was strange. The dark green wallpaper was old and gradually peeled itself off the wall and the floor was made of marble, its shine dulled by a thick layer of dirt and grime. Portraits with moving depiction of what Percy assumed were important wizards and witches littered the walls, their eyes following them and their whispers echoing through the empty corridors. One of them, Sirius’ mother as he had found out, was still on her rampage. Despite the noise the house felt abandoned.

“Are we the only people here?” Percy found himself asking.

“At the moment pretty much. I mean most of the time there’s a couple of order members here, but they mostly visit in passing. The meetings are when it gets really lively around here and, of course, the kids were still here this morning. They left for Hogwarts today.” Sirius voice turned a little bitter at that, “There’s also Kreacher, my house elf. He doesn’t make for good company though. He has never been pleasant, but these last decades really did it for him.”

They reached a room with a long wooden table that had several chairs added to it that didn’t fit with the rest; several had pillows heaped on them and one of them still had a knitted jacket thrown over it. A large pot was sitting on the table, a discarded pair of red oven mittens next to it, and he could see the dishes magically washing themselves in the kitchen.

This room felt lived in.

“Hungry?” Sirius asked.

“Starving” Percy answered and was surprised how much he actually meant it. Missing a days’ worth of food took its toll on him and now that he was off the ship and away from the sea, he was starting to notice it.

“I just ate dinner but if you’re hungry there’s still some hotpot. Molly made way too much, honestly. She didn’t even know you would come; she thought it would just be me and still she insisted on cooking.”

While Sirius happily continued rambling, he summoned another plate and cutlery from the kitchen. Percy loaded his plate with a generous portion of Hotpot and dug in without much ado. Sirius was watching this from a chair opposite him with a bemused expression.

“Wow, you really weren’t joking when you said you’re hungry. Long journey huh?

“No kidding,” Percy managed to say between chewing “Apparating is horrible.”

Sirius raised his eyebrow “First time?”

“You can say that again.”

Sirius shrugged carelessly “You’ll get used to it. Most wizards do, it’s just too useful not to.”

Percy hummed in response, even though he doubted that he would. “Who is Molly?” he asked instead.

“Molly? Well, I suppose that’s Mrs. Weasley for you. She’s a member of the order along with her husband and some of their children. They’ve got a lot of those. Children I mean. If you see a redhead around here chances are it’s one of them. Why are you asking?”

Now it was Percy’s turn to shrug “You mentioned her earlier, is all.”

“Oh well I guess you’ll get to meet the rest of the order soon enough. They must all be kind of curious about you. It isn’t every day that we get a guest such as you and Dumbledore was very tightlipped about the circumstances of your arrival. Talking about curious, what brings you here anyway?”

Percy shoved a lost spoonful of Hotspot into his mouth and chewed on it for as long as he could possibly get away with. From the sound of it Albus hadn’t wanted to tell the other order members too much about his heritage and Percy wasn’t sure yet whether Sirius would judge him because of him being the grandson of the guy they’re supposed to be fighting against.

Sirius was quietly waiting for him to finish even though it looked as if he might vibrate out of his skin out of anticipation. He didn’t seem like the patient type. Or maybe he had used his patience already. Maybe patience was something finite and once it’s gone, it’s gone. “Well, it’s a little complicated” Percy started out slowly “The thing is I hadn’t known that I’m a wizard until about two days ago. My mother is a squib, and my mother’s father was a dark wizard. And I mean like really dark apparently. Dumbledore and Sev were looking for her since they thought he might be looking for her. She had fled from my grandfather, you see? But instead of her they found me.”

“Bloody hell. “

“Yea.”

“So, you really knew nothing?”

“Nope, I just thought I was extremely unlucky. I constantly had these unnatural accidents happening around me and got thrown out of every school I attended because of them. I was a troubled kid practically all my life.”

“What kind of accidents?”

Inwardly Percy was grinning. He wasn’t lying about anything that had happened, he just wasn’t telling the entire truth. Nobody had to know that most of the things that happened to him were because of the godly side of his family. Outwardly he was grinning as well. Everything that had happened at school seemed kind of funny in retrospect.

“One time on a fieldtrip I shot the school bus with a cannon. On another one I magically pushed a girl that was annoying my friend into a fountain. Oh- and there was that time where a snake slithered into my bed while I was sleeping, and I accidentally killed it.”

Sirius at that point looked as if he was torn between laughing and pitying him.

“So how did you do it?”

“Do what?”

“Do wha- are you kidding? Survive in the lethal lands of course!”

“The lethal lands?”

“Well, that’s what we call it here. The lethal lands are pretty much the entire American continent, even though some people say that its safer all the way to the north west.”

Alaska, Percy thought to himself, the land beyond the gods.

“Why is it called the lethal lands?”

Sirius leaned forward again as if he was disclosing a secret to Percy. “Well, we don’t really talk about it much- social taboo you know- but the whole place is infested with creatures nobody has ever seen before. The muggles don’t see them, and the creatures don’t care for them but once a monster catches the scent of a wizard-” Sirius smiled grimly. In the dim lighting it looked a little psychopathic. “Well, magic doesn’t affect them and neither do weapons.”

His pen suddenly seemed to weigh a ton.

“I’ve met a couple of them. Of the monsters you mean. I don’t think there’s many of them where I live- New York is pretty crowded so my scent is probably covered- but there’s some.”

Sirius must have seen Percy’s discomfort and mistaken it for some sort of trauma, because he didn’t follow his line of question. Instead, he summoned a bottle with a label that read Odgen’s finest fire whiskey with a dragon that was spitting fire on it.

“Give me a second” he said distractedly while magically removing the cork.

Sirius poured himself a generous portion of an amber liquid into his cup, hesitated a second, then shrugged, mumbled something like “if the situation calls for it” and summoned a second glass. He chugged one of them in one go and handed Percy the other one. Percy didn’t object even though he definitely wasn’t legal yet.

Sirius seemed to have come to the same conclusion since he chose that moment to ask, “Wait how old are you exactly?”

“Seventeen.”

“Ah well then. You know I would have probably given it to you anyway, Merlin knows what I have gotten up to back when I was a teen, but you know how it is-” he shrugged again and poured himself another glass. Percy had no idea what he was talking about but decided to stay out of it.

“Isn’t the legal drinking age eighteen in the UK?” he asked instead.

“Oh, is it! Well of course I couldn’t expect you to know it’s- well as a wizard you reach adulthood at seventeen. Honestly don’t know why it’s different for the muggles. I for one believe teenagers are a great deal more responsible than adults give them credit for. My godson for one- well that’s a whole other story but he’s a great bloke really, went through a lot though. Wish I could have been there but, well, can’t change the past can you.”

Percy was starting to seriously doubt that Sirius was only on his second glass. He took a sip. He expected it to burn a little as it ran down his throat, but nothing happened. It tasted a little like a very watered-down version of nectar.

Sirius looked at him in astonishment “Wow you’re really not playing around over there, huh? Most people try to extinguish themselves after their first sip. It’s like lighting yourself on fire on the inside.”

Percy raised his eyebrow. “Anything else I should know about magic alcohol or is that supposed to be a learning experience as well?”

Sirius barked out a laugh. “It’s enchanted” he explained, “you only get as drunk as you want to be. Practically no hangover, can you imagine? Magic takes the consequences out of everything, which sounds fun at first but-”, he shrugged once again, “it gets old after a while. Sometimes all you want is some good old consequences. Keeps you on your toes and everything. It’s why me and my friends used to smuggle muggle-alcohol into Hogwarts. Ah, Hogwarts. Great place. Best years of my life, not that the other years were that hard to beat.” He smiled, dwelling in memories. It was a little crooked and unpracticed as if he had lost it once and only recently regained it.

They sat there a long time. After about ten minutes Percy’s thoughts became blurry and his head felt as if it was filled with cotton. The nagging voices in his head dulled down to a pleasant background buzz. Sirius too became a bit looser. He smiled with an ease he didn’t have before.

Sirius, Percy learned over the course of this evening, talked a lot. If that was because of his lengthy vacation in prison or because of another set of issues Percy wasn’t yet aware of, he didn’t know. Some of his favorite topics were Severus, or a Snivellus as he called him, whom he really seemed to dislike, a guy named Moony and some other people Percy assumed to be his friends or members of the order and his godson Harry, whose parents had apparently died at a young age. This place, Hogwarts, came up a lot too and Percy resolved to find out what exactly it was later.

There was something else he wanted to find out first.

“Sirius?”

“Yea?”

“This house. I didn’t see it at first. How does that work?”

Sirius word were slurred as he explained “It’s called the fidelius charm. Basically, this location is a secret that is hidden within a living person, called the secret-keeper. From that moment on that person is the only one that can pass on that information and therefore the only one that can grant them access. The people that are told are bound by the charm too. They can’t tell anybody else. Our secret-keeper is Dumbledore. It was his note that you read. That’s why the house only appeared afterwards.”

That’s weird, Percy thought. He said as much.

“Percy?”

“Yea?”

“Uhm, you have a scratch there.” Sirius vaguely pointed to his right. Percy looked down at his injured arm. He didn’t have time to rebandage it properly on the ship without Sev noticing it and he had missed the only opportunity to stick it into the sea when they had left the ship. At first it had looked as if somebody had tried to turn it into a banana split, a deep crooked gash of about 6 inches in length. It wasn’t nearly as bad now since the rain had also healed some of it, but it was still bleeding sluggishly, and had soaked though the gauze and his shirt, droplets of blood that were threatening to fall onto the aggressively pretentious marble floor.

“Huh must have been that cat. Its fine, I’ll just take a shower or something.”

Sirius looked at him strangely. “Yeah, you do that.”

Percy walked upstairs soon after and took a shower. The arm healed pretty fast under the streaming water. He asked Sirius where he could sleep and Sirius answered that he could sleep wherever he wanted to if it wasn’t already in use. Percy chose a room with windows, a dresser and a queen-sized bed. He opened the window, but drew the green curtains shut. Then he stared at the ceiling and compiled a list of things he had learned that day in his head, like Annabeth had always told him to do when they were still together. It looked something like this:

A short list of things Percy knew:

1. Wizards hadn’t been in contact with anything divine for a long time (long enough that they have forgotten about it?)
2. Sirius Black is innocent and talks a lot (what really happened?)
3. Percy isn’t affected by magic alcohol the way he is supposed to be (burning? nectar?)
4. Percy isn’t affected by the fidelius charm the way he is supposed to be (because he’s a demigod?)
5. All Wizards are clearsighted (do their powers come from Hecate?)
6. Wizards have a scent (legacies?)
7. Wizards have no way to defend themselves from monsters (powers aren’t of divine origin?)
8. Whatever protection Dumbledore had cast on Percy’s family isn’t going to work for monsters (additional protection?)
9. Improvised bandages can leak (ask Will for medical training?)

When he was done, he was still laying there in a random bed in a random room. He wasn’t sure why he had expected that to change.

He was still thinking about his father’s words.

The sea does not like to be restrained by the confinements of mortality.

He took his coin out of his pocket and flipped it. Head.

He was alone.

Chapter Text

September 1st, 1996, Hogwarts, Great Britain

Albus Dumbledore viewed life as a game of chess.
Perseus Riddle was simply an as of yet unknown piece, a mystery Albus was intent on solving.

This was why he was sitting here, approximately three hours before the student’s arrival, holed up in his office researching a seventeen-year-old while outside the other teachers made sure that the last arrangements were being taken care of. With both Rubeus and Severus still on a mission and Albus himself distracted by yet another descendant of Tom’s, everything had gotten slightly delayed which made for an unfortunate start into the next term.

But Perseus wasn’t like his mother. Perseus was a wizard. An American one at that.

A wizard born and raised in the United States of America was nothing short of a miracle. In fact, even Albus’ comparably brief stay there had previously been thought to be impossible. It had been a risky decision to bring both himself and Severus to such a place, but it had paid off quite well.

It would have been a disaster if a wizard with such apparent power as Perseus had ended up in the hands of his grandfather. Especially since they seemed to be a great deal more alike than Albus was comfortable with.

Perseus was Tom Riddle’s mirror image, a cruel reflection of past mistakes.

For one, and the most obvious one was the looks. His mother seemed to have gone after her mother while Percy was a carbon copy of his grandfather when he was his age. The only way to tell them apart were the white strand of hair Percy possessed and his eyes, sea green instead of dark brown, but equally unsettling in their intensity.

Another of their few differences was that he still had a mother, and Sally Jackson seemed to be a delightful woman from what he had gathered during his singular visit, but his father too was out of the picture. She must have meet him shortly after she had escaped her father and once he had found out she was pregnant he had left her behind.

His extensive school records speak of a long history of defying authority at every opportunity, endangerment of students and staff, attention seeking lying and the unprompted usage of violence. He has managed to get expelled from every school he had ever attended in the duration of a year except for the last one where he solely disappeared mere weeks after the start of his junior year.

There had been accidents, mishappens on fieldtrips, some things that could be considered the norm for a wizard that had never been taught to control their powers.

But it did not stay at simple accidents.

There was an incident, back when Perseus was of twelve years old. Both Perseus and his mother disappeared for quite some time after having been involved in a car accident. Soon after he was seen at an American landmark which exploded while he was on it, but miraculously left him unharmed. The year after he set his school on fire. Two years later another explosion took place in Perseus’ vicinity; during orientation day at Goode high school, where Paul Blofis, Perseus’ stepfather, worked he was reported to have assaulted a cheerleader and then caused an explosion. Later, the story was changed; now the cheerleader was the aggravator and Perseus the helpless bystander.

The cheerleader was never seen again.

This seemed to be a pattern in Perseus life; this constant picture of the innocent bystander during catastrophes while coming out unscathed against all odds. His and his mother’s disappearances, St. Louis Arch, his first stepfather’s sudden death after he returned (and Albus did not even want to consider the implications of that) -it was suspicious to say the least.

Then there were the dislike of their given name, the abandonment of their father, their desperate but kind mother, the instinctive distrust, his casual arrogance which was never voiced but told in the way he held himself, the way Albus could not tell what he was thinking despite his-

His name was quite fitting then. Perseus does after all translate to destroyer.

They were not the same, Albus reminded himself. Not in every way, not yet. Perseus mother had made it out of her abusive household and even though Perseus showed no interest in having her ordinary magicless family anywhere near him, a request Albus had honoured despite his better judgement, he could tell that despite everything Perseus had grown up with a mother’s love. There was still hope yet.

If he played his cards right, he could prevent the rise of yet another Dark Lord.

Albus Dumbledore viewed life as a game of chess. He did not know whose side Perseus would be on.

He did not know that Perseus was a player himself.

…

September 1st, 1996, Hogwarts, Great Britain

Harry frowned while looking at the staff table “He’s not here.”

“He can’t have left.” Ron said looking at Harry for affirmation.

“Of course he hasn’t.” he replied.

Hermione bit her lip anxiously “You don’t think he’s… hurt or anything, do you?”

“No” Harry said just as firmly as before.

“But where is he then?”

For a second nobody replied. Then Harry leaned forward casting a suspicious glance at his housemates. He lowered his voice so that it was barely audible above the merry chatter in the Great Hall “Maybe he’s not back yet? You know from his mission- the thing he was doing over the summer for Dumbledore.”

“Yeah… yeah that’ll be it.” Ron sounded reassured, but there was still a concerned look in Hermione’s eyes as she scanned the staff table once again.

“Snape is not here either. Do you think it has anything to do with that?”

“No,” Harry frowned “I wanted to tell you on the train, I overheard something earlier. I know why Snape isn’t here, and it probably has something to do with the whole broom closet situation.”

“Well, shoot then” Ron shrugged, aiming to appear unperturbed but ultimately betraying his interest with the excited glint in his eyes.

Hermione shoved him lightly “Not yet you dolt. Everybody could overhear us, and they clearly want this to be a secret. Why else would they not even tell the rest of the order?”

“Hermione’s right” Harry said, “Also, we need to tell the twins and Ginny too. SSEO remember?”

Ron, impatient as ever, merely grunted before once again scanning the table. He frowned “Who’s that toad?”

“Where?” Hermione asked.

“Up there next to Dumbledore.”

“It’s that Umbridge woman!”

“Who?”

“She was at my hearing; she works for Fudge”.

“Nice cardigan” Ron snorted.

The conversation moved on to another topic but harry still thought about that wizard. What did he have to do with any of this? A sinking feeling in his stomach told him that it could not be good.

…

“Impossible.” The word rang quite clearly through the abandoned classroom they had meet in and it was dripping with the certainty of somebody who knew he was right. Against all expectation, it wasn’t Hermione that said this, it was Ron and even more surprisingly none of his sibling felt inclined to object to his sentiment.

“Why would it be? Wizards exist all over the world” this was Hermione.

Ginny shook her head “Not in the lethal land there aren’t” she said in a grave almost conspiratorial tone.

“The lethal lands?” Harry and Hermione asked in unison.

“Wait you’ve never heard of the lethal lands?”

Hermione petulantly raised her chin and looked at Fred as if he was daring him to challenge her intelligence “It wasn’t mentioned anywhere in any of the books in the library.”

Fred shrugged “Well, we don’t really talk about it.”

“Why?” Harry asked.

“Wh- Its dangerous that’s why!” he lowered his voice “We once had a great-uncle who went there- he was on a cruise, wanted to travel the world the muggle-way you know? Later they told us that they had to stop because of some technical issues in the ship. It was just half an hour. When they wanted to take off again, they realized he wasn’t there yet so somebody went off to look for him. She brought him back- in a plastic bag.”

Ginny looked slightly green in the face while both Fred and George were shaking their head mournfully along to Ron’s tale.

“That’s ridiculous. There are plenty of people that have visited the states; Merlin my parents went there last year!”

“Your parents are muggles,” Ginny reminded her gently. “They leave them alone, muggles I mean.”

“Who’s they?”

“Nobody knows. They’re creatures but not like any we have ever seen They are resistant to both magic and muggle weapons and rip anything with even a drop of magic blood inside of them to pieces. None of them have ever been captured and they have only ever been inspected from afar.”

Hermione frowned. “A lot of people live in Amer- the lethal lands. They must have seen them right? There aren’t any ministry officials to wipe their memories either.”

“That’s the strangest thing.” Ron said “The muggles cannot see them or rather most of them can’t; there have been a few that were even accused of some mental affliction because of it. Its almost as if something is hiding them.”

“But say, there is a wizard that lives there, he must be incredibly powerful right?” Harry said.

Hermione looked thoughtful “Or have something else that fends the monsters of. Some ritual, a rare ability, or-” her eyes widened. She didn’t have to finish her sentence; they all knew what she had been thinking.

A weapon.

…

September 2nd, 1996, Grimmauld Place, Great Britain

When Percy had gone to sleep last night the first sunrays had already been looming on the horizon. When Percy woke up again it was nearing evening.

He felt like shit, and he probably looked like it too. Despite his shower last night, he felt grimy and sticky and the clothes he had been wearing for the last three days were sticking to his frame. He groaned and pushed himself into a sitting position. The sheets were wet. So were most of the curtains. Sometime during the day, it had started to rain, and he hadn’t closed the windows before going to sleep. A sharp wind blowed into the room causing goosebumps to spring up all over his bare arms.

Neither of this was what had awoken him.

Standing in front of his bed in the middle of the room was a scowling Nico Di Angelo.

“Where the Tartarus are you?”

Percy threw his pillow at him. It flew right through him, an iris message.

“Don’t you know it already? You need my location for an IM.”

“Iris found you for us. She owed Annabeth” Nico shrugged as if a god owing a mortal was completely normal. Percy wondered at what point they had gotten used to all of this if only to know how long this whole magic thing would confuse him. “Don’t try to distract me. You just disappeared without a word. We were worried about you. Annabeth was worried about you.”

“If Annabeth was worried, why doesn’t she call me herself?” he tried to sound unbothered but there was an edge to his words that betrayed his true feelings. Hurt.

Nico sighed “Percy-”

He interrupted him before he could say what Percy knew he was about to say.

It’s not your fault. Her decisions are her own. People break up all the time.

“No don’t do this to me.” He shook his head vehemently a slight laugh escaping his lips. Even in his own ears it sounded bitter “Explain it to me. Why have you do it? Why not face me herself?”

Nico glared at him. “Don’t make this about her. I was worried too.”

Percy looked away from him, took a deep breath to calm himself and started extracting the water from the fabric. It was very precise work, but he got the hang of it quickly. Droplets of water flew through the air in playful, unnecessarily long loops before gathering in the palm of his hand.

He liked using his powers like this. Casually without fear of judgment. If he played his card right, he could play it off as magic, but he would only attempt something like that after further research into how magic worked. Dumbledore had seemed suspicious enough of him and Sirius even had looked vaguely concerned when Percy had told him about these accidents, he had gotten himself into. At least Percy thought it was concern, could have also been nausea caused by the amount of alcohol he had consumed last night. It seemed that even magic-alcohol couldn’t stop someone from overindulging.

“Where are you?”

“London” he responded without heat.

Nico cursed under his breath.

“Why?” he asked eventually.

“Family stuff.” Percy replied. He absentmindedly played with the water he had managed to extract.

Nico raised his eyebrow in response.

“Not that side of the family.”

Nico waited for him to elaborate. Once it became clear that Percy wasn’t about to talk anytime soon, he stepped into his line of sight. “I spoke to your mother” he said accusatory.

“Did you?”

“I did. She seemed to be under the impression that you were part of some full ride scholarship for some university in Oregon.”

“I am.”

“Are you really? I was under the impression that you were planning on attending NRU next year.”

“I was, but then that whole thing with Anabeth happened. I already got the offer for the scholarship, so I thought it might be nice to get away for a while.”

“I see” Nico replied eventually, frown still firmly on his face.
Percy remained silent.

“The gods have been in an uproar lately. They know something and they do not want to tell us. Anab- we thought you might know something about it.”

An uproar? Did it have anything to do with Percy’s involvement in the wizarding society? It would explain his father’s sudden visit if there was concern over the involvement of a demigod in a world the gods had distanced themselves from. On the other hand, it could just as likely be connected to his maternal grandfather. A potential war, not matter where could affect the gods and decisions would have to be made about whether they should get involved or not. Percy’s existence kind of answered that question already, the gods would be involved it was just the question of how much and in what manner.

“I’m sorry” Percy said, “but I don’t.”

There was a slight tug in his stomach region and Nico’s form flickered out of existence. Percy let out a breath he didn’t know he was holding.

Only half of what he had said was a lie. He was truly sorry.

He hoped Nico knew that.

Percy collected the water and directed it into an antique vase sitting on the drawer. Then he opened the door and listened for a sign of life.

Most of the house was quiet now, or at least as quiet as it could be. Now that most of the portraits were having an afternoon nap (they were apparently nocturnal since most interesting things around here happened after sunset) the only sound that filled the void was the humming of magic. It was everywhere; the wall, the ground, the very air he was breathing. Everything was alive and humming along to the same song, a melody that Percy yet had to learn.

He crossed the hallway and tried to remember which way he had gone to get here. Most of the house looked eerily similar, endless hallways with a plethora of identical doors. For all that he knew he could have ended up in Daedalus’ labyrinth without having noticed.

He sent a quick prayer to Tyche and started opening doors at random in the hope that he would find something that looked vaguely familiar.

Some of the rooms were simply other bedrooms, not too dissimilar from the one Percy had just exited. Others seemed to be storerooms for all kinds of magical artefacts that Percy knew he probably should not mess with if he didn’t fancy being cursed. Then there were three bedrooms with multiple beds inside, rather like a dorm. These were most likely the rooms the so called ‘kids’ had inhabited during their stay here. Children of order members, if Percy had to guess. He wondered what it was like, to watch your parents enter the fight against a dangerous dark wizard while being holed up either in a small mansion or boarding school. Percy could not possibly imagine watching a fight and not being directly involved with it.

Then there were the more special rooms, a room with a glass dome and a gigantic telescope used for stargazing, lavish offices, something that looked like a training room with dummies, a whole room that was empty except for a single desk standing in the middle, and naturally a gigantic library.

The door didn’t lead to the actual ground floor of the room, but rather to a platform that encompassed two sided of the room, with a third side acting as the staircase that led up to it. The ceiling was strangely bent inwards, making the room look suffocating and stuffy instead of grand as he assumed it was supposed to look. From the lowest point of the ceiling there was an enormous chandelier with crystals embedded on it hanging down and almost touching the round table located in the middle of the room. Everything else was stuffed with shelves that were filled to the brim with old books.

This, Percy decided, was a room that required further inspecting.

Most of the books to be found on the forefront of the room seemed pretty boring. There were simple charms, books on creatures he had never heard of but had illustrations that made him believe that they might be descendants of some of the monsters he had encountered, and one seemed to just contain recipes.

It was only in the back that he found more promising books.

He let his eyes wander over their spines; most of them were written in fine gold letters that were mostly flaked off. He would have been unable to decipher any of their meaning even if he wasn’t dyslexic.

But then, that might even be the point. If Percy had magic and a whole lot of important books to store, he would at the very least make sure they didn’t grow mold while they weren’t being read.

He opened one of them. It immediately started screaming. He slammed it shut again.

He grabbed another one. It didn’t scream, which Percy counted as a win, but it did try to eat his hand. Third time’s the charm then.

This one was rather small and bound with a light brown leather that was soft from presumably decades of use. He opened it and waited for something to happen. Nothing did.

He leafed through it. It was entirely handwritten with dark blue ink. As he tried to read what was written inside, he found it to be surprisingly simple, as if the meaning of the world just sprung inside his head without him having to carefully decipher letter after letter; the book was written in Greek, or at least a variation of it.

this particular verdict is exemplary for the concerning decrease of the representation of wizarding culture within wizarding society; specifically, it shows who is primarily at fault for it. Condoning wizards and witches with one or more muggle ancestors to proudly proclaim their appreciation for muggle culture and hubris such as the abandonment of-

“A new boy disgracing the belongings of my mistress with his unworthy hands, another blood traitor or a nasty mudblood, oh what would my mistress say-”

Standing behind him and glaring viciously at Percy as if he hadn’t just read a book but rather torn pages out of it, thrown them on the ground and set them on fire, was one of the stranger creatures Percy had seen. He was about half his height and had greyish almost translucent skin and ears that were so log that he could have tied them in a ponytail if he so desired. His clothing consisted of a torn and dirtied rag that was tied in various places to prevent it from falling apart. His big bloodshot eyes stared up at him in an expression of strong disdain.

“You’re Kreacher aren’t you?”

“And now he is asking Kreacher questions. Why should Kreacher answer to the brat while he openly disrespects the house of black.”

Percy looked back down to the book he was still holding. He closed it and carefully placed it back into the shelf.

“Is that better? I meant no disrespect, I just wanted to see.”

The house elf fell silent and stared at Percy with his huge eyes as if he could not believe what had just happened.

“Uhm,” Percy said as he grew more and more uncomfortable with the silence “could you help me find the way to the dining room, please?”

The elf shook himself out of his stupor and hurriedly took off whilst mumbling furiously. Percy had to run to catch up to him.

“Smells off like nothing Kreacher has ever encountered, but looks familiar, the boy. Where has he seen him before Kreacher wonders?”

“We haven’t seen each other before. I’m not from here.”

Kreacher turned around and fixed Percy with an almost affronted look “Kreacher might be old, but he is not yet mad. Kreacher is sure of it. He has seen the boy before. He has impeccable memory.”

Despite himself Percy wanted to laugh. He didn’t, but instead settled on smiling at him encouragingly. Kreacher didn’t smile back, but he hadn’t expected him too. Instead, he just held out his arms to point to two large wooden panels serving as doors, the entrance to the dining room.

“Thank you Kreacher.”

The house elf popped out of existence.

....

September 5th, 1996, Aberdeenshire, Great Britain

It was cool and the winds were vicious the day he was found out.

The last full moon had been little under a week ago. Not yet long enough that he did not still feel the bone deep exhaustion the transformation had left him but still long enough that he had started worrying about the next one.

The castle they had been staying at had been abandoned in the early 20th century and it looked it. The ceiling must have collapsed a long time ago, for nature had long since reclaimed most of the lands. This was how his kind liked it. Unburdened by the shackles of humanity, as they called it. They made humanity out to be this ravaging vicious monster that drained a soul of its joy. In the end that was what made them exactly that. By deliberately trying to hold themselves to everything a human would not do, they tied themselves to their standards; they were shackled by themselves.

But he digressed.

What was important was that it was cool, and the winds were vicious and he had been found out.

The sound of a single apparition cut through the castle grounds. In his wake he left a trail of blood.

Chapter Text

September 2nd, 1996, Grimmauld Place, Great Britain

There was an owl sitting on the table. Its white heart shaped face was edged with a shade of dark brown and it had uncanny black eyes that seemed way to intelligent for any animal even one that was sacred to the goddess of wisdom. Tied to its left leg was a small scroll of paper that looked more yellowish than what Percy thought to be normal. On its right was a small pouch that appeared to be filled with tiny round objects that were hard enough to relay their texture onto the leather. In the distance he could hear the low murmur of a heated discussion. Percy did not dare breath.

The owl blinked.

He blinked back.

For a couple of seconds nothing happened.

Then the damn thing attacked him.

…

September 2nd, 1996, Hogwarts, Great Britain

With a whoosh and clatter, hundreds of owls came soaring in through the upper windows. They descended all over the hall, bringing letters and packages to their owners and showering the breakfasters with droplets of water; it was clearly raining hard outside. Hedwig was nowhere to be seen, but Harry was hardly surprised, his only correspondent was Sirius and he doubted he would have anything important to tell him after hardly twenty-four hours apart. Or rather there was, but it was nothing he would be allowed to know. Still, it was hard to suppress the sharp sting of injustice he felt. Hermione, however, had to move her orange juice aside quickly to make way for a large damp barn owl bearing a sodden daily prophet in its beak.

“What are you still getting that for?” Harry asked irritably, while shoving a spoonful of cereal into his mouth as if it had personally wronged him. Hermione, for her credit, said nothing and merely placed a knut into the owl’s leather pouch, who took off again. “I’m not bothering… load of rubbish.”

“Its best to know what the enemy is saying” said Hermione darkly and she unfurled the newspaper and started flipping through the pages at a pace that made Harry dizzy. Once she had reached the end, she flipped it so that the front page faced forward once again and started reading it more carefully from the beginning. Professor McGonagall was now moving along the table handing out timetables. There was another darkly clothed tall figure moving along the Slytherin table at the other end of the hall. There was no doubt who it belonged to. “Snape’s back”, Ron mumbled in between chews, echoing Harry’s thought.

“His escort mission must have gone well then” Harry responded, “Then again it cannot have been that difficult, they just had to go there, get the wizard and leave, right?” He looked up to Ron shrugging non-committedly and Hermione still being engrossed in the article on the front page of the Daily Prophet.

She did, in fact, not seem to be the only one. Without Harry noticing it, the usual atmosphere present in the Great Hall in the mornings, that is one of residual sleepiness complimented by frantic homework copying, had faded and been replaced with an erratic flow of discussion that was ever increasing in volume until Harry had to wonder how he could have possibly missed it. The tumult seemed to- strangely enough- mainly originate from the Ravenclaw table. People who had received a daily prophet in the mail were surrounded by flocks of students trying to find out what was happening. A few odd students from different houses had moved to their table out of curiosity. Some of them had commenced a heated debate that was so chaotic that Harry could not possibly hope to catch the meaning of it.

“Hermione?”

She looked up sharply. “You guys might want to see this.”

She shoved most of the already emptied silverware out of the way without much care of where it landed and set the newspaper onto the cleared space; there was a moving picture on it depicting a massive storm that was moving its way along the coastline of the Lethal Lands, then the ocean and then with a large leap over to Brittain. Above it declared with bold letters:

WEATHER OUT OF BOUNDS: MINISTRY AND EXPERTS CLUELESS

Since the Night of the 1st of September several unforeseen storms have occurred, with London as the main focal point. The damage thus far amounts to 1500 galleons and there have been concerns over the stability and protection of the vital infrastructure located in this area, for example the Ministry of Magic itself or the hospital St. Mungus and many citizens worry for the long-term consequences it could have for the statue of secrecy since many packages and letters have been reported missing due to the winds. Weather forecast specialist have conducted further research on this anomaly and found further recent occurrences of non-scheduled storms of various magnitudes, most of them occurring in an area largely unsupervised by wizards and witches, known by the muggles as a city carrying the name New York, that is located on the eastern coast of the Lethal Lands. The start of these unusual storms can be dated back to up to several months ago and have stayed mostly stagnant since their formation. Since the 31st of August, however, the storms seemed to have started moving further east across the Atlantic Ocean, before having reached magical Britain tonight. Experts see the storms’ sudden movement as a worrisome development and advise caution. The ministry has prohibited long-distance broom flights for the unforeseeably future and numerous Quidditch matches have been rescheduled (for further information see page 10).

“Have you lost your bloody mind? Why would we care about the weather while You-Know-Who is still on the loose?”

Hermione glared at Ron and if looks could kill he would be a smoldering pile of ash right now. “Don’t you understand? This is impossible! It is unprecedented! Wizarding weather forecasts are always correct! They can sense every natural storm from a mile away!”

“Well,” Harry said shrugging while contemplating biting into one of the apples located three seats to his right, “obviously they aren’t.”

“You’re both impossible!”

“She’s right about that” Fred said appearing out of nowhere. “Dead on as usual,” George chimed in “but we should be used to that, shouldn’t we?” He and Fred sat down on both sides of the tables.

“Flattery will get you nowhere” Ron muttered annoyed.

“Clearly you know nothing about women, Ronniekins.”

Ron rolled his eyes “Just spit it out you two. Do you know something?”

“Know?”
“Nothing.”
“Figure out with basic thinking?”
“Enough.”

Harry frowned “What do you mean by that? Are you saying that Voldemort did this?”

Hermione shook her head “No, no regular wizard could have caused a storm like that.”

“A storm like what?” Ginny who had just joined them at their table asked.

“Well, like that.” Hermione was gesticulating wildly now, and Harry had no way to tell what any of it meant, but to him it rather looked like a poorly performed punch, or perhaps an ancient summoning ritual performed by goblins. “I mean, sure a wizard can control the weather a little, but only with extreme effort and in a small perimeter for a couple of minutes at most. These are multiple massive storms at once moving over a long distance, and whats more it’s still happening.” She pointed onto a small rectangle on the bottom of the title page proclaiming that that there would be radiant sunshine this morning. A small glance to the enchanted ceiling quickly disproved this. It was still raining heavily, if a little less than before.

“But then, why does it matter to us?”

Hermione sighed “Think about it, Harry. There is no way that this was a natural storm and if this wasn’t a natural storm, then what caused it?” she regarded both him and Ron with a long look, casted another one sideways to check if anybody was listening and then leaned forward. “Just look at its movement; straight from America across the Atlantic Ocean and then once they have reached a safe distance for apparition the whole thing suddenly springs over to London. Who do we know that lives in America and had to travel to London yesterday?”

“Wow,” Ginny said quietly and perhaps even a little reverently. “He must be even more powerful than we had thought.”

…

September 2nd, 1996, Grimmauld Place, Great Britain

“I swear I didn’t try to provoke it.”

Sev hummed clearly unconvinced. Percy wasn’t sure whether he should be offended since he really didn’t do anything this time or be strangely proud of having managed to get Sev to let his guard down to the degree of vaguely letting Percy know what he was thinking. He settled for the latter. Small victories and all that.

They were both sitting in the dining room with Percy sporting several cut and nicks on his face and arms and Severus magically healing them. They had turned some weird magic lighting on so that the room was now luminated with a soft, warm glow that allowed Percy to see the extend of the decay that still lingered in it. Small cracks running over the walls, ripped fabrics, flecks of dust on the chandelier and shelves and a darkened spot on the Persian rug that looked suspiciously like old blood. All in all, it looked as If somebody had plastered a band aid over it and called it a day. There was a metaphor in this, but Percy was too tired to look for it.

The sensation of being healed by magic was very much different from what he was used to, it didn’t feel rejuvenating or energizing like being healed by water, nor did it feel taxing and exhausting like healing the regular way. In fact, Percy did not feel much of anything of it except for a small tingling sensation right before the wounds seamlessly sealed themselves shut.

“Where does it come from?”

“Where does what come from?”

“The magic.”

Severus looked up. His hair was still dishevelled, and his robes had a small tear from where the owl had desperately tried to free itself from his grip. Another memory Percy would treasure forever. First the cat and now this, Percy thought to himself he must think I’m really terrible with animals. Sev frowned, and even though that was basically his default expression, there was a tinge of something more on it, something that led Percy to believe that there was something more to the answer than what he currently considered appropriate for Percy to know.

“Everywhere” he answered curtly, and Percy was brought back to earlier, when he had been walking through that hallway. To the humming of magic, he had heard there for what he perceived to be the first time in his life. Even now still he could hear it. It was like it lived somewhere inside of him too, curled up like a ball inside of his chest, thrumming and throbbing like a living thing, significantly weaker than what surrounded them but there nonetheless.
It had always been there, Percy just had never thought to look for it.

He had magic. He was a wizard.

He had known that already but knowing and feeling were two very different things.

After Severus had finished healing him, he stood up and in a swooping motion rearranged his hair and restored his clothing to the way it had looked before. A soldier putting his armour on, Percy thought to himself and then banished the thought as soon as it had come. Severus Snape was many things, but a soldier was not one of them.

“Where did you go?” Percy asked.

Severus looked at him, imploringly.

“After you left yesterday, where did you go?”

“Hogwarts.” Sev drawled in a carefully apathetic manner.

“What’s Hogwarts?”

“You don’t know what Hogwarts is?”

This voice didn’t belong to Severus. It belonged to Sirius. After snatching the screeching bird from Sev, he had heroically sprinted out of the room where the bird had managed to work up the portrait of his mother as well, which had resulted in a lot of screaming and Severus aggressively casting the door shut and whispering some spell that stopped the noise from reaching them.

Whatever Sirius had done to calm the owl had apparently worked since he had managed to untie the slip of paper from it. While walking past him he handed it to Severus, who immediately unscrolled it and began reading it with an inscrutable expression.

Sirius drew out a chair next to Percy and sat down on it with the back facing forward so that he could casually rest his arms on it. He produced the pouch the owl had carried from a pocket of his strange robe, took a small yellow candy out of it and plopped it into his mouth. “Lemon drop?” he offered. Percy shook his head which led to Sirius shrugging and mumbling something like “more for me”. Frowning lightly Severus folded the paper back into its original format and put it into a pocket of his own.

Sirius pulled out another lemon drop from his pouch and put the paper of the one he had just eaten on the table. It immediately erupted into bright yellow flames and vanished without a trace. “Seriously what even have you told him yet. He came here yesterday asking why the lethal lands of all places were dangerous. I had assumed you would at least tell him about the school he’s going to attend.”

“He isn’t going to attend it.”

“What!” Sirius violently jerked backwards and for a moment Percy thought he was going to fall of his chair.

“Dumbledore’s orders.” Sev replied, his tone even and smooth, if a little disdainful. Sirius didn’t say anything; His face was set in stone in an expression of something akin to horror as if he had just stared right into the face of Medusa.

Sev glared at him. “The boy has found out he’s a wizard a couple of days ago, what did you expect? He’s seventeen for Merlin’s sake! What are we supposed to do, put him with the firsts? He doesn’t even have a wand!”

“Then we’ll buy him a wand.”

Severus frowned at him as if he thought he was being particularly difficult. “And then what? He needs to at least get a basic education. Bringing a wizard to Hogwarts a day after the term has already started, a seventeen-year-old one at that, let alone one who doesn’t have any idea about how magic works? There is little I can think of that is more suspicious than that. We cannot afford something like that, not with the ministry breathing down our neck.”

“The ministry?” Percy asked.

Severus looked at Percy as if he had forgotten that he was in this room. His expression softened a little, but the hard edge remained “Yes, the ministry of magic. I fear that the minister is having some minor disagreements with Dumbledore.”

“Minor disagreements” Percy echoed.

Sirius groaned loudly in annoyance and ran his hand through his long dark hair, a habit Percy had already picked up on the day before. “Oh, for Merlin’s sake just explain it to him! He’s confused enough as it is and it’s all common knowledge anyway.”

Severus glared at him “Dumbledore explicitly said that-”

“Screw Dumbledore then! He has a right to know. He has as much a right to this knowledge as any other wizard”

Sev continued glaring but didn’t say anything in retaliation. He is just as unhappy with this as Sirius is, Percy realized.

In the end Sirius once again sighed loudly and returned his gaze to Percy. “We might want to start this at the beginning. You do know who Voldemort is do you?”

Percy nodded.

“Well, he tried to conquer the wizarding world and overthrow the ministry of magic, our government. He gained followers, quite a lot of them actually. Death eaters they were called. Hypocrites the lot of them. Gullible if nothing else. Far too eager to believe in something- someone- higher than themselves just to be relieved of the responsibility of thinking for themselves.”

“Anyway-” Sirius breathed in deeply as if to calm himself. “The war that broke out because of him lasted eleven years; and they were- what do muggles say- like hell? People feared that by even saying his name they would somehow evoke his wrath. Every time you went home you had to fear that there was nothing to return to, and every time you left the house you had to fear that you wouldn’t return.”

“He was at the height of his power when the unimaginable happened. Of course, the order already existed back then. Dumbledore founded it as soon as he figured out what Voldemort was planning to do. He has always been rather quick when it came to things like that- better safe than sorry after all- and at the time we thought he was the only wizard that could possibly stop him anyway. I was a member back then, and so were my friends.” Sirius closed his eyes and when he opened them again it was as if Percy was looking at another version of him. Sharpened by war and deeply exhausted with raw grief still lining his features. “He tried to kill someone. A child to be precise, barely a year old. We don’t know why he did. Well- no that’s a lie I’m sorry.”

“Black” Sev said warningly. For once he seemed to listen to it.

He sighed again, the lines on his face etched with deep regret. Finally, he said “The curse backfired and killed him instead. Or so we had thought.”

“He came back” Percy whispered, not daring to speak any louder as if it would reveal him as what he truly was. Somebody that did not belong here, not in this world and not in this house. Somebody who is the grandson of the man that had done this, caused this grief. Somebody who had caused grief of his own.

Sirius nodded.

“But- how?”

A shrug was all he received in reply. Sirius seemed too far away as if he was floating far out somewhere in the sea with no land in sight and still desperate to pull himself back to the shore.
Percy could help him with that if nothing else.

“What is Hogwarts?” he asked carefully.

“A school” Severus replied courtly. Sirius remained silent even though he looked more aware than he did a second ago. Good, Percy thought to himself. And in that moment, he desperately hoped that something good would happen to him soon. Something nice. Something that wasn’t a desolate house or a bottle of hangover-free alcohol. From what Percy knew of him, he deserved it.

“It teaches magic, naturally.” Severus continued; his tone still clipped. “Dumbledore is its headmaster. I’m a teacher. The students are divided into for different houses, all of which honour different qualities.”

Percy nodded in understanding “Do all wizards go to schools like that?”

“Most do. Some choose to teach their children themselves, but it is not all that unusual that a wizard is born to a pair of muggles and therefore cannot be taught at home. Therefore, all magical children receive an invitation once they turn eleven.”

“How come I didn’t get one then?”

Severus and Sirius exchanged a look. They were being surprisingly civil at the moment and Percy couldn’t tell whether it was because of his presence or because the owl thing had been something of a bonding moment between them. In the end neither of them responded. The “Lethal Lands” or whatever it was what that they called it must be a pretty touchy subject for wizards.

“Right” Percy said and then coughed awkwardly. “What about the ministry? What are they doing?”

“Nothing much, I’m afraid”, Sirius answered honestly. “The current minister, Cornelius fudge is a spineless bastard. He doesn’t want to believe that Voldemort has returned so instead of preparing for war, he is publicly slandering both Dumbledore and Harry for telling the truth.”

“Harry’s your godson, right?”

“Yup” he said popping the p loudly. A proud tone had entered his voice. Sev grimaced but remained silent.

“What does he have to do with this?”

“He was the one to witness the dark lord’s return.” Severus responded, his voice once again smoth with barely hidden disdain. He must not like this Harry much. “But he neglected to obtain any sort of proof for it other than his tale. The minister had not been willing to believe him.”

“Harry was the one who had defeated him in the first place.” Sirius threw in glaring at Sev all the while. There definitely was a story there. “He‘s a bit of a celebrity in this world, but of course they conveniently forgot about that and everything that had been done to him, the moment Fudge had the press start complaining about him.”

“Of course his bloated ego would barely be able to withstand a little bit of criticism, spoiled brat that he is-“

“He is not a spoiled brat, he’s-”

The chair scratched loudly against the floor as Severus stood up. He towered above Sirius with a dangerous look in his eyes “Of course he is, he's his father’s son after all-”

Sirius stood up as well, drew his wand and-

“You don’t happen to have some spare clothes lying around, do you?”

They both looked at Percy as if they had forgotten that he was there. “Of course,” Severus said, straightened his robes even though they weren’t creased at all and sat back down as if nothing had happened. “I must apologize, but I doubt there is much to be done for the ones you are currently wearing. Perhaps we could acquire more fitting clothing in Diagon alley.” A few seconds passed in which Sirius gave Percy a look that held something like gratitude- or perhaps it was wonder. “Yes,” he said in the end still gaping like a fish, “Perhaps.”

H sat down only to stand up again cursing under his breath. “I bloody knew I was forgetting something, wait up kid, I think we still have some of those bloo-”

Everything else he might have said was cut off. Sirius had left the room as fast and tumultuous as he had entered it and the silencing charm was still in place.

Percy looked at the door from which Sirius had just exited, then at Severus and his black robes with the endless rows of shiny buttons and then back onto himself and his by now probably hopelessly ruined but still- in comparison at least- relatively normal clothing. He sighed “I’m going to regret this aren’t I?”

Severus looked at him and before he could say anything Sirius slammed the door back open and stuck his head through it.

“Are you coming or not?”

Chapter Text

September 2nd, 1996, Grimmauldplace, Great Brittain

Back when Percy was younger, far less aware of the kind of world he was living in but still older than any child his age had any business being, he, like many children his age, liked to play pretend.

He would lay on his bed after school with his door firmly shut and barricaded, close his eyes, stuff his ears with pillows as well as he could manage, and he would just imagine he was somewhere else anywhereelsepleasehewasscaredandaloneand-

He would imagine he was a shark swimming in the endless depths of the ocean. He would picture himself as an adventurer walking the country and solving all sorts of problems. He would imagine he was a powerful sorcerer, one who was appointed at a court or something the like, well respected by his peers. He would imagine he was anybody else anywhere else.

When he pretended hard enough, he would feel the heat of day on him, even in the middle of the night, a glow of light so bright, it would burn into his retinas even though his eyes were closed firmly shut.

And then he would open his eyes and still be him.

(Now in retrospect, he could recall one instance where he had told his mother of this- not the whole self-deprecating bit, but the part about the daydreaming- and she had smiled and ruffled his hair in the way she usually, did whenever she got the chance. Then he told her more about it and she got this strange faraway look in her eyes and quickly distracted him with the prospect of blue ice cream.
In accordance with this it should also be mentioned that the daydream he told her about was the one in which he was a well-respected wizard.)

That being said Percy did end up following after Sirius and he did regret it. But he also did have to admit that it was in a way worth it, if only because there might have been serious hygienic issues if he wore these clothes just one more day.

And perhaps also because he really did not want Sirius and Sev to fight. That might have been another deciding factor.

Once again, he tried to adjust his tie and resisted the urge to cry as he saw the number of stairs he had to take until he reached the end of the staircase. His new magic wizarding clothes were predominantly impractical and way too long and flowy, not at all reminiscent of the way regular mortal clothing or even a chiton was. Jeans were suited for fighting. A chiton was suited for fighting. These robes decidedly were not. With a vague sense of impending doom, he returned his gaze to the staircase that seemed to stretch into the everlasting vastness of the pit. Then he grabbed a fistful of fabric, gathered it into his arm as if it were a lover he was not particularly fond of and quickly galloped downwards with all the grace of a drunken cyclops.

Wizarding fashion, Percy decided, was the worst.

…

The foyer was empty when he entered it. It was also a mess.

The curtains, a dark green, almost black satin-like fabric covered with even darker lace, were ripped at various places and irreparably damaged at all others. The remains of vases lay shattered on the ground, their contents having spilled all over the once immaculate floor like the intestines of a particularly unfortunate murder victim. Paintings were crooked, its inhabitants scowling furiously into nothing, furniture was moved, and feathers were scattered all around the room. One of the little coffee tables lay completely broken apart in some remote corner, one of its legs at the opposite side of the room. With some guilt Percy recalled having ripped it of and tried using it as baseball bat.

“Who lets an owl into a house anyway?” he mumbled, more to himself than anyone else.

“I believe that would be my owl.”

Albus Dumbledore entered the room, with as much flourish as was appropriate for a stereotypical Gandalf-esque wizard. The aforementioned owl was sitting on his shoulder, now calm and with only slightly ruffled feathers, though still unmistakeably more plucked. It was unmistakably glaring at Percy but did not try to gauge his eyes out again even though it looked like it wanted nothing more.

“Sirius was so kind to inform me about your encounter. He also told me that she has refused to leave Grimmauldplace. I assume she knew I would come here sooner rather than later.” He thoughtfully inspects the damage done to the room “I must apologize, I do not know her to be this vicious. She is quite an intelligent owl after all.”

The owl preened and looked at Dumbledore with big, bright eyes. Percy glared at it. Dumbledore directed his gaze at him. His eyes were carefully neutral, but weighted down with something Percy could not decipher. Nonetheless he returned his gaze unflinchingly.

“I see that you have settled in already.”

He looked at his new attire- dark green, almost black robes with a slight silk-like sheen to it with wide billowy sleeves that had an odd sort of fabric canal integrated into it on one side and ornamental stitching on the other, and silver clasps at the front that he could close if he so desired- which he did not, because he did quite appreciate his ability to breathe- , the comparatively ordinary white dress shirt, the black trousers and the honest-to-the-gods tie that Percy was planning on getting rid of at the first opportunity that presented itself.

It was horrid, but Percy was nothing if not adaptable, so he chose not to comment on it. Instead, he smiled in a way that he hoped came across as polite or even apologetic but was probably closer to a determined grimace soured even more by the sideway scowl he sent the owl. He forced himself to calm down. The owl was an owl, not some monster hellbent on killing him. Dumbledore was a mortal heading a secret organisation against his evil grandfather, not a -well- not an evil grandfather himself. And Percy was, loathe as he was to admit it, a wizard too, and there was nothing to be changed about any of that. If he wanted to carve out a place for himself in this world, he would at the very least have to make an effort.

“It is quite alright. The thing with the owl I mean. Honestly, I just think owls generally don’t like me much. If I am to stay here, I will have to get used to it, don’t I?” He shrugged as if the possibility of being attacked within inch of his life by a wild rowdy animal at any given moment was normal, because to him it was.

Dumbledore just continued to look at him.

“I do however have a question, Mr Du-”

“Professor.” Dumbledore interrupted him. His tone was chiding and for a moment Percy felt something like resentment bubbling up inside of him.

“But you are not, aren’t you?” Percy cocked his head and suddenly felt as if he was staring down at him instead of up. As if he was the one who was supposed to be in a position to chide instead of being chided. He lightly shook his head to rid himself of these foreign thoughts. “It’s just- I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be rude, but how am I supposed to learn how to control my magic if no one will teach me?”

Dumbledore was still training his gaze intently onto him, his eyes now devoid of the slight sparkle that had previously inhabited them. “You will be taught” he said firmly “An order member will accompany you to buy your necessities ib the near future. Your mother has thankfully sent you some money, which you can exchange for wizarding currency. If necessary, the rest of the expenses will be carried by the school.”

“The school that I don’t go to, you mean?”

“Precisely.”

Percy thought of yet another wizard asking him about his life, his friends, and his family. He didn’t mind the questions, but lying became tiring quickly and being constantly guilt-ridden would not help him nor anyone. “I- I think I would prefer to get them on my own, Sir.” He asked while trying to appear as diligent as humanly possible, if only to appease him a little.

“It is out of question, I’m afraid.” The professor responded curtly.

Percy bit his tongue in order to refrain from telling the man what else would be out of question if he continues treating him like a ticking time bomb. He felt as if that might proof his point and Percy certainly was not about to serve him this kind of satisfaction on a silver platter.

“Is there anything else I should know, Sir?”

I assume you have not told Sirius the details of your ancestry?

Percys heads snapped up. “Was I supposed to?”

Dumbledore shook his head “I suppose that there is no supposition in this case. It is completely and utterly your business, as you say. You are free to tell whoever you want.”

This was a test. Dumbledore was testing him. Percy kept quiet.

“I do hope that you will treat your future teachers with more respect.” He looked at him again, something which was starting to become a pattern, and once he found what he was looking for he nodded, as if he were a doctor who has just confirmed his suspicion that his patient has an incurable ailment. “I’m truly inconsolable to tell you this Mrs Blofis, but your son has a serious case of high-school-deliquentites. Let us be grateful that it is not catching.”

But Dumbledore said none of that.

“Have a nice day, Tom.” With that he turned around and briskly walked away. Percy looked after him even after his form had already disappeared in a flurry twisting movement that he has come to know as apparition.

Percy shrugged and walked into the kitchen, grabbed an apple- the ripest, shiniest one available-, a pomegranate he happened to stumble upon and upon further contemplation also a vase containing dried up white lilies on the table.

…

The room Percy inhabited basically had its own bathroom. It did not officially belong to the room, but it was directly across the hallway and as far as Percy knew there was nobody currently residing in any of the other rooms. Therefore, for the time being it would be his.

This was why Percy did not feel guilty in the least for any of the things he was about to do inside of it, nor for the amount of time they might take.

He looked in the mirror that was hung on the wall above the sink. It was circular, surrounded by a black wooden frame that was artfully carved to depict what Percy assumed to be various magical creatures, and almost definitely magic. The Percy in the mirror gave him a mischievous wave. He was wearing the same clothes that Percy had arrived in, only intact and remotely clean. Percy looked down on his own borrowed robes. They felt old, older than him certainly. Most likely even older than his mother. They felt like something to be passed down. Wearing them Percy felt like a fraud. The only thing that gave him a modicum of comfort was the beaded CHB necklace hidden underneath his collar.

The curtains were drawn shut and the windows were closed. Still, he felt a slight breeze caress his skin, as if even the molecules in the air knew what he was about to do. The atmosphere was expectant, wary, thick enough to be cut with a knife, coiled up like a snake about to attack.

He pulled out the candles he had found in a drawer and arranged them in a circle in the middle of the room. They were black, like most things in this gods-forsaken house were and already slightly burned. He supposed white or even gold would have been more fitting, but he would have to make do. In the middle of the circle he laid put a platter he had brought from the kitchen and, gently opened the pomegranate causing it insides to spill all over the platter. Around it he carefully arranged the flowers and thin slices of apples as if it were a crown.

There is a balance in this world, a feeling of right or wrong- or rather when one spoke of balance- balanced and unbalanced. It was in everything, every living thing, the water he drank, the air he breathed. It was in worship is well.

Worship was- as far as Percy was concerned- surprisingly simple. It only need be genuine and for it to be genuine it required effort and belief. Effort he could muster any day and belief was not hard to come by should one’s heart be honestly convinced of the cause.

And the gods knew that it was.

Quite some time ago, back when the spats between him and Annabeth were less like earthquakes and more like minor hiccups, she had taught him the ancient ways of worships, the art of dealing with the gods and striking bargains with them. Back then he had laughed with her and made biting remarks about the gods and their insatiable need for appreciation and supplication, but still he had listened to her intently as he did every time a word passed her lips.

Annabeth was not a daughter of Athena for nothing. If she deemed this knowledge noteworthy and thought it necessary for him to have he had no doubt that some day he would need it.

Someday turned out to be some night in a decadent bathroom in London while a bunch of wizards were downstairs, but that was rather unimportant in the grand scheme of things.

He thought of the list he had made yesterday while drunk. The way wizards had no way of defending themselves against monsters, the way Percy was able to see through enchantments without trouble, what magic felt like, how it resided in objects, in air, in people.

It was a rash decision, a stupid one. It was the only one he could make.

He sliced open his thumb with Riptide and let a few drops of blood dripple onto the floor until he held it out above the platter. He started chanting in Greek under his breath, at first with noticeable effort and then more easily, words spilling out of his mouth without much thought.

The wind picked up and the candles, previously unlit, started to flicker burning with a ferocity that should not be possible. Percy closed his eyes and only reopened them when the golden light died down and the winds relented.

The candles were burned completely to stubs and the ceiling was blackened by the ash. The wind had caused the curtains to shift, allowing moonshine to stream into the room. The plate had vanished completely. In Its place stood someone else…

“Lady Hera” Percy greeted, nodding his head briefly in acknowledgement.

“Perseus,” she responded, smiling “Nephew. We have not spoken to each other in quite some time.”

Percy snorted and bit his tongue to stop himself from answering. Hera, surprisingly, did not seem to mind.

“I had expected you to request my presence soon, but I must admit that I am positively surprised to see the effort you have gone to ascertain it. It is always an honour to receive such an offering from a hero, let alone one as close to divinity as you.”

“Mr D. said something similar.”

“Did he?” this time the tone was more dangerous. Percy knew what she was really asking. Did Dionysus receive such an offering too? Did he receive it first?

Gods really were nothing if not jealous. It would have been fine if it were to be his father Poseidon, or- gods forbid- her husband Zeus on the receiving end of such a sacrifice first, but Dionysus, her stepson who had had never gone out of his way to grant Percy favour, to have gotten one before her, the queen of all heavens would be considered a grave insult. It was the way thing worked for the divine.

Percy wondered when he had gotten close enough to them to know such things.

“I had offered to sacrifice to him if he were to leave me alone.”

“Did he?”

“He did not.”

She nodded, pacified.

“I have a request to make” Percy said, his voice clear and determined, ringing out over the artificial silence and the incense heralding over the room. “It is on behalf of my mortal family.”

“I have heard of your newfound relative. Even without a drop of ichor running through his veins your grandfather has invoked the interest of Olympus, though I cannot see what I can do for him.”

“It is not about him. It concerns the protection of my mother.”

“Your dedication for your mother honours you, though I do not understand your concern. It is in my conviction that a variety of wizards have already vouched for the safety of your mother, on both sides of the upcoming war.”

“She is with child.”

Her gaze settled on him with barely hidden curiosity, far more divine than he was used to seeing. “Speak then, nephew.”

“Since my arrival I have sensed a great variety of magic. I have familiarised myself with it and I am certain that it is the same as what has started to form in my mother’s womb a few months ago. She has not told me. I believe she does not even know herself. But if I can sense it, so can they and-”

“-and there is now way to circumvent it other than moving her to a place accessible to her father whom she has spent her life running from.” Hera finished.

Percy looked at her, his expression somewhere between threatening and pleading. “My mother has honoured your domains with this child. It had not been conceived illegitimately. None of them have deserved your wrath. Do not doom them for something I have done.”

Hera raised her chin “It will be done, but under one condition.”

“Which will be?”

It was almost painful to look at her. Her eyes swivelled with gold and when she spoke, she spoke not with conviction but with raw power coating her voice like unsweetened honey “I will construct wards for them, but it will be your power upholding them. The only divine or semi divine being that could cross them would be you for as long as you breathe. However, the moment the wards settle into place you will not be allowed to associate with them anymore, lest the protection will be irreparably destroyed by your presence, and they will never know peace. Do you accept?”

“Why is that necessary?”

“It is sacrifice. Do you accept?”

Did he have a choice?

He had time, still, little as it may be.

“I need to think about it.”

Without bidding farewell she disappeared into thin air.

A peaceful life. A normal life. A life with a complete set of parents and a child. It had never been something Percy could have fit into, could have had, no matter how much he wanted to. It was fair that he was to be the one who should leave for the sake of the others. It was his responsibility to keep them safe. It was his responsibility to keep everyone safe. He wasn’t a mere mortal, nor would he ever be.

He wanted to crumple to the floor and hit his head repeatedly until it was stained in blood, until it stopped making sense, until he could feel wronged and angry and something that wasn’t hollow resignation. He wanted everyone to feel this misery.

He did none of that.

Instead he turned on the tab, healed his thumb and waited a second for the water to heat up. With a slight tug in his stomach, he directed the moisture to form around the mirror; then when he deemed the layer of fog laying on to of it to be appropriate, he stopped the tab. With his index finger he started writing on it:

A short list of things Percy knew (Part II) :
1. The best books in a wizarding library are to be found at the very back
2. There was a magic school named Hogwarts which Dumbledore is headmaster of
3. He was not allowed to go to said school
4. There was a magic government called the ministry of magic, which is apparently also incompetent (big surprise)
5. Said ministry was not particularly fond of Dumbledore
6. Dumbledore was not particularly fond of him
7. Owls were not particularly fond of him
8. Snape was not particularly fond of Sirius
9. Sirius was not particularly fond of Snape
10. Snape was not particularly fond of some guy named Harry
11. Sirius was very much fond of this Harry-person, and he was also his godfather
12. Ergo this harry-person seemed to be a hit-or-miss sorta guy
13. Percy was not particularly fond of wizarding clothes

For the unforeseeable future this would be his home. There was no other place he could go to. He needed to make this work.

He took a couple of steps backwards to admire his work, almost tripping over one of the candle stumps in the process. Then he focused on the small spot directly beneath number thirteen. Two numbers appeared on it, painstakingly drawn. Then a short sentence, all in the same neat letters.

14. His name was not Tom

Chapter Text

When he was a small boy, he killed a rabbit. Billy’s rabbit to be precise. Billy was about five years older than him and had always pushed him around and stole bis lunches. His rabbit had white fur and a limp on bis left hind leg. He had not meant to kill it. He had only meant to hurt Billy.

He had not even needed to touch it. It just happened. It was quick. It was efficient. It was impersonal. After it was done, he did not feel like he had done anything at all. He went to bed. He slept. He woke up again. Life continued without a hitch. Billy was upset for a couple of days. Eventually he stopped crying. He stopped pushing him around too. He slept. He woke up again. Life continued. It wasn’t better. It wasn’t worse either. It was as if nothing had happened at all.

Suddenly it all felt so unimportant. If a life could be taken so easily, did it matter? And if this one didn’t matter, did Billy’s? Did miss Coles’? Did his?

The only kind of life that mattered was one that could not end. One that was eternal.

He wanted his life to matter.

…

September 3rd, 1996, Olympus, USA

Hera entered the throne room with the smug expression of a goddess with a job well done.

There, everybody was already assembled, waiting with varying degrees of patience.

Hades was tapping his foot and expertly glaring at everyone who so much as let their eyes wander in his direction. Hephaestus tinkered with a tiny, radio like figure laying in his lab, that kept sprouting of lilac sparks, desperately trying not to look to where his wife Aphrodite was visibly flirting with Ares. On the opposite side of the room, Apollo and Hermes had stuck their heads together and were giggling at each other as per usual. Dionysus was wistfully filling a can of diet coke into a wineglass. Artemis and Athena were both sitting on their respective thrones, the former in one of her more mature forms with a bow sling still strapped onto her shoulder and the other fervently scribbling down notes in one of her notebooks, whilst Poseidon and Zeus were immersed in a heated discussion which, from the looks of it, did not seem to be going too well for either of them. Hecate was present as well, decidedly the odd one out of the bunch since she stood in a far-off corner next to the Ophiotaurus dubbed “Bessie”.

Hera strode towards her own throne, her size increasing with every step she took as the rest of her mortal guise melted away. Hades, Artemis, Athena, and Hecate were the first to remark upon her entry, nodding their heads in greeting. Her husband, on the other hand, did not notice her presence until she elegantly but deliberately resoundingly sat down.

“I must apologize,” she said, her voice boastful, “My presence was required elsewhere.”

Zeus didn’t bother turning his head towards her. “Elsewhere, wife?” he said, annoyance plain in his tone, “What would be more important than this?”

“A sacrifice.”

Zeus stopped dead in the tracks and then turned to stare at her as if he had never seen her before. Not in the cute love-on-first-sight kind of way. In the what-the-fuck-are-you-doing-in my-house kind of way.

“A sacrifice.” He echoed hollowly.

“Yes.”

Nobody spoke. Hecate shifted uncomfortably. Everyone ignored her.

Dionysus was still holding his glass of diet coke raised halfway towards his mouth, as if to toast to awkward tension. Throughout the dead silence of the throne room, he spoke, his voice echoing what everyone was already thinking.

“You’ve got to be fucking shitting me.”

Hera glared at him “I am not ‘fucking shitting you’, stepson.”

“-He could have chosen any one- ”

“-And he chose me! -”

“Exactly! He doesn’t even like you!”

Dionysus sat there with his hands thrown up in the air in a show of divine indignation. The diet coke had been spilt all over the floor, as well as having stained large patches of his chiton, but he wore it as if it were diamonds, like the wine god that he was. He readjusted and draped himself over the side of his throne as he waved his hand to make another can appear. “Don’t get me wrong. I’m not hung up on it or anything. Sure, it would have been a nice sentiment, you know? After all I’ve done for him.”

Poseidon snorted. Dionysus, of course, took offense.

“Where’ve you been then? Haven’t seen you around camp in ages.”

Poseidon startled as if he could not possibly imagine a world where his parenting skills were questioned. “I’ll have you know I’ve-“

“You sure it was him?” Hermes interrupted before the situation escalated. He still looked doubtful “It could have been anyone right?” He looked around for support.

Apollo shrugged. “Black is the most common hair colour in the world- ”

“-yes exactly, thank you, Apoll-“

“- and I mean, I, myself, see at least eight guys with black hair and a white streak in the front per day, and at least half of them happen to be a demigod, who is also a wizard, who is also trying to protect his mother, who happens to be a non-magical mortal living in the centre of western civilisation that is pregnant with a magical child, from monsters and less-than-optimal dads. It’s really starting to get annoying, you know?”

.-.

“It does make sense.” Athena said carefully, after nobody had said anything in a good thirty seconds, “Hera is the goddess of family and motherhood. She is the logical solution to all his problems.”

Hades glanced at her “Since when does he do things that make sense?”

“That is exactly what is so unsettling about this. Normally, he would not have done this.”

Apollo perked up at that “So it has already begun, then?”

“You know very well that it has, nephew” Poseidon answered in a rumbling, boastful voice, “Even a sun god such as yourself could not have evaded my son’s moods. He is powerful. I do not see a reason to continue this charade. There is but one conclusion.”

“Loathe as I am to admit it,” Zeus grumbled from his own throne “my brother speaks truth; and even if there weren’t, there is no possible justification for seeing one of our own having to associate with that kind.”

Hecate looked up at him in indignation. Zeus stared back, daring her to object.

“I believe we’ve forgotten about the most pressing matter at hand” Artemis said, still leisurely sharpening one of her arrows.

“And what would that be, daughter?”

She smiled, redirecting her gaze at the queen of all heavens “His response, of course.”

The weight of attention immediately shifted onto Hera. “He’s thinking about it”, was all she said.

Dionysus snorted “That’s as good as nothing.”

Hera glared at him, as if she’d come across a particularly troublesome bug “Quite wrong. It is as good as done. There is no other way of accomplishing what he seeks to do. What we seek to do. We’ve discussed this at length.”

“A great length indeed,” grumbled Ares from his own throne. Hera ignored him. Dionysus conjured a golden bowl filled with grapes and ate one of them with an utterly disinterested expression on his youthful face.

“What is done, is done.” Artemis said, expertly wielding the tension as if it were another of her blades “Perseus has entered the magical realm now. I am certain there is a way to turn this situation to our favour.”

“I still do not like this.” Poseidon said with disdain colouring his tone, “They are wizards.”

Athena stared at him coldly “There would have been no need of discussion had you not sired a chid with a magic bearer.”

“She is no magic bearer, she’s a-”

“Truth is”, Ares stated, “that we never would have had these problems would it not be for Perseus’ irrational refusal of godhood.”

“No,” Apollo shock his head “Truth is that there is no universe in which he would have accepted this initial offer of godhood. But it will happen. It always does, eventually.” And despite the forlorn expression on his face, there was a smile in his voice. “He is where the fates have decreed him to be.”

“Very well”, Zeus said, “I suppose that brings us to the next matter that warrants discussing.”

Hecate gulped.

…

September 4th, 1996, Grimmauldplace, Great Britain

“Was somebody here?”

“A lot of somebodies, actually. Kind of shocking you didn’t notice them; we weren’t exactly quiet. But then again, the house is big enough, huh?”

Percy fiddled with his increasingly uncomfortable tie and managed to tug at the wrong end of the string once again, causing it to tighten even more. He wrestled with it half-heartedly until he decided to just bite the bullet and ask for help.

Sirius snorted in response and flicked his wand once. Then again in order to repair some of the rougher damage that had been done; curtains flicking themselves together, the floor polishing itself, feathers disappearing without a trace. For a second Percy wondered why Dumbledore had not done it himself when he was here earlier, or any other of these guest that had apparently been here. Was a semi-destroyed house normal around here? If that were the case, then maybe he really could find a way to fit in around here.

“You know, your home’s pretty neat, actually.”

Sirius shrugged, clearly unconvinced. “This isn’t my home. I had one once, but I can’t go there. This is just the place where I live.”

“How come you can’t go home””

“Oh, you know how it is,” Sirius responded in a way that made it abundantly clear he absolutely did not think that Percy knew how it was, “you escape out of prison and suddenly you’re not allowed to leave the ridiculously well-guarded house, ‘cause it’s too dangerous. Seriously, what could happen? I mean I’ll be a wanted criminal no matter what, so why not a wanted criminal with a new leather jacket, you know?”

He did in fact not know that, but, in a way, he did get that.

“Well, I guess you could be caught, right?”

Sirius shot him a faux annoyed look that was just a little too pointed to be completely ingenuine “You’re supposed to be in my side.”

Percy threw his hands up in mock surrender “I’m on no one’s side. I said could, not would. And to be fair, I hardly even know about would.”

The man, the wizard Percy reminded himself ran a hand through his hair, mussing it up in a manner that didn’t fit in with the other puzzle pieces making up his behavioural pattern. Something he had picked up from someone else, presumably a long time ago.

“You’re a strange kid, you know that?”

“Says the guy who can do magic and is semi-willingly living in a ghost hunter’s wet dream.”

Another snort. Off in the distance some church bells proclaimed the time; midnight. Percy’s stomach grumbled, loudly.

“Hungry?”

“Do you really have to ask?”

“Wait up, kiddo. I haven’t eaten either and Molly didn’t bring over dinner tonight, but ill whip something up.”

“No need,” Percy said grinning, “I have a better idea.”

…

“That,” Sirius said between munches “was the best idea you’ve ever had.”

“We’ve known each other for not even a full week.”

“I don’t need to know more than that. Theres no way you could top this.” Sirius shoved another load clumsily into his mouth. All in all, he’s taking surprisingly well to the chopsticks, even though he did mistake them for small wands at first “Seriously what even is this stuff? And you can just get some and eat it wherever you want? That’s genius!”

“What, wizards don’t do takeout?”

“Well,” Sirius hesitated, “not that I know of, not really. Maybe some do it, but I’ve certainly never heard of it before. I’m sure Remus would, though.”

Percy hummed “Remus? Like Romulus and Remus?”

Sirius looked up in surprise “How have you heard of that?”

He frowned “At school? You know, the myth of these twin brothers who were raised by wolves?”

“Oh.” And then he didn’t say anything else.

“Can I ask you a question?”

“Sure, kid, shoot”

“Why can’t you just teleport to your actual home. They can’t follow you there, right?”

Sirius quirked a brow “Apparate, you mean?”

“Sure, that.”

“It’s not that easy, kid.”

“Why not?”

“After my capture all my properties were officially transferred to one of my cousins and her husband. They’re known followers of Voldemort.”

“Why would they give them the properties then?”

“Known” Sirius reiterated “not official. They are rich and influential. I know it, they know it, most importantly: the ministry knows it. All they had to do was claim that the husband had been bewitched and that they hadn’t meant it. They were glad to believe it.”

Percy swore quietly.

“Welcome to my world kid”, he half-heartedly sipped on his glass- water this time, but there was a bottle of fire whiskey right next to it that he and Percy were once again several glasses into - “I doubt they use it anyway, but they’ll have set up all sorts of bobby traps, what with Voldemort’s return. Searched it too, I wager. Probably threw away my vinyl collection too, those gits.”

Suddenly a memory popped up in Percy’s head, something that Dumbledore had said back when they had first met a couple of days ago.

They wanted to notify their friends of her existence through a letter in case of their death. They were murdered shortly after, and several circumstances led to the letter never being discovered and read.
Sirius leaned back and took a small object wrapped in shiny gold wrapping paper out of the discarded bag still laying in the table. “What’s that?”

Percy looked up “A fortune cookie. Look in the bag, there should be one for me too.”

“It foretells the future?”

“It’s supposed to” He accepts his cookie from Sirius “If you break it in half, there’s a note with some proverb inside of it; usually it’s absolute bull crap, but it’s fun and it doesn’t hurt that the cookie’s good.”

Sirius hummed in reply, following his instructions. When he read the note, he snorted.

“What does it say?”

“Never stand with your back to a veil.”

Percy frowned “That makes no sense.”

“Right?” then he shrugged “I guess if that’s what the universe is telling me it’s got to be important but-” Sirius crumbled the paper and carelessly threw it over his shoulder. “What does yours say?”

Percy glanced at his note and tried to discern the letters from each other. On it, there were only two words.

Brace yourself

Well, dam.

“If you kill a killer, the number of killers stays the same.” He replies eventually.

“Kill two then.” Sirus said while still munching on his cookie, “You were right, these are bull crap. Sorta fun, though.”

Percy hummed in vague agreement. Or maybe it was disagreement. He didn’t even know what he was doing anymore. Then again, he never did, and it been working out up until now.

“Hey,” he said, “do you know this weird philosophical thing? The one with the tree?”

“Percy, I have literally no idea what you’re talking about.”

Percy frowned, trying to form a sentence that made sense “You know the one that’s like ‘If a tree falls in a forest does it make a sound?’”

Sirius looked at him.

“Okay, uhm- alright” he took another gulp of the amber liquid while simultaneously forcing himself to sober up a bit “Imagine there is a wizard that isn’t allowed to leave his house. But if he were alone and he did leave his house, but nobody ever saw him, then did he really leave his house?”

…

Three and a half hours after that, they were once again sitting at that same table. Percy has long since resigned himself to just skipping sleep altogether for tonight and digging himself further into hole of a horrid case of magic-teleportation-jetlag combined with sleeping patterns from Tartarus while Sirius seemed to not have even considered going to bed at all.

At this point they went to the local movie theatre- or cinema as Percy had been informed it was called around here- found out it was closed, got a round of ice cream from some convenience store, and went back to Grimmauld Place, which actually had just gotten a little more depressing after having spent some time somewhere else. Then there was a plethora of little-pinkie-swears about how no one’s going to find out about this whole happily-skipping-through-the-night-despite-being-a-wanted-criminal-and-a-seventeen-year-old-who’s-technically-supposed-to-be-in-hiding-thing. After that they just started talking about everything and nothing.

“So…” Sirius began hesitantly, “your family, uhm… what are they like?”

He shrugged “It’s a bit complicated.”

Sirius shrugged too, and if Percy couldn’t recognise the stiffness in his shoulders from himself, he never would have known he was nervous. “Hit me, we’ve got all night.”

“Actually, I’m pretty sure I need to get up early tomorrow.”

“Diagon Alley?”

Percy frowned “What’s that?”

Sirius looked vaguely horrified once more “Merlin’s pants, I keep forgetting how little you know. Diagon alley is the place where practically all wizards buy their stuff before they go to Hogwarts- well the British ones at least.”

“So, there are wizards in other countries as well?”

“Sure, there are- all over the world actually- but most of them live in Europe. You know, France, Germany, Bulgaria, Greece, the works.” He looks to the side a bit, pondering “Although there’s hardly anyone left in Greece, it used to be one of the biggest strongholds of magic in the world. Some say that that’s where the first wizards and witches were from.”

“My dad’s Greek.” Percy said in the spirit of participation “He’s not a wizard though, and to be fair, I hardly know him. My mom met him on a beach in the states, it must have been shortly after she had moved there. They fell in love, he left, and she found out she was pregnant. She was nineteen.”

Most adults he knew would say something nice and consoling now, something kind to hide their disapproval at such a situation. Most adults would pity him, but then clap their hand on his back and say something like “heads up”, or “May god stand you by”- he’s been, ironically enough, to a lot of catholic schools in his life.

Sirius, however, did no such thing.

“Shit” he said. And then he waited.

Percy smiled at him. “My mom married another guy later. He was a real prick. Then, he disappeared, and she went out with someone else. He’s a real great guy. Now they’re married and she’s happy. So, it worked out.”

“And your- uhm, what about your grandfather?”

Percy shrugged. “Well. What about him. It’s not like I’ve met the guy. I’m actually quite sure he doesn’t know I exist.”

“So, he’s still out there? Being a death eater and all that?”

“And all that.”

Sirius sighed heavily and then proceeded to open another bottle.

…

September 4th, 1996, Hogwarts, Great Britain

Binn's voice droned on and on and on as he wrote with aggravatingly slow flicks of his wands a series of dates and Names on the blackboard.

“First history potions, Divination and Defence with that toad Umbridge on Mondays and now Binns first thing Wednesdays again; it’s like they want us to screw up the OWLs.” Ron had grumbled angrily as they had made their way to the classroom. Harry had readily agreed, while Hermione shook her head and hardheartedly mumbled something about a ‘healthy sleeping schedule’ and him and Ron ‘not even trying to learn something’.

Now, sitting drowsily on the bench squashed between Hermione, who was somewhat aggressively taking notes and the windows, he couldn’t help but think that the opportunity for some additional sleep might be a rather fortunate turn of events, all things considered. Harry let his attention drift as he pillowed his head on his arms, lazily craning his neck to catch a glance of Ron, only to see that his friend was already lost to the world.

Sleep. Sleep was a great idea.

He snuggled a little more firmly into his arm-pillow and felt the vibrations of Hermione’s quill against his cheek.

…

“You know-” Hermione began as she strode through the corridors with her Arithmancy books clutched against her chest “I’d love to be able to catch up on a little sleep, but then what would you dolts do without any notes before the OWL’s”.

Ron yawned and rubbed a little bit of sleep out if his eyes “Did you finish a book again, without starting a new one after?”

She huffed “You wouldn’t understand that. You need to have a little bit of time in between, in order to sufficiently mourn the book.”

Harry shot a questioning glance at Ron; Ron solely shrugged in response.

“Did Binns mix up a year number?” Harry tried.

She turned around to look at him in clear annoyance. “Binns never mixes up a year number, which you would know if you-”

“-bothered to pay attention, fine. Look, could you please just say what’s wrong?”

Hermione stood abruptly, causing a still bleary eyes Ron to walk into her. “Has neither of you even heard what the lesson was about? They changed the curriculum, ministry mandated. Why do I even bother going to the classes, if all he’s going to talk about are these ridiculous fable stories drenched in blood superiority complexes!” And with that she took a turn to the right, while Ron and Harry were left to make their way to Divination on their own.

Harry looked at Ron, intending to have another exchange of glances with him, as they usually did when neither of them understood what Hermione was talking about, but when he turned to look at him he saw Ron frowning after her.

Chapter Text

September 5th, 1996, Grimmauldplace, Great Brittain

Despite Dumbledore being an unreasonable prick about the whole affair and Sirius having been way too drunk to explain anything of importance to him yesterday, Percy was excited for his visit to Diagon alley. It was his first proper foray into the magical world after all and even with the whole upcoming war thing going on, the wonder at getting to experience a whole new world was pretty hard to quell.

Which was why he woke up surprisingly early considering how late they had once again stayed up last night. His windows were closed this time and there was no rain drumming against it nor were there the typical cloudy sky one would expect from England. He was once again hangover free and felt only a little woozy from the lack of sleep. He took another set of old robes out of the drawer and quickly got dressed, pleased to find that these ones fit him a lot better than yesterdays.

As he walked through the hallways of the house, sunrays falling through the old gothic windows and reflecting on the old, dusty wooden panels and no owls in sight, he already knew there was no way this peace would continue for long.

And he was right.

A quiet shuffling of small, bare feet toned through the empty hallway. A doorway opened slightly with an unexpectantly loud creaking sound. He saw nothing through the crack; only darkness.

“Kreacher?”

More shuffling sounded out of it. Then the stifled groan of someone carrying something way too heavy for them.

“Kreacher?” Percy called out again. Again, no reply.

“I’m coming in now.”

He opened the door and was once again greeted by an onslaught of darkness and the stench of something horrid. He flet the wall for a light switch before realising that he had not seen a single electrical device since having arrived here. Wizards most likely did not use things like that. They had magic after all. They probably thought themselves above electricity since they could rely on their own abilities to do everything for them instead.

Well at least he wouldn’t have to worry about monsters picking up on his scent via technology while he stayed here.

Still his hand wandered along the wall has he felt his way forward. The darkness was so thick that he could almost taste it on his tongue. There was no way in Tartarus that this hallway wasn’t enchanted, not with the way the magic was swirling under his hand as it trailed along the peeling wallpaper, lighting up under his touch as if being awakened by it.

Wards, like the ones on the outside, but unkempt and therefore barely active. They weren’t welcoming him, but much like the other ones, they couldn’t protest his presence.

He walked on.

The door leading back to the light filled room was just behind him, but still, he couldn’t even make out the slightest silhouettes as if all the light had just been swallowed up. It reminded Percy eerily of the black holes Annabeth had spoken of. How the mortals theorized that light was the fastest way for information to travel across space and how the hole’s gravity caused the escape velocity to be so incredibly high that it surpassed even the speed of light, making it impossible for anything to ever escape.

Comforting.

His hand found a ridge in the wall. He followed its trail up to a strange wooden platter hung on the wall. Carefully he moved his hand along it towards-

“Stop!”

The light returned so suddenly and with such viciousness that Percy had to blink several times until his eyes managed to adjust.

In front of him, mounted on the wall like a price, was the head of a house elf. Then its facial features morphed, the old flesh twisted, and the bones cracked as they moved under the skin. The eyes became slits, the checks hollow, the skin paler and it opened its mouth as if it was going to-

-

“Kreacher knows now.”

Percy turned around, breathing heavily. To him, it felt as if hours had gone by, but somehow he knew that no time had past at all. His heart was pounding so hard he felt it in his chest. For a second it was all he could focus on.

His heart pumping his blood though his veins. Blood. Red. Red blood in his veins.

Had it been just a dream?

“Knows what?”

The house elf smiled proudly, baring yellowed teeth. It was a surprisingly endearing sight.

“Knows where he knows the boy from. As a young boy master Orion brought friends home during summer. Kreacher saw them sometimes. He looks exactly like one of them. He’s even wearing the robes master Orion gifted him.”

“Oh,” was all Percy said, but Kreacher had already disappeared.

…

When he found his way into the kitchen, it was already occupied.

“Morning, Sev”, he called out as he walked into the kitchen. Sev merely nodded and went on magically stirring his tea as he read the newspaper. The purple haired witch sitting across from him hardly stirred, her head burrowed in her arms as it was, she appeared to be fast asleep.

Percy grabbed yet another apple from the counter and took a bite, immediately regretting this decision as it reminded him of what had taken place the day before.

“Is she okay?” he asked instead of dealing with his problems.

“She had the night shift.”

“Ah.”

A second passed in silence. Then another.

“Uhm… what for?”

“I cannot tell.”

“You mean you don’t know?”

“No, I mean I cannot tell.”

“Oh.”

Percy walked to the back and poured himself a glass of orange juice and a very lacklustre sandwich with some ham and cheese he found. Then he went back and conveniently positioned himself next to the witch so that he could spy a look at the title page of the newspaper Sev was reading.

NO NEW FINDINGS REGARDING WEATHER CRISIS- ALL USAGE OF BRROMS AND OTHER FLYING VEHICLES PROHIBITED FOR THE UNFORSEEABLE FUTURE

He frowned to himself, thinking of the view that had greeted him this morning. The only thing that had happened since he was there was a bit of rain, but wasn’t that the norm for Brittain? He tried reading the actual article, but his dyslexia started acting up again, so he just continued sitting there eating his sandwich, silently glad that the woman next to him wasn’t snoring.

That was when he sensed it. A slight pounding in the floor beneath him. Small ripples in Sev’s tea. A gust of wind on his right.

Before he knew it, he was crowded against the wall, the tip of a wand digging into his throat. A pair of unfamiliar eyes were glaring at him- mismatched, one of them dark the other-

“Intruder”, the man growled, his voice unnaturally loud and bellowing, making Percy wonder how he had almost managed to sneak up on him. The purple haired woman had since startled awake and was now eyeing Percy with a mixture of distrust and apprehension.

“Let go of him, Alastor” Severus said, his oily voice carrying though the tense silence.

The man, Alastor, only tightened his hold. “Not before the intruder explains why he is here.”

Percy blinked; his face completely neutral as he felt his pen burning in his pocket, begging to be used. He ignored it; it would do him no good here. “That eye is not yours.”

“Answer the question!”

It was Sev, who answered for him. “Dumbledore has brought him in. He vouches for him. So do I.”

“A new order recruit then”, Alastor concluded gruffly only slightly easing his iron grip.

Out of the corner of his eyes Percy saw the purple haired woman shake her head. “He is only a child, Mad-Eye.”

“He has good instincts. As well as experience.” And with these words he removed his person from Percy altogether revealing the slightly rusted butterknife Percy had been pressing precariously right below his sternum, ready to be thrusted into his heart at moment’s notice. “Now if only he had actually thought to bring his wand. This sort of behaviour is going to get him killed out there.”

“That eye is not yours”, Percy repeated. And it was true; strapped on his face and circling wildly into every direction imaginable was something he was familiar with. The eye belonged to Argus.

The man shrugged. “I lost mine; got this one instead. It’s mine in all ways that matter. Where did you learn that and why are you here.”

“Ignore him”, the purple haired woman said as she gingerly pushed the man out of the way. “All the fighting during the last war have made him paranoid. I’m Tonks.” She held out her hand. He took it. It was warm and had callouses at all the places where she would presumably hold her wand.

“I’m Percy. I like your hair by the way.”

“Thanks” she said. “I always have a lot of time to think about the colour during night shift. Green and yellow are just ghastly with this complexion and blue washes me out. Pink is my favourite usually, but purple is nice too, sometimes. You know, for a change.” And all the while her hair changed colours as she spoke of them until they returned to the vivid purple they had been before.”

“So” she clasped her hands and gestured for Percy to sit as she returned to her place as well, while “Mad-Eye” stood against the wall as if to surveil the scene. “What brings you to our humble headquarters?”

“Percy here is the very first participant of our very own witness protection program.” Sirius called out from the doorway as he made his way toward them, a slight skip in his steps that had not been there just the day before. “Morning Tonks, morning Moody,” he narrowed his eyes “Snivellus.”

“Black” Sev returned just as coldly, returning to his tea. He pointedly turned the page of his newspaper to the page with a blurry unmoving picture of Sirius presumably from the night before. BLACK BACK IN ENGLAND- NEW SIGHTINGS IN LONDON the caption read. Definitely his fault. Percy sneakily glanced at Sirius to catch his reaction, but the man merely pursed his lips, only to then send Percy a wink.

“Witness protection.” Tonks said, curiosity gleaming in her eyes. “What did you witness?”

“Nothing really. I only found out about this whole thing a couple of days ago.”

She shrugged, almost reassuringly “Most people doubt that you-know-who is back. It’s not really your fault that you didn’t know.”

Percy furrowed his brows “But I don’t know.”

“You don’t?”

“I don’t know who”, he clarified.

Tonks looked at him strangely.

“You said that I know who, but I don’t.”

“Don’t what?”

“Know who.”

“You don’t know who?”

“Yea.”

“You don’t know you-know who?”

“Uhm-” Percy shot a helpless glance at Severus, who did not deign to react at all, “Yea, I mean- I guess not?”

An expression of utter and complete bafflement crossed her face. Then, a wave of disbelief. It was all rather like a car wreck, which was at least a somewhat familiar situation for Percy to be in. From the corner of his eyes, he could see Sirius trying to stifle a grin. In a rare moment of mutual amusement, Percy could see Sirius and Sev coming to an agreement to leave Percy to whatever misunderstanding he had just stepped into.

“Are you… a muggle?” Tonks asked after several seconds of silence.

Percy shrugged. “Nah, I’m just new to this magic thing.”

Moody, meanwhile, looked at him as if he were a calculation he was trying to solve. “New to magic?” Percy nodded. “Impossible.”

He frowned. “There’s a secret magical society, but they’re trying their hardest to stay hidden, but apparently also spring up all over the place and you’re surprised that you’ve missed one?”

“I’m not surprised, I’m saying it’s impossible. The ministry tracks every magical being below the age of seventeen on their territory, and so does every other magical government across the globe.”

“Well, not where I live then.”

Severus, having finished his cup of tea, neatly folded his newspaper and, in a fit of uncharacteristic mercy, decided to step in. “None of this is of any consequece to you. Let’s go, Perseus, we do not have all day.”

Percy, once again, shrugged and went to follow him ignoring the looks that were burning into his back.

“We’re not going there by apparating again, are we?” he asked warily as they descended the small couple of stairs at the front of the house. He couldn’t help the shudder that overcame him at the thought of it, at the way it twisted his being and contorted it into something it wasn’t, as if magic had any right to do such a thing.

“There are other ways of travel.”

Percy was about to ask whether these other ways would entail flying or puking his guts out, when the door was slammed open, and a large black blur shot out and slammed Percy onto the ground. He only just managed to repress the urge to uncap his pen and swipe at the being in front of him. Instead, he looked at the dog that was breathing heavily into his face and awkwardly patted his head with puzzlement blatantly apparent on his face.

Severus meanwhile regarded the scene from a considerable distance. “I truly didn’t believe you could be anymore idiotic, Black.” The dog turned his head to Sev and growled at him.

“Wait, that’s Sirius?”

Severus ignored him. “You have seen what happened the last time you did this. The aurors are actively searching for you in London again and the Dark Lord is already aware of your little trick.”

Sirius just pushed his snout against Percys chest, insistently urging him to stand up. Percy, eternally confused as always, just did what the wizard-dog told him to.

Severus shrugged in a way that could be interpreted as the universal gesture for ‘your funeral’ and held out his wand towards the road.

…

“You know, as far as nausea inducing magical transportation goes, that one isn’t too bad.”

They did have to pay full price for Sirius, even though they didn’t know he was actually a human, but it wasn’t Percy’s money and Sev somewhat gave the impression of being well-of so he wasn’t too bothered by it.

“You’re only saying that because you somehow didn’t mind the conductor’s idiocies- a truly incredible feat.”

“I liked Stan. He was nice.”

Stan was, unfortunately, also very nosy. He asked him a lot of questions, like what Percy was doing with an old bat like Sev, or whether Percy was a Slytherin, whatever the Tartarus that was supposed to be, only to then decide that he must be since he wore green, which Percy just decided to accept. At some point he had remembered to ask him for his name.

“I didn’t catch your name”, he had said.

“I didn’t throw it.”

The conductor laughed, went to the front to tell the driver, and then came back only to ask again.

“Percy”, he had responded that time.

“Percy huh? D’you have a last name too?”

Jackson he had wanted to say until he remembered. Instead, he just tried for an embarrassed smile and mumbled ‘sure do.’ He caught Sirius staring at him in his dog form and was very caught off guard by his expression of pity mixed with unmistakable curiosity.

Stan meanwhile looked at him with understanding in his eyes, though understanding of what he couldn’t tell. ‘That’s great, man.’

He told him loads of stuff about himself too. As it turns out he had been going to Hogwarts as well not too long ago and ‘Professor Snape’ had been his teacher. Once he started trying to remind Sev of the good old times where he kept trying to sneak through the school after nightfall only to be caught by some cat of all beings, Sev pointedly pulled out his already read newspaper and read it again. Percy decided not to comment on that.

And after that somebody else came in and Stan left to take care of them. Her hair was slightly wet when she came in and she dried her wand with her coat.

“Came out of nowhere that,” she grumbled.

“Bloody weird weather, it really is.”

“It’s bloody depressing too, saw two kids burst into tears once it hit.”

Again rain. Rain in New York, rain in London, rain wherever he went.

He stayed silent the rest of the bus ride.

Percy took a second to look at his surroundings. It was all very medieval looking, with that stereotypical bit of magic in the form of self-cleaning tables and the recommendations on the blackboard writing themselves. “So, we’re just hanging out in a magic pub now? Didn’t think you’d be into that.” The old barkeeper shot him a somewhat angry look. Sirus took the chance to snatch at the sausages hung up behind him.

Sev raised an eyebrow “Are you perchance familiar with the term patience?”

“Can’t say I’ve ever heard of it” Percy responded as he followed the man out the back.

Their way led them to a red brick wall. “You sure this is the right way?” Percy asked, though he already knew it must be. The magic hung in spades over the wall was as much a tell as anything ever could be, but he wasn’t yet sure whether he was actually supposed to be able to sense such things.

Sev drew out his wand from wherever the Tartarus he kept the thing while it wasn’t being used and poked a select few bricks with it.

The wall seamlessly slid back to reveal an archway leading to a cobbled shopping lane. It wasn’t terribly busy this time around, probably since most teenagers had just returned to school, but still there were a considerable number of people milling about with hefty looking shopping bags slung over their backs. Witches and wizards with strange clothes, like the ones he was currently wearing, wands in their pockets and magic flowing through their veins.

There were building built in weird upside-down sort of ways that Percy was utterly unfamiliar with but that he could only guess were made possible by magic, display windows showcasing devices and utensils he has never seen before and candy stores selling things like Fizzing Whizzbees or Toothflossing Stringmints. And above all, high up in the sky was another thick layer of magic preventing anyone from the outside from looking in. Anybody but Percy at least.

Sirius took a quick sprint about and practically jumped Percy in cheerfulness. Percy scratched him under the ear god-naturedly. “I know, buddy, I like this place too.”

“So,” he said as he rightened himself back up again, “where to?”

…

Gringotts was one of the stranger and bigger buildings in Diagon Alley. It did not look like much, but Percy had learnt a long time ago that that didn’t mean anything. He felt reminded of Nereus, the old man of the sea, who knew everything about anything and yet chose to hang around San Francisco Bay dressed in pajamas and a fuzzy bathrobe.

They were still standing outside with Percy staring at the building and Severus quietly berating, read threatening, Sirius into staying close by while they conducted their business inside, since they could hardly bring a dog inside a bank. “Dumbledore said something about my mother having send money?”

“She did,” Sev grumbled, annoyed with whatever Sirius managed to tell him in dog-form, “but it is unlikely to do us any good. It’s an American currency, so they might not even be familiar with it. And if they are it will only cause us unwanted scrutiny. Best not to use it at all or exchange it in a muggle bank for another muggle currency first. It will hardly be enough anyway. You haven’t brought any clothes with you and books aren’t cheap.”

“Hm.” Percy said uncommittedly. The heavy doors to the bank opened automatically and Percy had only briefly taken in the scene stretched out in front of him, marble columns and mosaic floors like the ones on Olympus and people and goblins alike hurrying about, before he was pulled forward by Severus.

“We require access to the Hogwarts vault.”

The goblin briefly looked up from his paperwork to stare at Sev with barely concealed disdain.

“Hogwarts vault? A little late for that, isn’t it?”

“It is… an unusual situation.”

“Unusual you say.” The goblin hmphed and looked up again, only this time his gaze fell on Percy. His eyes widened imperceptibly.

“Unusual” he repeated.

Some other goblin coughed sharply and as if a switch had been flicked the goblin blinked and returned to his former professional stance.

“Key?”, he requested. Sev handed it to him, it was oddly shaped and rusty. The goblin quickly checked it over with nimble fingers and then gestured for Percy to follow.

He followed a step behind Severus. The goblin halted again. “Only the boy. He is old enough after all.” The goblin smiled, revealing sharp yellow teeth. Severus looked ready to protest. Percy shot him a smile. “I’ll be fine.”

He nodded albeit reluctantly.

“This way.”

Percy gripped his pen tighter and followed.

The room he was led into was large, almost unreasonably so. The floor was blindingly white marble with a couple of steps leading downwards from the entrance platform to the main floor which was supported by decorated marble columns. The ceiling was high and the walls to all sides covered from head to toe with colorful mosaics depicting various events, some of them of goblins waging war against wizards, others of hordes of centaurs looking at the sky, werewolves on a hunt and-

“You recognize them.”

Percy nodded, his mouth hanging wide open. The goblin was looking at him expectantly.

This was a test.

He walked up to one of the nearest mosaics and lightly rested the palm of his hand against it. The mosaic started moving, the tesserae shifting under his hand as if it were water. The pictures started moving, as he had seen the portraits at Grimauld place do. “That is Daedalus, famed inventor, and son of Athena. He is building wings to escape the King Minos with his son Icarus. His son dies in the attempt.” He started walking further into the room, his hand brushing lightly against the wall, breathing new life into every scene. “And that is Theseus, son of Poseidon. With the aid of Ariadne, he found a way through Daedalus’ labyrinth and defeated the minotaur. He left her behind later. Perseus, son of Zeus, killing the Medusa, a being that can turn someone to stone with a mere look. He kept her head as a spoil of war to use against his enemies.”

He kept listing the stories of his predecessors one by one, the goblin listening with rapt attention as if it were the first time he heard them. It was only when he reached the end of the first wall that he turned around. “Why are you showing me this?”

“These are the stories of your people. Only a selection of the more ancient ones unfortunately. They are the only ones still somewhat known to this day. All others have been lost to time.” The goblin looked at Percy and added apologetically “Our ways have parted a long time ago.”

“So, you know what I am.”

“The goblins understand what you are far better than the wizards ever did.”

“Will you tell them?”

“We have not forgotten about the injustice done to your people. All these centuries we had held onto the hope that one of your kind might have withstood the test of time and, despite all reason, prevailed. We would never think to betray you like this.”

And before Percy could stop him the goblin bowed.

…

“So…” Percy tried to start of awkwardly, “Stan said you’re teacher, right?”

Sev stared at him, his gaze clearly saying that he knew exactly what Percy was attempting. After they had left Gringotts with a- as the goblin had assured him. reasonably filled money pouch Percy refused to speak of anything that had happened in there. He might have been let of the hook if it hadn’t been for the silence that had befallen the room and hordes of goblins staring at him with awe and wonder plain in their eyes as he had crossed the hall to the archway where Severus had been waiting for him. “I am.” he responded.

“So… how’d that happen?”

This time Sev slightly turned to look at him though he did not deign to slow his steps. “Why are you asking?”

“You don’t seem the type is all.”

Silence.

“What do you teach?”

“Potions.”

“Potions? That sort of like chemistry, right? Or is it more like cooking?” Either way, it would include some sort of liquid so Percy most likely couldn’t be too bad at it.

“It is insulting to compare the delicate art of potioneering to a plebian activity such a s cooking.”

“… So, it’s like chemistry?”

“Aimless chatter won’t gain you any favours.”

Percy shrugged, even though Severus couldn’t see it with his back turned. It seemed to be his go-to gesture at this point when he didn’t completely understand what he was supposed to do, but didn’t want to seem too bothered by it. “I’m not looking to gain any favours. And anyway, if I were, it wouldn’t be aimless now, would it?”

“I’m sure you’d find a way.”

He said it dryly, like he said most things. It was by no means unexpected of him to say such a thing, but-

Aimless. That word. For some reason it pissed him off, even though Sev technically hadn’t called him aimless.

“You expect a lot of me.”

“I really don’t.”

“Yes, you do. You all do. You expect me to just get this whole magic thing immediately, to understand your fucked up political skirmishes or who you mean when you say you-know-who or hog watch or this weird colour scheme thing or people that eat death or whatever. I’m trying to be understanding, I really am but I don’t know what you want me to do!”

Severus didn’t say anything, only looked at him with his vacant expression, that reminded him of when he first met the man a couple of days before. A couple of days. No time at all. At least not now that he thought about it. And he knew. He knew who his grandfather was and now after the whole Gringotts debacle Sev was reevaluating his opinion of him. He was suspicious. Wondering whether he was hiding something from them.

He was right to be suspicious. Percy was hiding something after all.

He gripped the coin he had stashed into his- his grandfather’s robes this morning when he got changed, until his knuckles turned white, as if it could in some way help him. It didn’t. It was useless.

“Sorry,” Percy said in the end. “Look, I- I’ll just go get a wand. I need one of those, right?” He made a jerky motion towards a little shop, whose peeling gold lettering at the front declared ’Ollivanders: Makers of Fine Wands since 382 B.C’.

Severus didn’t nod, but he didn’t stop him either. It was as good as any confirmation he could get. So, he went.

Aimless. The word repeated itself in his head a couple of more times. Aimless. Aimless. Aimless. He kept repeating it, until the word had long since lost its meaning.

It bothered him because it was true. Without Camp, without some quest and a couple of monsters and immortals out to kill him, without Anabeth he really was aimless.

Chapter Text

September 5th, 1996, Hogwarts, Great Brittain

Harry craned his neck in order to gain better sight of the head table.

“What is it?”, Hermione asked.

“Snape’s not here again.”

“Again? Isn’t the man supposed to work here or something?”, grumbled Ron and took another bite of his sandwich. They had Astronomy last night which meant he was rather grumpy from the lack of sleep, but since the alternative was sleeping in and missing breakfast, he usually just gritted his teeth and moved on.

Harry yawned and his sight fell onto the Slytherin table across the hall. Malfoy was showing the other Slytherin boys something, his chest puffed up like a flamingo as he was most likely bragging about whatever expensive thing his parents had sent him.

Ginny followed his line of sight and huffed. “Don’t bother, he’s been doing this for a couple of days now. Merlin knows he’s always been a self-assured prick; he’ll be insufferable now.”

He frowned, “Why, what happened?”

Ron poured himself a bowl of cereal. “Well, you know how Malfoy turned fifteen during summer holidays?” Harry nodded, which Ron took as a sign for him to continue. “The Malfoys and a bunch of other self-conceited pureblood families have this tradition where once the male heir reaches fifteen, they gift them a family heirloom. Word is that it’s the source of their purity or something stupid like that. He’s probably bragging now that he got his.”

Harry threw another glance at the other end of the room where Malfoy was, surely enough, sporting a golden beaded necklace around his neck which he promptly snuck back under his uniform and patted it smugly, disguising it from unworthy eyes.

“How would wearing jewellery prove their blood purity?”

Ron shrugged “No idea, man, they’re bonkers.”

…

September 5th, 1996, Ollivander’s, Diagon Alley, Great Brittain

382 B.C. Unimaginably old and yet this shop was practically an infant compared to most of his relatives.

The shop consisted of a single room divided into two parts. The front of the room which served more or less as the customer area, if it could be called that, and the back of the shop behind the wooden desk. Everywhere where there was not already something, was filled from floor to unusually-high-hanging ceiling with long black boxes, all the exact same size with the same golden label attached to the front and the top and the same scribbly handwriting on them.
A massive shelf lined the wall to his right, overflowing with even more boxes and mason jars filled with all sorts of wondrous things: silvery strands in some, in others feathers, others had brownish red strings inside, the rest various kinds of wood cuttings. Everything was covered to varying degrees with a layer of dust and the filtered lighting falling through the windows tinted slightly yellow from age gave the shop the impression of being an old photograph brought to life.

“Hello?” he called out, closing the door behind him. It fell shut with another ringing of the bell attached to it. “Anyone here?”

Then, somewhat hidden between all the clutter compiled in the room, he saw him. An elderly man balancing precariously on a ladder, sorting something into one of the overflowing shelves, absentmindedly humming a jovial tune.

“Uhm… sir?”, he tried again. The man didn’t seem to notice.

“Sir?”

The man didn’t startle from his voice, only turned his head toward Percy, as if he had known someone was there all along. Then, once he caught sight of him, he gasped, jolted, lost balance, regained it by holding onto the shelf, then promptly lost it again as the shelf toppled over and came down with him.

Out of pure reflex, Percy brough out his hands in front of and squeezed his eyes shut, waiting for impact.

Only there was none. There was no loud crash, no mason jars shattering, or pained yelps, only a man’s heavy, guttural breaths.

Everything was frozen in midair. Percy was still holding out his hands, but they weren’t shielding his head, as he had initially thought. They were stretched out in front of him, shaking from exertion, something warm and heady and already somewhat familiar readily flowing through them which wholly failed to rejuvenate them.

Percy was doing magic. On his own and to some extent intentionally.

The man, who Percy just now realized must be Ollivander was looking at him with wide eyes.

“A little help here?” Percy croaked out, his body straining under duress. It felt a lot more unnatural than his godly abilities, and more draining too. He didn’t seem to be drawing the magic only from his stomach or simply the air around him either but rather more in the area around his chest as well as directly from his limps, causing them to feel heavier and heavier with every passing second.

For a second the man just continued to look flabbergasted, just long enough for him to fear he might have frozen him indefinitely too. But then he mercifully seemed to catch himself- well metaphorically so to speak since he was still floating midair and very much incapable of catching himself as he had just aptly demonstrated.

He fumbled blindly for his wand on the inside of his robes until he found it and whispered an incantation under his breath. The world seemed to set itself into motion again, only this time backwards. Everything moved to its rightful place, the shelf reassembling itself and the ladder righting itself to lean against it once again, with the man following closely behind. The weight lifted from Percy’s shoulders, and he finally felt as if he could breathe again.

Ollivander carefully stepped down the ladder, and then just stood there looking at him as if he was staring at a ghost.

“Curious,” he said quietly to himself. “Curious,” he repeated, louder.

“Uhm,” Percy said, “I need a wand. You sell them here, right?”

“Curious,” he said again. “My sincerest apologies. I haven’t expected you to come here.”

Percy tilted his head, playing oblivious even though he already had a pretty good idea on what the man was referring to, “I don’t know how you could expect me. I didn’t exactly announce myself. And either way, how would you? We don’t know each other.”

Ollivander smiled and whilst kind and genuine it was somewhat bitter towards the edge. “That may as well be true Mr. Riddle. I must say you have a striking resemblance to your grandfather. For a second, I thought you were him.”

Kreacher said he looked like his grandfather. Dumbledore mistook him for him. Twice. He called him Tom.

The man had looked terrified when he caught sight of him.

“I’m sorry?”

“You have nothing to be sorry for. We have, after all, very little power over who we are related to.”

He smiled again and Percy used the moment to file his face into memory. In retrospect it was no surprise he had overseen him at first. The man seemed to slot perfectly into the space surrounding him, swathed in yellow light and ‘dusty’, if a person could be called that, with brown robes matching his wooden shelves and workbench. He looked a bit like what Percy would imagine Albert Einstein to look like if he were a wizard. His gaze had something passionately manic to it which reminded him of the Hephaestus kids whenever they played around with a new bit of tech. He would be wholly unsurprised if the man did turn out to be a legacy, however distant his goldy relation might be.

“You said you were looking to buy a new wand. May I ask what happened to the old one?”

“Uhm,” Percy stuttered once again, taken off guard by the measuring tape now floating around him. What did he need to know the distance between his eyebrows for, anyway? “Nothing. This is my first one.”

“Your first?” The tape stilted midair. Percy noticed that the man was holding his wand and directing it movement for movement like a puppeteer. “How old are you?”

“Seventeen.”

“Seventeen”, he whispered to himself. Then he tilted his head and regarded him with guarded curiosity. “Well, better no wand at all then an ill-suited one.”

Percy thought about how all wizards he had met thus far made magic look effortless. Then he thought about his own attempt just now, his knees still shaking from exertion, threatening to give out. Did wizards need wands that much? No wonder he hadn’t noticed his up until now. “I think I’d prefer to have one, still. I’m not picky.”

“Oh, you may not be, but it is not in your hand. It is the wand that chooses the wizard. No wand that has not specifically accepted you or has been won through combat will wholly work for you and allow you to unfold your full potential, but” he glanced at the shelf, “I suppose we hardly have to worry about potential.”

He seemed rather excited now, that he had some time to calm down from his scare. He dug through a pile of the slim black cartons and slid back the cover of one of them, revealing a wand nestled neatly on a satin pillow. He handed it to him.

“Elm wood and dragon heartstring core, fourteen and a quarter inch, sophisticated and powerful. Give it a try.”

Percy flicked it trying his hardest not to feel like an idiot. When that resulted in four mason jars exploding at once, Ollivander quickly ripped it away and held out another one.

“Larch and unicorn hair, thirteen and a half inches. Go ahead.”

“Laurel and phoenix feather, honorable and headstrong.”

“Cypress and unicorn, eleven inches, honors loyalty and fearlessness in the face of danger.”

They tried again and again. Sometimes, when the wand clashed especially badly with Percy, something exploded, sometimes even before he was handed it, causing both of them to assume protective stances whenever they tried out a new one. And yet, with every wand Ollivander grew more excited. “A tricky one, isn’t he” he would mumble, grinning wildly whenever another wand was added to the ever-growing pile of failed matches.

Percy meanwhile grew more and more antsy. Not being chosen by any of the wands they tried didn’t bother him in the slightest. He was used to being difficult to match when it came to weaponry, courtesy of his heritage. Other than riptide no sword had ever quite worked out for him. Other questions were far more pressing.

How long had they been here already? An hour? Two? Was Sev still waiting outside with Sirius? Would they argue until Sirius did something reckless like revealing himself in public? Would Severus even help him if worst came to worst?

The more time they spent together, the more Percy was annoyed by their incapability of getting along for even a second. There was no doubt that when he came out Sev would be very close to ripping Sirius fur out, strand by strand, despite him not even being capable of using human speech at the moment.

They tested more wands until Percy felt like they had moved at least half of the shop’s supplies to another corner to make more room for the dejected wands. Soon they were branching off to a selection of more experimental wands, which were, as he was told, no more uncommon than regular wands, only harder to match. Some of them had two cores, instead of the usual one, others were comprised of several types of woods, interwoven with each other, and yet others were simply harvested through unconventional means, as Ollivander explained.

“Close,” he mumbled, after he had Percy try an Aspen Cedar mix, “Very close…”

He brought another to the front. “Cedar, with dragon heartstring, harvested from a transatlantic water dragon. The handle is pine.” He handed it to him and took a step back. “Well, give it a try.”

Percy adjusted his grip and tentatively flicked it. A bout of stark white sparks emitted from the tip. He looked at Ollivander.

“Interesting”, the man mumbled.

“Uhm... is it the right one?”

“Yes, it most certainly is.”

“Is there any problem with it?”

“Not… any problem per say, only a peculiarity.”

Percy frowned. Peculiarities were from his experience never a good thing.

“The wand chooses its wizards. There is no magical connection more pure, more essential to our magic than that. It just so happens that this one was made from ingredients harvested in the place which is known to be the most incongruous to magic. Only a minute ago I thought it incapable of procuring even the slightest hint of a spark.”

Percy looked at the wand. It felt alive and warm in his hand, filled with magic. He couldn’t even imagine it lying cold and dead in a drawer for decades on end.

“I think”, Ollivander said, his voice quiet and serious, his pallid grey eyes staring into his with unabashed intensity, “it is clear that we can expect great things from you.”

…

When Percy joined up with Snape and Sirius, who were indeed entangled in a glaring contest with each other, the sun was already standing low. As a consequence, they unanimously agreed to hurry up for the other purchases.

While they were waiting Sev had apparently taken upon himself to stop by the local potion ingredients shop and buy some of the more standard ingredients for Percy to familiarize himself with, as well as the one kettle Hogwarts students often used which wasn’t ‘pitifully subpar’ as Severus had put it. Out of Severus’ mouth that meant that it could probably cure cancer while playing Caprice No.24 on the violine or something.

Their next stop was, to Percy’s despair, the bookstore. ‘Flourish and Blotts’ it was called, and it had big glass windows with stacks of books displayed behind it, a built-in café and rows and rows of shelves filled to the brim with books.

Quite frankly, Percy was pretty much done with shelves for the day.

Sirius wasn’t allowed to go inside with them because he was a dog. Severus took great pleasure in tying him to a tree in front of the shops, while explaining to passersby that he had fleas. He smiled and Percy was pretty sure that that was what caused that one child to burst into tears.

He was also pretty sure that Sirius was very done with waiting too.

There was one upside to the trip and that was the small section he found of books written in Greek, which mercifully included a book on translation spells. He slipped it into the basket while Sev was busy deciding between two beginner level books on something called ‘dada’.

The rest of their visit was surprisingly… normal. They stood in line, had awkward small talk, paid, and went on their merry way. This was what life must be like when there weren’t monsters out to kill you all the time. No wonder everyone kept going off about it.

…

After they went to a clothing store named Madame Malkin’s Robes for all Occasions next, which for some reason allowed dogs inside, effectively gaining her cookie points from both Sirius and Percy.

Not from Severus though, partly because he seemed to dislike everything Sirius liked on principle and partly because he- well, he wasn’t actually there right now. He took one glance at the shops display window filled with mannequins clothed in the ‘seasonal colors’, as the Aphrodite kids would call them, deep reds, rich lilacs, and light greens as well as some florals they seemed to still have left over from the last collection and made a run for it. Percy was pretty sure that Sev was allergic to color. And happiness. And peanuts, for some reason.

They ended up spending another few hours in the shop.

Sirius, who seemed to be the epitome of happiness at this moment started trying to drag Percy around the shop toward various pieces of clothing. Madam Malkin, the shop owner, seemed to already regret her decision to allow the dog inside.

Percy declined Madame Malkin’s offer of help and proceeded to waste a good few minutes browsing through the racks with garments made of strange fabrics and cuts until he realized how utterly out of his depth he was.

“Need some help?”

A woman was standing behind him. She had curly blond hair which cascaded over her shoulders and soft grey eyes matching the elaborate silvery robes she wore. She was beautiful.

“You got the eyes wrong”, he said, nodding in greeting and turned his attention back to the rack.

He heard the goddess step closer. “You do not react to me the same way you did as you saw me for the first time.”

“I was young.”

“And in love” she added. “Not that you aren’t still.”

He turned around. “I thought gods didn’t come here.”

“Your kind isn’t supposed to be here either. But you’ve broken that rule. As did Hera by coming to your aid.” She shrugged gracefully “Now it’s fair game.”

“Why are you here?”

She tilted her head and a small smile played between her lips. “You needed help picking out a new wardrobe, right? And I am the goddess of beauty. Despite the separation I have stayed up to date with all the latest fashion- See?” She pulled out one of the strange clothing items Percy had been considering just now. “This is a chemisette. It is worn under a low-cut outer garment and meant to provide further coverage around the chest area without having to wear a full blouse underneath. It’s also meant to be worn by women.” She smiled “You’re in the wrong section.”

Ah. That’s why Sirius had been trying to drag him away just now.

“Besides”, the goddess spoke as she as she held up two different colored squares of fabric to his face, considering which one might suit his complexion more “It would be such a shame to let the hero of Olympus run around in rags. You are representing us here, after all.” She moved to another aisle.

Percy frowned but reluctantly followed her “They don’t know what I am.”

“But we do.” She started picking up various items and handing them to Percy at an alarming speed. “And so do you. What they know is of little importance.” She hummed consideringly and then picked up another set of robes, these ones dove gray with minimal trimming. “This will suffice for the beginning. Try them on and then show me. This is going to take us a while.”

There was much to be said about the goddess of love, but she did not make false promises.

…

By the time they were done Sirius had somehow managed to befriend Madame Malkin as well as get drawn out petting sessions from every customer that came across him. Percy on the other hand was thoroughly exhausted on account of the sheer number of times he had to change and then model stiffly for an excited love goddess. Sev meanwhile was… Sev.

“This was the last thing, right?” Percy asked hopefully, “We can go back now?”

“You need an owl.” Severus said as they were walking through Diagon alley at a brisk pace. Brisk of course because of Sev. The man had no chill.

“Are you serious?” Percy asked. Sirius barked in a way that meant ‘No, I’m Sirius’. They both ignored him.

“They are practical and very essential for wizarding communication” Severus answered.

“But I’m not even writing anyone!”

Sev solely raised an eyebrow.

…

They exited Eeeylops’ Owl Emporium about thirty seconds after they had entered it looking much worse for wear.

“So… no owl?”

“No owl,” Severus agreed. Sirus barked.

…

September 5th, 1996, Hogwarts, Great Brittain

The potions essay Snape had given then Monday was due tomorrow and Harry had barely even gotten started.

“I don’t get it”, Ron groans from where he is flapped over his armchair, his potions book propped against his knees. “Isn’t the elixir of ethereal serenity basically a calming draught.”

“They’re very different,” Hermione argued while reviewing her History of Magic notes from yesterday, since she had finished the potions essay Monday and already tried numerous times to urge Harry and Ron to do the same, with little success, “calming draughts are mainly meant to be used for medical purposes, since they can be addictive if taken excessively and should always br dosed and utilized with care. The elixir of ethereal serenity on the other hand is more commonly used to combat day-to-day stress as well as having a history of being used in religious context as well as rituals.

“Also, one is called an elixir, and the other is not,” Harry added while contemplating scratching out the last three lines since Hermione indirectly just told him they were utter bollocks.

Hermione frowned “Yes, but that really has no significance for the actual potion since-”

“Nah, I think it’s a great point actually,” Ron said, “I’ll build my whole thesis on that.”

Hermione laid her book aside and assumed the position of someone who was about to hold a very drawn-out speech on why he should not do that. Harry fondly rolled his eyes at his friends, only to catch sight of something familiar.

He took Hermione’s History of magic book and glanced at the page on which it was opened. On the one side was an accumulation of old sources on skyrocketing cattle, incense, and wine production. On the left, filling the entire page was the portrait he had seen in Gringotts, only slightly altered to make the wizards seem to be on equal footing with their opponents. There was only one sentence written beneath it; the title of the portrait.

“The Demigods’ Last Stand”

“Doesn’t look much like a last stand to me,” he commented. Hermione paused in their one-sided argument.

“They called it that since it is rumoured that the demigods disappeared after and were never seen again.” She huffed „Of course there is no evidence that the battle has even existed in the first place. Or the demigods for that matter. Just another pureblood myth.”

Harry looked back at the picture. The so- called ‘demigods’ weren’t depicted nearly as powerful as they were in the actual painting he had seen in Gringotts, but they still had an ethereal grace about them, an inherent power that he had never seen in a human. He could understand why they would be called part god; they moved as if the earth belonged to them, as if it were their divine birthright and the battlefield their home. With the way they fought, he could hardly imagine them ever doing something as humane as dying.

He tried to imagine a world where such beings existed and lived alongside them; hundreds of humanoid creatures, each as powerful as ten ordinary wizards. What would they do if there was a new Voldemort among them? Who could hope to fight such a creature?

Just a myth, he reminded himself.

Just a myth.

He seriously needed some of that elixir.

…

Chapter Text

It went something like this:

The day had been a long one and Percy too used to strange occurrences. When he went to bed, he had already forgotten about what had happened while he was in that hallway.
But there was someone who did not forget.

…

September 5th, 1996, Great Brittain (precise location unplottable)

His relationship toward religion had always been straightforward.

In a way it was like any other. He only ever took and if there was nothing left to take, he left.

He grew up with crucifixes in every room, weekly visits to the church, bending his knee to a being he did not believe existed. He learnt what to say, how to say it, when to let his eyes glister over with tears, how to look up to the altar with innocence and devotion in his eyes.

Faithful, devoted children were not punished. In the eyes of God, they would be freed of their sin and born anew.

The priest thought him very devoted. Devoted children were to be rewarded, or so he would tell him. And then he would invite him to stay a little longer. He would refuse. The man would ask again next time.

One of the first lessons he learned was this: Everyone used gods for their own agenda.

Wizards, despite their acclaimed superiority, were much the same in that respect. They believed, but they believed because they wanted to believe. They wanted it to be true. They wanted it to justify them.

The wizards believed, even if they believed differently than the muggles back in the orphanage did.

He only believed when it helped him reach his goals.

Still, it fascinated him; the idea of it. Of beings that were undying, all powerful, all seeing, watching from above and judging. Gods did not hold themselves to pesky morals or fleeting laws. Gods did not have to confine themselves to a mere century of life.

There were no gods, but if there were, he would be one of them.

…

His robes chafed against the cold stone floor as he crossed the hallway in a brisk pace to return to his temporary study.

He had been awake the entire night, the one before it and then the one before that one too. It was, while not an ideal situation, a tolerable one. There was much to do and no point in closing his eyes and waiting for sleep to claim him. He would not have been able to rest without the aid of a sleeping draught anyway and since he did not have the time to brew one himself nor did he want to risk being poisoned by a treacherous of simply inept follower, he had decided that staying awake would be the preferable course of action.

The walls of his study were lined with floor length mirrors, revealing its former purpose as an overly conspicuous dressing room; candle holders uselessly mounted on the walls despite the magical light, and in addition to it an equally redundant chandelier dipping low in a circle around the raised platform in the middle of the needlessly spacious room, almost touching the floor and being all around hazardous and difficult to avoid getting tangled up in. If one where to close one’s eyes one could easily imagine a wizard standing on top of it, surrounded by a plethora of house elves tending to his every whim and need in a room decorated so heftily that even the doorknob could provide for a family of five for a fortnight, a picture of obscene opulence.

Voldemort didn’t close his eyes, nor did he picture anything. Instead, he returned to his desk in the long, assured strides he forced himself to habituate at a young age.

What he had previously been working on lay opened in a ledger in the middle of his workspace. Magically cut out newspapers, carefully accumulated measurements of storm surges, humidity, atmospheric pressure, visibility and evapotranspiration as well as estimates on magical aid in the making of them. None of the data added up. There was no magic involved, no traces of any ritual to be uncovered, nor were there any of the indications a natural storm would have invariably had. It was simply as if nature decided to rebel against itself, disobeying its own laws for no reason. It should not have been possible under any circumstance, the overt connection to the lethal lands making it even more ominous. Such a fascinating phenomenon with seemingly no explanation and yet it still wasn’t what his gaze was drawn to first.

The letter was still there, tucked securely in its envelope which lay unobtrusively on top of a pile of books. If he opened it again and took the parchment out, he would find it soft and pliable in his hand, wrinkled in various places, worn from the many times he had done so before. He had read it so often that it felt as if its contents were ingrained into his very being. A mockery of his power, the one thing he had not been able to foresee and prevent.

He had hated the name Potter long before his fated adversary had been born one.

When he tore his gaze up from the letter to stare at the mirror in front of him, he saw himself standing a few meters behind him.

He stood behind the chandelier, surrounded by the crystals hanging from it which were now tinted a shade like molten gold dripping from the ceiling. His entire figure seemed somewhat unreal, as if it were merely a creature consisting of thin air, and yet he had never in his life been more certain that something was real.

He was younger, a lot younger, either in the late stages of adolescence or in the early stage of adulthood, and he was wearing the same robes he had worn back when he was seventeen, the ones Orion had given him while he was staying at the Black residence.

The boy stepped closer towards him, his steps just as long and confident as the ones Voldemort had made earlier, the ones he had made since he had been a young boy, but even as he came closer his features continuously flickered and the air around him warped around itself as if reality itself could not quite comprehend him.

The figure wearing his face walked right through the crystals without them jostling even a bit. His steps were silent too. It was as if the creature was even less bodily present than he had been aback when he was nothing more than a wraith. He stopped just before him. He did not say anything, merely regarded him with an air of curiosity.

Now that he could see him properly, he could detect all the little differences between them. His hair, while just as dark as his, had a slightly bluish tint to it and a hard to miss white streak in the front which he knew for a fact he never had. It was a little on the wilder and untamed side, while he had always preferred to keep his neat. His complexion was darker too, more Mediterranean, and while he was as tall as he had been that age, the boy in front of him was leaner and more athletic looking than he ever had thought necessary for himself to be.

The most striking difference though were his eyes. They weren’t the cool shade of brown like his had been, or even brown-adjacent in any sense of the word. Instead, they were the color of the sea, shifting in color like the ever- changing tides.

The boy, as if he sensed the man’s confusion with his eye color, simply tilted his head in a surprisingly innocent gesture and blinked once, then a second time. Suddenly his eyes looked like his own, red and with a slit pupil. He blinked again, and it was gone.

“What are you?”

The boy blinked again, this time seemingly in shock. “You can see me?”

His voice had an eerie quality to it as if multiple versions of him were speaking at once, all of them different ages. If he were any lesser, he would say it was unnerving. As it was, he simply noted it down as an additional intimidation tactic in his head.

“Why are you here?”

“You should ask that yourself. If I am here, it is only because you wished me to be.”

„I have performed no ritual.”

The creature shook his head, with a small smile tugging at the corner of his lips. “You were thinking about her, weren’t you? You think you are indulging her by waiting.”

The creature blinked again, and its eyes changed color again. Blue, like Saffine’s had been.

He felt rooted to the spot, unable to move. Looking at the creature made his eyes burn, but he found that he couldn’t look away.

“You are wrong.”, the creature continued, “Should you ever manage to find her, it will be because she has let you.”
And though the words should have been spoken with venom, they came out feeling soulless, as if whatever this creature was, it wasn’t completely aware of its surroundings.

You’re me, he wanted to say. How did you get here? How did you escape the horcrux?

But before he could regain control over his mouth, it was gone.

Only when the creature had disappeared did it occur to him that he had never raised his wand against it. It simply had not occurred to him in the moment. Even after it had left, he found it hard to summon the onslaught of wrath which normally rose to his command as easily as breathing. Everything felt hazy and dreamlike; even though it had happened less than a full minute ago, the details of the encounter were seeping through his mind like sand.

The lighting shifted with every moment that passed, colouring the crystals hanging from the chandelier. Red like freshly spilled blood, then orange like something best forgotten. It did not turn gold again.

…

He had found out very early in his life that he was different.

While the other children in the orphanage cried about not being adopted, about not having a family, he did not understand it. Sure, having his own room and a house less crowded than the orphanage would be nice, but here they had a reliant source of food, which was more than a lot of children with parents could say about themselves.

Then, when his classmates started fancying each other and complaining about heartbreak and the likes, he did not understand either.

It was only when he held Saffine for the first time that he felt he understood. She blinked up at him, and he noticed that her eyes were shaped like his and so was her nose and the structure of her hair.

He could look at her and see all the ways in which he made her exist.

Later when he found out she was a squib, he decided she was not to blame. Instead, he saw her as what she was, something fragile and invaluable that warranted protection. He protected her, made sure she grew up with both of her parents, even though Aurelia had long since outlived her usefulness, and when she smiled up at him, he felt… glad. He felt as if he understood.

He made her, so he was responsible for her. He made sure she grew up happy, because it made him happy. He kept her around even though she did not help him or his cause in any way.

He felt he understood love. And once she was gone, he felt he understood grief too.

He understood grief, he understood loss, so when he heard the prophecy, he already knew who it was about.

He looked at his reflection, red eyes, snake-like nostrils, pale skin tinted a greenish color. He thought of what this younger him had looked like, like something larger than life despite his seemingly human features. He thought about his daughter, who had always been afraid of monsters.

He didn’t sleep the next night either.

…

It continued like this:

He was lying in bed, desperately trying to fall asleep. Artemis had long since chased her brother from the sky, and her light was illuminating the room, strange silhouettes dancing over the floor. He heard a dripping sound, presumably from the bathroom where he most likely had neglected to completely turn the tab off. Right now, he felt just about comfortable enough that he could fall asleep sometime soon, so he couldn’t get up, but the tab was still preventing him from falling asleep.

Drip

He extended his senses towards it, to shut it. He felt his consciousness slip from his body as he was sensing for it, stretching his awareness further and further-

Drip.

Drip.

Drip-

…

Drip

Drip

Drip.

I don’t want to die like this.

The sound was tantalizing him and with every drop that gathered into the small puddle he felt his terror increase.

There was a tub right in front of him, next to another one, and another, but this was the one he was kneeling in front of. Behind him stood a small group of people, boys about his age. Situated as he was, in the corner of what he could only assume was a lavatory, he couldn’t properly see them, but he knew they were there regardless. One of them drew closer, uncomfortably so, and pressed the tip of his wand against his neck. He felt the heat of magic emitting from it, contained for now, but the threat clear as day.

His fingers twitched for his own wand, chestnut with phoenix feather. The rarest core the man in the shop had told him. He barely suppressed a flinch when he remembered what happened to it.

(A thing like you doesn’t deserve to do magic-)

He returned his attention to the tub.

It was like most things he had encountered over the course of the last few days, quite old, but kept in working order with more magic than care. Yet it was what one could perceive to be pleasing to the eye in a grotesque way. Decadent.

He turned on the tab a little more (cold, for what use was the comfort of warm water now?) and listened to the water as it splattered into the tub, leaned over the rail in a fit of morbid curiosity, watched his reflection rippling on the surface until it was barely recognizable. (Long, brown hair, black robes with a blue tie and dark brown eyes.) Then, once the boy behind him deemed it enough, he turned it off.

“Get on with it, mudblood.”

He tilted his head, as if he were considering something. He drew in a large, shuddering and absolutely terrified breath and dunked his head under the surface and started screaming.

He screamed again, and again until he noticed that he wasn’t screaming at all but coughing violently. He tried to stand up, to just get out of this place and run until his legs gave out, but he found that one of the boys was holding his head down. They were laughing at him. His throat burned and his limps were twitching and his hold on the railing growing weaker with every passing second until he simply fell forward, and everything faded into a soft oblivion.

In the back of his mind, he heard the boys leave, still laughing. And he, still underwater, drew another weak breath. And another one. The longer he did it the more his throat ceased burning and his limps grew lighter again. The wounds on his head and body healed. He got up again, feeling better than he had before.

He was alive, he realized with sudden clarity.

Of course he was, Percy reminded himself. He was a son of Poseidon, of course he couldn’t drown.

But he already felt his consciousness slipping out of this body.

…

“Do you copy?”, a woman’s voice sounded in his ear.

What?

“For fucks sake Sokolovsky, you know I damn well don’t like being fucking played with. Do you copy?”

The communicator went off again, this time its sound choppy and the voice more frantic “Do you copy, I repeat: do you copy?”

“I’m here”

It wasn’t his voice that came out of his mouth. It was older, at least by a few decades, and gruffer too.

A sigh of relief echoed from the other side of the line.

“Good, then do what we fucking came here to do.”

Easier said than done, Lady.

He paused and extended his senses. He felt everything around him, the water in the pipes, the moisture in the air, the blood in these foreign veins.

The vial of poison in his pocket.

“What if it doesn’t work?” The voice belonged to the body he was inhabiting, but it hadn’t spoken on his accord.

“It has to.”

“You’ve never been a good potioneer.”

“Pray that it works then.”

pleasegodpleaseletitworkpleasepleasepleaseplease

“Already have.”

He was walking briskly, and time didn’t seem to work as it was supposed to anymore. He blinked and he was meters ahead of where he was supposed to be, as if the flow of time had been disturbed by something that wasn’t supposed to be. Not yet. Not like this.

Suddenly he was in a kitchen. It was quiet and eerily empty for such a vast space. There on a tray lay a singly vegemite sandwich with a glass of water beside it. He reached for the vial of poison and in his grasp, it seemed to change, the particles shifting, rearranging themselves.

There was no glowing, no poof, or fireworks. There was no obvious sign that anything had happened at all, but all of a sudden Percy was confident that whatever the liquid was supposed to be doing would work.

He unceremoniously dumped the contents into the water.

“Done.”

“Done?”

“Yep.”

“Great, then get the fuck out of here.”

And Percy did.

…

The sweet smell of decay lingered in the air. He breathed it in and almost coughed from its intensity. Then he noticed that he was sore and exhausted in the way that settled deep down in his bones. It was the sort of exhaustion he should be familiar with bit it all felt strangely foreign to him.

He opened his eyes.

He was surrounded by the ruins of what appeared to be an old British castle which had been reclaimed by nature a long time ago. The ceiling was completely gone allowing Percy to catch another glimpse at the sky with the waning moon. It had been repurposed to some sort of temporary camp; shabby tents had been constructed all over the place and some people had set up little fires for warmth and light. There were strange wooden constructions built up in the ruins of a watchtower, which had raw meat hanging from it. Nobody seemed particularly interested in cooking it.

It was loud and crowded. Some guys were rough housing each other somewhere outside the ruins, tumbling in the dark, while others were eagerly cheering them on. Others were arguing loudly at the fires and others still, the majority of them women, were in the process of setting up the camp.

“Hey, pup!” a woman yelled, her voice rough with a natural growl to it “Make yourself useful, won’t you!”

A few men at the chuckled at this, others looked at the scene trying to gauge whether he would rise to the obvious bait. He didn’t, but he still glared at her and growled when she came too close to him.

It wouldn’t do for him to raise unwanted suspicion, but letting everybody think that he would roll over for them would be even more disastrous.

He took the waterskin another newbie handed him- a boy of about fifteen years who had been turned only two moons prior- and made his way towards the cliffs. Casting a quick Lumos he climbed them down as quickly as he could and stared out at the scenery in front of him.

The North Sea stretched out in front of him, and the overwhelming smell of sea salt tingled in his nose. Even with the magical light he could barely see what was in front of him, but he could sense the presence of one of his sister’s storms within the volatile waves.

He splashed his face with a handful of water and scrubbed it as if it could wash away the last couple of weeks if only he tried hard enough to. Finding out that Voldemort had returned, being sent on missions again by Dumbledore, seeing Harry with that horrible, haunted look in his eyes, leaving Sirius behind in that wretched house.

Absentmindedly, he filled the waterskin and made his way back to the heart of the camp.

When he returned, the rest of the camp was gathered outside. He handed his waterskin back to the lone boy at the boiling pot and went to join them.

Faces turned his directions when he tried to make his way toward the middle, mumbling apologies under his breath. They all looked as if their faces were roughly carved out of wood, their cheeks hollow and something animalistic in their eyes. A voice rose above the crowd, and everybody seemed to listen with rapt attention, the ever-growing hunger lining their figures. Hunger for something more than flesh, hunger for respect, for revenge and for validation. The sort of hunger that could only ever bring ruin.

The man in the middle of the spectacle looked more wolf than man. He was large and had something inherently vicious about him. His grey hair was grown out and matted, and his teeth were canine-like.

He was looking right at him with a sadistic smirk on his face.

He was already in motion before the werewolf could say anything. He stunned the leering man on his right and elbowed the guy who was trying to grab him in the gut and tried to cast a way through the crowd with various expulsion charms. “Get him!” Greyback bellowed out, and some guy managed to grab ahold of his sleeve, successfully throwing him off his course and into a group of people.

They scratched at him in a wild flailing of limps. The crowd went wild with cheers and laughs. Percy kicked and punched whoever he could reach, while he automatically sent out hexes with his other hand. Someone grabbed him from behind and pressed him against their chest and drew him away from the group. Percy kicked him from behind and struggled to get as far away from his as possible, but the grip on his arm was relentless, viciously pressing into the cuts the others had given him.

He felt him press his mouth close to his ear. “I remember your daddy, pup.”

Remus froze.

The chest behind him rumbled and a dark chuckle sounded.

“I met him a long time ago. Charming fella, that one. ‘Said that all werewolves are soulless. That we’re evil creatures deserving of nothing more than death. So, I took revenge.”

He felt him mockingly stroke a clawed finger down his cheek. Everything was silent now, except for the sound of waves crashing against the shore.

“I made you, pup. Guess that means I’m your daddy too.”

He was breathing hard, Adrenaline pumping through his body, but he still didn’t move.

‘Why couldn’t he move?’, Percy thought to himself and then ‘What is the man talking about?’

He needed to get to the water.

He concentrated with all his might on moving forward, away from the man, away from this body-

He stumbled forward.

Behind him the man still stood, unmoved with another man in his grasp. Short, light brown hair, shabby, but carefully patched robes and a scared face. Around them were all the other werewolves waiting in tense silence. None of them blinked at Percy, as if he weren’t there at all.

All the better for him.

He called to the water and the water responded.

…

Percy only stopped once he had submerged the entire camp underwater and heard the revealing sound of an apparition cutting through the hysteria.

He felt as if he could drown the world. For a terrible second, he had wanted to.

…

He was on a field-somewhere in nowhere which was to say everywhere- and it was storming again.

He was on a field, and it was raining, and he was running, and maybe he wasn’t on the field at all but rather above it around it inside of it- he took the winds and twisted them made them heed to his command and formed them into something vicious and wild and free and-

He tilted his head up as if he were praying to it instead of it to him and let the rain roll down his face like tears, because that’s what they were: tears, his tears. Tears of grief, of loss but also of hope and love and liberty.

There were screams, a commotion, a plethora of desperate cries-

…

September 5th, 1996, Grimmauld Place, Great Brittain

He awoke with a gasp.

At some point- in the beginning, the end or somewhere in between- Percy would just idly stand somewhere staring off into space feeling something, be it blood, power, or the essence of the universe itself flowing through him and it will be the most peaceful and most heartbreaking thing he would ever feel.

He knew this now. He did not think about what this means.

Right now, he was just a boy.

…

September 5th, 1996, Camp Half-blood, USA

“So… any of you heard of Percy lately?”

“Nico said that Percy’s mom said that he went off to college. Got a scholarship for swimmers or something like that”.

“That can’t be true.”

“Of course it’s not. I bet it’s fine though. He’s Percy Jackson. What could possibly happen?”

“Yea, you’re right.”

Somewhere in the back, Dionysus had the sudden urge to get absolutely wasted.

Chapter Text

September 6th, 1996, Grimmauld Place, Great Brittain

He only returned to Grimmauld Place a couple of minutes before dawn. That is once he realized he had left at all.

Leaves lay scattered all over the floor. The window was opened, its hinges lightly hitting against the wall from where the wind hit it at an odd angle. It swept through the room and caused the temperature to drop further. It was a cold day for early September, and a windy one. But not a rainy one. Or at least not anymore.

Percy lay in the middle of a bed that didn’t belong to him in a room he could not truly call his, all limps extended away from him, one of his legs propped up against the headboard, the other stretching over the edge of the mattress. A coin lay on top of his chest, moving up and down as he breathed, a comforting weight that he felt kept him from flowing away into the ether. On his bedside table stood a half empty can of blue Gatorade. He considered taking another sip, but that would mean sitting up and he did not want to do that.

“You’ve got to stop catching me in these situations”, he grumbled under his breath. He had no doubt the other would be able to hear him.

“Then stop being in them.” He felt the atmosphere shift a little to his right, making way for its intruder. The bed did not dip, but Percy knew his companion had just lain down beside him.

“How are you doing?” he asked.

Next to him, the prince of the underworld, son of one of the eldest most feared gods, ghost king and Ambassador of Pluto shrugged. “Been worse, been better. You?”

“The usual.”

“Depression rain?”

Percy sat up. “You knew about that?”

“You weren’t subtle.”

“And you don’t pull your punches.”

Nico shrugged again. Percy sighed defeatedly and laid back down again. Then he sighed again, only mentally this time, since he forgot to drink the rest of the Gatorade while he was already sitting up.

“Did you know”, he said after he felt as if the silence had gone on just a tad bit too long, “that in the eighteenth century or so they used to put lead in makeup.”

Nico did not seem to know how to respond to this.

“Wasn’t poisonous though. Well, I mean it wasn’t unless you used some sort of skin softener beforehand. You know like moisturizer or glycerin or something. Then it can seep into the bloodstream and cause all these fun little diseases.”

“Do you happen to have talked to Aphrodite lately or do they just happen to teach Victorian fashion trivia at that college of yours?”

“I don’t like that insinuation you’re making there, old man.” Percy said.

“What insinuation? That you lied to your mother and keep pushing everyone you care about away?” He turned to Percy as if to make sure he was paying attention. “That’s not an insinuation, that’s a fact.”

There was a slight breathless quality to his voice, like a dying man’s last gasp. It only served to remind Percy of their inhumanity. He thinks of the ichor dripping from Ares’ heel after Percy had wounded him in combat. He thinks of the storms he caused. He thinks of his dreams. He thinks of how Annabeth had looked at him down in Tartarus. He thought of how she had looked at Luke in his last moments. He thinks of Luke laying unmoving on the ground of the throne room. Dead.

Even after everything, Annabeth had forgiven Luke for what he did.
She had never been able to forgive Percy for what he was.

Percy could tell him what happened. About the magic, the wizarding world and its complicated relationship with their world. He knew if he told them of the war and his plausible involvement in it, they would follow him as they had done before.

“They think I’m being stubborn, don’t they?” he ended up saying instead.

Nico looked at him, confusion evident in his gaze.

“The fates.”

“Oh.” He turned away.

“They’ll be used to that”

Percy shrugged. Then he remembered something.

“Hey Neeks, d’you mind passing on a message to Argus for me?”

…

September 6th, 1996, Hogwarts, Great Brittain

Dear Snuffles,

Hope you’re okay, the first week back here’s been terrible, I’m really glad it’s the weekend.
We’ve got a new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, Professor Umbridge. She’s nearly as nice as your mum. I’m writing because that thing that I wrote to you about last summer happened again last night when I was doing a detention with Umbridge.
I’ve been wanting to ask you about your new visitor. I know I shouldn’t know about that, but I happened to overhear you talking about them the other day. I hope they don’t mind the weather. We were all pretty upset since we had rescheduled Quidditch try-outs because of the storms.
We’re all missing our biggest friend, we hope he’ll be back soon.
Please write back quickly.
Best,
Harry

Harry reread the letter several times, trying to see it from the point of view of an outsider. He hoped Sirius understood that part about the visitor and who he meant by biggest friend. It was all a little vague, but Harry did not want to accidentally draw any attention to it, in case it could endanger them or the Order.

In the end he figured it was good enough. Carefully he sealed the envelope, climbed through the portrait hole and headed off to the owlery.

…

“Sirius’ head?” Hermione repeated. “You mean like how he wanted to talk to you during the Triwizard Tournament? But he wouldn`t do that now, that would be way too- Srius

She gasped, gazing at the fire. Ron dropped his quill. Harry tried to not think about how the house elves would have to clean that up; he had perhaps spent a little too much time with Hermione lately…

There in the middle of the dancing flames sat Sirius’ head, long dark hair falling into his grinning face.

I was starting to think you’d go to bed before everyone else had disappeared”, He said “I’ve been checking every hour.”

“You’ve been popping into the fire every hour?” Harry said half laughing.

“Just for a couple of second to check if the coast was clear.”

“But what if you’d been seen?” Hermione asked anxiously.

“Well, I think a girl- first year by the look of it- might have got a glimpse of me earlier, but don’t worry,” Sirius said hurriedly as Hermoine clapped a hand to her mouth, “I was gone the moment she looked back at me, and I’ll bet she just thought I was an oddly shaped lump or something. And besides, this was by far not the riskiest thing I have done in the last couple of days.”

“Sirius,” Harry said, all amusement wiped off his face “What did you do?”

“Nothing” he replied just a tad bit too fast to be believable. “Anyways, we’ve got to hurry, I don’t know how long this connection will remain unnoticed…”

“Right” Harry said, not done with the topic but willing not to push it further for the moment. It couldn’t be that bad anyway. Even Sirius wouldn’t be stupid enough to run off in the middle of London for a movie and ice cream. “So, about my scar. Do you think Umbridge’s got something to do with it hurting? I swear it happened right as she touched my arm.”

“Well, that could just be a coincidence, couldn’t it? I can’t see a reason for which he would possess Umbridge, and it had happened before without him being physically present after all.”

“Umbridge is nasty enough to be a death eater though.” Ron voiced. “You should have seen what she did –“

“Right” Harry interrupted, “Dumbledore said it happens whenever he feels a strong emotion. Maybe he was just angry. It happened again that night too, sometime after midnight.”

“After midnight you say? Yea that fits.” Sirius frowned. “Listen I shouldn’t be telling you this, but Remus had to return early from his mission last night- there was an incident at the werewolf camp he was supposed to investigate.”

“Is Professor Lupin alright?” Hermione asked concern coating her voice.

“He’s fine- but”, Sirius swallowed, “he’s the only one who is, I’m afraid.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” Harry asked.

“Ah, well, he’s- I’ll imagine you read about it soon enough. But back to Umbridge: I do know her by reputation; I’m quite sure she’s not a follower. The world isn’t divided in good people and death eaters, you know?”, he added with a wry smile, “She is a nasty bit of work though; you should hear Remus talk about her.”

“Professor Lupin knows her?” Harry asked remembering Umbridge’s comment about dangerous half breeds.

“Well, not personally no, but she drafted this anti werewolf legislation two years ago which made it very hard for him to get a job.”

Harry remembered how much shabbier Lupin looked lately and found his dislike for Umbridge deepening even further.

“So, she’s got something against werewolves then?

“Any sort of half human. Scared shitless of them I gather; she even campaigned to have merpeople gathered up and tagged last year. Imagine wasting your time persecuting merpeple when there’s little toe rags like Kreature on the loose.

Ron laughed but Hermione looked upset.

“Honestly if you made a bit of an effort with-”

“So what are Umbridge’s lessons like?” Sirius interrupted. “Is she teaching you to kill half-breeds?”

“No,” Harry said, ignoring Hermione’s affronted look at being cut off in her defense of Kreature. “She’s not letting us use magic at all.”

“All we do is read the stupid textbook,” Ron said.

“Ah well, that figures,” Sirius said. “Our information from inside the ministry is that Fudge doesn’t want you trained in combat.”

“Trained in combat” Harry repeated incredulously. “What does he think were doing here, Forming some sort of wizarding army?”

“That’s exactly what he thinks you’re doing” said Sirius, “or rather that’s exactly what he’s afraid of Dumbledore doing- forming his own private army with which he will be able to take on the ministry of magic.”

There was a pause at this, then Ron, visibly trying to keep himself from laughing, said “That is the stupidest thing I have ever heard.”

“Stupid people in power can be just as dangerous as dangerous people.” Hermione said solemnly.

“So, were being prevented learning from how to defend ourselves, because Fudge is scared Dumbledore will form a child army?”

“Yep,” said Sirius, “he thinks Dumbledore will stop at nothing to seize power. One of these days he’s going to come up with some trumped up charge and get him arrested.”

This reminded Harry of Percy’s letter.

“D’you know if there’s going to be anything on Dumbledore in the Prophet tomorrow? Percy said there’d be-”

“Percy? How do- oh wait, right, Percy.” Sirius coughed unconvincingly. “Well, I haven’t really been in contact with most members of the order safe for Remus and Sniffelus- and Merlin knows he never tells us anything of importance, so I wouldn’t know.”

“What about your visitor then?”

Sirius gave him a look. “My visitor,” he said, drawing the word out unnecessarily long. “is none of your business. In fact, you shouldn’t even know about him. The less people aware of his existence the better.”

“We deserve to know”, Harry said hotly. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Hermione and Ron nodding vicariously. “I saw Voldemort return, he’s after my head more than after anyone else’s, except for Dumbledore’s maybe. If he’s somehow relevant to the war-“

“He isn’t.” Sirius replied in a tone that was clearly meant to be final. But Harry did not allow himself to be deterred that easily.

“Then why is he at the headquarters? Why have him with you?”

“That is none of your concern.” Sirius sighed and for the first time Harry noticed the dark bags under his eyes. “Don’t worry kid, let the adults handle this one.”

Harry didn’t relent his glare, but he didn’t argue either.

“But- But how?” Ron choked out, “how does he even exist? How did he survive?”

Sirius shook his head somewhat sadly. “I don’t know. I doubt anyone does except for him. All I know is that Dumbledore and Snape stumbled upon him by accident. He lived there all his life; he didn’t even know magic existed let alone that he was a wizard. Not like anybody could have told him, I suppose. His existence, it-“he looked down, trying disguise it, but Harry could still detect something like awe in his gaze, “- it changes everything.”

When he looked up again his gaze hardened. “Please just promise me, for once in your lives, please don’t get involved in this. This isn’t a game. You have no idea with what kind of power we’re dealing with here. Nobody does.”

…

The next morning there was no Umbridge on the front page, nor was there a mention of Percy Weasley; instead, they found themselves staring at the barely recognizable remnants of a ginormous werewolf camp at a shore with a plethora of snarling faces depicted right next to it.

OVER 200 WEREWOLVES DEAD AFTER SUDDEN FLOODING IN ABERDEENSHIRE- NO KNOWN SURVIVORS

...

October 1st, 1996, Hogwarts, Great Brittain

“Accio.”

The book shuddered weakly and before inching forward ever so slightly.

“You need to be a little bit more assertive with the spell. The words are what forms the intent. You need to control your magic, not halfheartedly ask it to do it for you. Show me your movement again.” Percy swished his wand through the air.

The wizard next to him nodded thoughtfully. “Just as I had imagined. Your aim is just fine, but your movement is a little too fluid and your hold is off. Here.” He demonstrated the spell again and the book flew into his hands without delay. “The movement is what gives your magic shape. Magic has a mind of its own. You cannot command it, but you also cannot treat it as a part of yourself. If you want to use it, you need to learn how to tame it. How to direct it. That is what the wand is for. It’s what allows you to channel magic. May I?” he gestured at Percy’s stiff hold of the wand. Percy nodded.

“For simplicities sake, imagine these to be the points where the magics flows out of you. - ” He points at the tip of his index finger and the spot on his palm right between the thumb and heel pad. “These have the most direct access to the magic steaming from your core, which is why you need to adjust your hold so that your wand always puts a little pressure in them while casting. Like this.” He gently adjusted Percy’s hold. “Make sure the wand is always secure in your hand and your stance is stable. There’s a bit of a pushback when you use a lot of magic at once. But that shouldn’t be an issue with this spell.”

He moved a couple of steps back and nodded encouragingly at Percy to try again.

Percy swallowed nervously and adjusted his stance to one of the fighting stances Chiron had taught him. He closed his eyes and mentally pictured the book flowing from where it was lying on the other side of the room to him, right into his hands.

“Accio!”

The book missed him by merely a hairsbreadth, and only because the force of the magic caused him to stumble slightly to his right, despite his expertly fighting stance. In hindsight Percy was quite grateful for it. The book took off so forcefully that it left a sizable dent in the wall behind him which only grew larger as it kept repeatedly hitting against it. The tremors in the walls caused some of the paintings to fall straight down of it, the inhabitants cussing him out loudly all the while.

Percy winced slightly.

“That is… unusual”, Remus said.

Unusual was a word Percy had been intimately familiar with ever since he could understand what words mean. Still, it hit different when it was said by a werewolf of all people, even if the werewolf in question was not aware that Percy knew about his furry problem.

Officially Percy had meet Remus Lupin the morning of the sixth of September down in the foyer of the headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix where the man was sitting with still damp hair and a changed set of robes, most likely curtesy of Sirius, after he had prematurely left his mission of infiltrating a neutral werewolf pack after a `series of complications`. Unofficially he was possessing his body that same night only a matter of minutes before, fought of a horde of werewolves with him, and then set the whole place underwater, almost killing him in the process.

For obvious reasons, Percy was not too keen on anyone finding out about that part.

Now, he was his teacher for the foreseeable future. He was, according to Sev, the logical choice despite being ‘the same spineless idiot he was back when they were young’ , having been a teacher before in the oh-so great wizarding school Percy wasn’t allowed to get in the general vicinity of, as well as being injured in action and therefore unable to do much of use to the Order anyhow, ‘not that he would have otherwise’. Sirus on the other hand stated that ‘Moony’ was a brilliant teacher, that his godson Harry had said that he had been the best defense teacher they’d ever had and that ‘Snivelus was merely being his usual sniveling self that cannot get over not being allowed to teach Defense’.

The position of the defense teacher was apparently one that changed every year due to a suspicious number of accidents varying in gruesomeness ranging from quitting due to an ‘unfortunate incident’ to straight up dying under horrific circumstances. (Or, as the official story went, taking a permanent leave; Percy felt strangely reminiscent of his first math teacher back in sixth grade). It was also a position that Sev had been trying to get for years, and even though he was clearly qualified for it, and even though they practically had to bribe people to take the job the last few years, Dumbledore had never even seriously considered him. Impossibly, Percy’s disdain for Dumbledore grew even further.

Remus Lupin, on the other hand, was a guy Percy could get behind. In a way he reminded him of Chiron, who coincidentally was the only other teacher Percy had ever enjoyed being taught by. Remus was the type of teacher that listened to your problems and then actively sought to solve them with you at your own speed. He was kind and encouraging and apparently liked to take his tea with a tablespoon of cocoa powder in the morning which Percy thought to be quite disturbing.

Sirius interrupted his train of thought by dramatically slamming the door open with a bunch of sandwiches and some sort of medication for Remus balanced precariously on a small silver tray. “How are magic lessons going” he half yelled over the enraged cries of his dead relatives’ portraits.

“Great”, Percy yelled back as he helplessly watched Remus trying to regain control over the book whilst trying to shush the portrait whilst attempting to repair the damage done to the wall, that looked more and more inclined to collapsing.

“That’s nice, Perce”, Sirius replied just as loudly, though a lot more relaxed and sat down on top of the table, his legs idly swinging back and forth as he watched an increasingly desperate Remus scramble for a scrap control over supposedly inanimate objects. “Sandwich?” he offered. Percy took one.

“SIRIUS!”

“Sorry, sorry”, Sirius got up with all the serenity of someone that had been yearning for this house to collapse for decades, “You want one too?” He held the tray out for Remus.

…

“I just can’t wrap my head around why it didn’t work” Remus said, munching on his sandwich (corned beef). “I watched him like a Hippogryph during his last attempt; by all means, the execution was correct, and the ones before correct enough to work substantially better than they ended up doing. It should have gone perfectly fine but…” he trailed off staring regretfully at the hole in the wall.

“Where do you reckon the book is now?” Percy asked, slightly curios.

“Don’t worry about that. Worry about when it will come back.” Sirius replied.

“It makes no sense!” Remus started pacing around the room, his fingers stroking his chin as if feeling for his stubble would somehow lead him to enlightenment. “The spells are always either too weak or ridiculously strong, stubborn enough that even a fully grown wizard cannot dispel it or so unstable that a single breath can cause it to crumble-”

“Hey!” Percy interjected, feeling slightly insulted.

“Maybe its ‘cause he started off late, a lot later than usual”, Sirius mused. “His magic is a lot more developed than when wizards usually start practicing it so maybe there’s too much stored in him at once, like a well or something.”

Remus frowned slightly, “Percy,” he asked carefully, “you didn’t repress you magic did you?”

“No” he shrugged. “Or, well- I don’t know, but if I did, I didn’t mean too. I never noticed it being there after all.”

Sirius eyes lit up “If you didn’t notice it, maybe you somehow unconsciously blocked your access to it. And now you cannot control it properly; either it’s all the way open or practically not at all.”

Remus nodded still deep in thought.

“Cool”; Percy said. “Then what do I do now?”

Sirius slumped back into the chair he had conjured earlier. “Yeah, Moony what do we do now? As much as I hate this house, I do appreciate a roof over my head.”

“What we do now,” Remus said, “is the sensible thing. If we cannot get him started on charms or dueling or any other sort of wand work, then we find another way; one that does not require a wand. He‘ll just practice potions first.”

“Great!” Sirius said, “only one problem with that. We suck at potions.”

“Yes, but Severus doesn’t.” Remus replied, gesturing to his cup of foul smelling liquid with a blue mist emitting from it.

“Sev is at Hogwarts,” Percy deadpanned.

Remus smiled. “Then we’ll get you to Hogwarts.

…

This evening as he lay in bed the conversation earlier did not leave his head.

From the first day on which he started learning it, he had noticed it. He noticed it in the aching in his back, in the all-encompassing fatigue at the end of each day, He noticed it in the way his skin had turned a few shades paler and tighter in odd places as if it did not quite understand how it was to fit on him. He noticed it in the way he keeled into bed each night to be greeted by a complete and utter void.

He had not blocked magic, not intentionally, unintentionally, or otherwise. He had simply never felt drawn to it, never felt the natural compulsion to use it. And he knew why.

Magic exhausted him. It depleted him in a way his other powers never had.

Magic was hard. It was excruciatingly painful and felt completely foreign to him as if he was trying to fit the last missing puzzle piece in only to realize it seemed from another puzzle entirely.

And yet, Percy mused, magic helped. It kept the dreams at bay; it stopped the storms.

In the dead of the night, in the fields further up on the road away from the Blackhouse, just behind the monotony of regular civilization, Percy practiced.

…

Chapter Text

October 3rd, 1996, Grimmauld Place, Great Brittain

Percy was fiddling with the hem of his robes as he watched the flurry of coats and robes swoosh past him from the safety of the staircase. From downstairs Moody shot him a look with his magical eye. Next to him Tonks clumsily removed the water from her Auror-uniform and waved at him with a grin. Several order members followed her gaze and stared at him in confusion. Percy awkwardly waved back.

There had been an expected lull of gatherings due to the new year at Hogwarts having started barely a month ago. In fact, there had only been two meetings Percy knew of: one which occurred the night Percy was preoccupied with summoning goddesses, the other while he was still in that field doing the-gods-knew-what. Neither of these had, according to Sirius, discussed the fact that American wizards were a thing now and that they had one in their custody, even though it was apparently still as mind-boggling to them as the existence of Greek deities had been to that one hardcore Christian demigod a while ago.

He once again revised the plan Remus had composed over dinner a few days ago.

1. Watch the order members enter the designated meeting room

2. Let the adults handle the rest

Percy hated the plan. But then again, it had been unsurprising; Ever since the book-summoning-incident Remus had been acting as if he expected Percy to spontaneously keel over and die. Percy responded to this by trying to throw himself into his study of magic even further; it was all incredibly frustrating, really. With his normal powers all he had to do was reach outward and wait until something responded. He and the water were one of the same, part of one major being which all connected back to his father. He did not revert inward and draw power from his own limited reserves; the reserves were anywhere, and he could draw from anything. He became part of the larger context of it all, the fabric of the universe, the fate’s tapestry, and he was free to pull and pluck at strings as he pleased.

Magic just made him nauseous.

The meeting room was one of the dining rooms, the one which Percy assumed once must have been meant for social gatherings. It was the only room that didn’t house artefacts deemed too inappropriate to the public. Somehow, the magic in it was different than the one which permeated the rest of the house. By now Percy had learnt to be used to the feel of magic on his skin and had decided he disliked dwelling in this specific sort of it; clearer, systemized rather than wild and free spirited. It most likely stemmed from the fact that he was born of untamable forces of nature and couldn’t compute with this organized artificiality, which to him felt like a mockery of all which was sacred. Or, as his father always said The sea does not like to be restrained.

After the last had disappeared and the wooden panels had looked shot with an alarmingly final sounding thud, he silently counted to thirty, made to move and stopped immediately only to count to thirty again in case he had somehow counted too fast the first time. Only then did he carefully make his way downstairs and press one of his ears against the door.

“- currently housing a boy to conceal him from Death Eaters. We have reason to suspect Voldemort might be interested in him.”

At the mention of the name there were several sharp intakes of breath. “Goodness,” a woman gasped, “Albus, you oughtn’t use that name. One of these days I’m going to have a heart attack!” Percy experienced yet another Deja-vu as he was reminded of back when he first found out he was a demigod. How everyone kept warning him of the power behind names. They called Furies Kindly Ones. At camp they called Dionysus Mr. D. When Monsters fought Percy, they called him Perseus.

Percy had never respected the power names carried. It stood to reason that this was because he had never made a habit of respecting people in general. It seemed as if this at least was something they had in common.

“Why would You-know-Who be interested in a teenager?” Percy faintly heard fabric rustling, as if more than one order member was leaning forward in anticipation. He related to that notion; he too strained his hearing. What information Dumbledore offered to the order would determine how they had to play this game. Was Percy to be a mysterious foreigner from a cursed land or the unfortunate offspring of a high-ranking death eater?

“We fear that whatever knowledge he has could be of indeterminable value. Perseus-” Percy grimaced at the usage of his given name “has exhibited… an unusual talent for staying alive in rather… hostile environments.”

“…hostile environments?”

Whatever person was asking these questions must not have been satisfied by a nonverbal answer on Dumbledore’s part for it took an unnatural amount of time for him to resume speaking. “An environment which had previously been assumed to be-“

“-lethal,” Moody responded for him. He sounded almost pleased as if a mosquito bite that had been itching for days has finally gotten to be scratched.

Dumbledore must have nodded, for there was no more rustling of fabric after that, shocked into silence. Finally, the same woman from before whispered in a breaking voice “that poor boy. Albus, do- do you know how old the poor thing is?”

“Seventeen.”

“Seventeen?” another female voice cut in. She spoke in a no-nonsense tone strangely reminiscent of Athena. “Shouldn’t he be at Hogwarts then?”

“Due to these…”, Dumbledore paused as if searching for an unoffensive term, “unfortunate circumstances he claims that he has no prior knowledge of magic or the wizarding world.”

“He claims?”, Remus asked. He sounded polite but Percy felt the way his magic tensed.

Sirius was less polite.

“You don’t trust him,” he said. “You don’t trust him because of who his grandfather is. “

“Sirius,” Remus said in a warning voice, but it was no use. The damage was already done.

“Who exactly is his grandfather?” another voice asked.

“That is of no importance,” Remus responded fluidly.

Percy could practically hear Moody frowning. “A death eater, I’ll bet. We need to know who he is related to. He must have trained his grandson well- we’ve led him right into our best hidden hideout.”

“Who he is related to makes no difference.” Remus said. His tone was sharp enough for Percy to be able to detect the wolf behind it. “Percy has a right to tell everyone on his own terms.”

A low murmur broke out. “We need to know what he might be capable of” someone said.

There was a screeching sound, and Percy realized someone must have abruptly stood up. “My brother was a death eater, my cousin still is. My parents were as good as.” Sirius’ voice was colder than it had ever been in his presence. “Does that change the fact that I’m not?”

“We are well aware your relatives, Black,” Moody growled. “That doesn’t change the fact that he could be dangerous to us- he’s survived the Lethal Lands for Merlin’s sake!”

“He hasn’t done anything!”

“Clearly he did!” Moody shot back.

“Do you know who his grandfather is?”, Tonks asked, in a futile attempt to defuse the situation. Still, she sounded vaguely curious. Percy felt sick to his stomach.

A thudding sound. Sirius must have sat down again. There was a collective release of tension in the air. “I don’t.” Sirius said, his voice even and carefully controlled. Despite his brash personality, Sirius desired to be seen as more than an uncontrollable ex-convict more than anything these days. “And I don’t need to”, he finished. Moody remained quiet.

“Knowing who his grandfather is might give us a better picture of his abilities,” a male voice suggested, sounding far calmer and more reasonable than Percy felt comfortable with. Arguing against senseless paranoia was simple when compared to refuting thought-through arguments. “It will help determine how he could survive entering the Lethal Lands.”

“He didn’t enter the Lethal Lands,” Remus countered almost involuntarily, as if unable to let misunderstandings be sold as truth, convenient as they were. A side product of managing a rag tag group of teenagers for seven years and then becoming a professor. Percy wished he would shut up, but he knew that wanting others to stop running their mouths would make him a hypocrite. “He was born there.”

If a pin were to drop now, the sound would be deafening. Percy is never ever going to let ‘the adults’ handle anything ever again.

Another chair scratched against the old floor. The sound of heavy robes swishing across marble. Dumbledore’s gently authorities voice commanded the room once again. “I have granted Perseus permission to tell anyone of his descendancy should he wish to do so. And only if he wishes to.”, he paused to let the words settle properly. “It will not do for us to force him to entrust us with personal information. But-”, he spoke as conversation rose once again- “that does not mean that he is to be trusted unconditionally.”

Dumbledore pursed his lips, his whole face contorting itself to a stricter expression, that looked a little unpracticed on him, whether that was deliberate or not. Percy knew whatever he would say, he probably was not going to like it.

“Sirius, your firm belief that anyone can have the capacity for good honors you. But you must keep in mind that despite whatever you might have seen of him so far, you do not truly know Perseus. We have only found out about his existence by chance. We have little to no information on him and nothing to suggest how he might have survived in the United States, especially since he had no prior formal training in magicks and dueling.

Tonks looked up at that, a little taken aback. “Are you suggesting he did not actually grow up in the Lethal Lands?”

“He couldn’t have” someone else cut in, “it is impossible, that’s what it is. A magical child would have been torn into pieces the second they exuded even a spark of magic!”

“I am saying that we cannot know how much of what he is telling us is genuine. There have been longer periods of time where nobody knew where exactly he was, and numerous occasions on which strange things- stranger than what even we would consider unusual- occurred around him. It is well within reason to remain cautious.”

“Percy hasn’t done anything,” Sirius said again, sounding almost petulant.

“I would never dare to assume to know what Perseus has and hasn’t done.” Dumbledore countered, lightly as if he was talking about his favorite type of bread spread. “We cannot afford being careless in these volatile days.”

Sirius remained silent.

“Well, I believe this matter is settled then.” Dumbledore concluded. ”Now, let us discuss-“

“Actually,” Remus threw in and quickly paused as if he was regretting his rudeness. Percy thought of how just yesterday the man had called Sirius an ’inept buffoon who couldn’t tell one end of the wand from the other if he tried’ for over steeping his tea. “Excuse me for the interruption, but there was something we hoped to ask in regard to Percy.”

Dumbledore must have mentioned for him to continue.

“Percy seems to be having some… difficulties with accessing his magic. We had hoped he could attend Hogwarts. The magic in the warding could help stabilize his core.”

Dumbledore hesitated almost imperceptibly before replying. “Remus, my boy, do you truly believe that it would be worth the risk of-”

“I would not bother with that if I were you.”

“Why not?” Percy swiftly turned to look at his interrupter and raised an eyebrow. Better own up to being caught red handed than be accused of lying badly on top of it.

“The door is enchanted against eavesdropping.” Sev explained smoothly. “You cannot hear anything said on the other side, no matter how much you try, though-” and there he smirked slyly, “I do appreciate the commitment.”

Percy carefully stored away this tidbit of information for later. “You should go in,” he said in lieu of explaining himself, “I bet they’re waiting for you.”

Sev sent him a nod and opened the doors with a flick of his wrist. Percy expertly stepped out of sight. “Severus”, Dumbledore’s cheerful voice sounded from inside. “We’ve been expecting you! Come join us, my boy!”

Severus grimaced slightly at the ‘undignified’ address, then glanced in his direction one last time and smoothly entered the room, his cloak billowing behind him. Percy rolled his eyes. Wizards really were nothing if not dramatic.

He waited again. It seemed a bit careless to commence sneaking around right after being caught in the act. But in the end his curiosity won out once again.

“-just don’t understand how it would be a risk! If it is safe to send Harry, we can afford to send Percy too.”

This Harry person again. He seemed to be a weirdly important for a war that is supposed to be led by the ‘adults’. Maybe he’s involved in a prophecy too? The again, Percy mused, he didn’t even know whether wizards had prophecies in the first place. Apollo would have had to have an oracle among the wizards then and with the whole separation situations they’ve got going on that’s unlikely to say the least.

“Severus-” Dumbledore called out once again, “You know of the boy’s heritage and have spent a considerable amount of time with him. Do you consider it wise to leave him on his own in a magical school, while he still might pose a danger to other students?”

Sev seemed to consider, before responding. “I am unsure.”

“Unsure”, Sirius repeated. His voice was dripping with barely concealed fury.

Sev continued undeterred. “It is as Lupin said. He is unstable, volatile and has no experience with magical society. I believe it to be best if we left his lessons in solitude until his magical core has stabilized on its own accord.”

Dumbledore hummed, seemingly appeased without trying to appear too appeased to be accused of judging Percy unfairly. He’s good at this, Percy thought to himself bitterly.

“Albus, you cannot possibly mean to leave a young wizard without an education.” The stern voiced women from earlier said. “Related to a Death eater or not, he has a right to it.”

„A compromise, then,” he amended. The woman must not be someone he could argue with without risking losing his face in front of the order. “We will do it as follows: Perseus will continue to be taught in the core classes in Grimmauld Place. Then,” he said just as Sirius opened his mouth in indignation, “should he have reached the magical skills necessary for it before the solstice, we will consider matriculating him into Hogwarts, as an exchange student in the fifth year.”

…

October 3rd, 1996, Hogwarts, Great Brittain

DADA was a total bust. Divination had always been too heavy on the perfumes and tea leaves for his taste. Astronomy took place way too late at night to bring about anything productive. Transfiguration, charms and herbology were just sort of… there. He didn’t even need to talk about potions.

So, in a rather unexpectant turn of events, Harry found himself actively trying to pay attention in History of Magic

“… gathered huge amounts of Gillyweed… had no effects on…. the period typical assumption that….futile attempts to appease…”

Harry valiantly opened his eyes and pinched himself on his thigh, hard. Ron has long since disappeared into the land of dreams and mumbled something about “bloody stubborn businessmen, these vampires”. Hermione, in yet another shocking turn of events, was rewriting her transfiguration essay instead of paying attention to whatever Binns was talking about.

What was Binns talking about again?

Looks at the front, there’s only a year number and a rather crude drawing of male genitals the Weasley twins had drawn last year only to see how long it would take Binns to notice. Right next to it was an uncomplimentary drawing of a much younger Snapes nose, which Ron swore up and down had already been there when Bill Weasley went to Hogwarts.

Harry took a large, steadying breath and forced himself to listen to Binns.

“…despite their best efforts they failed to find a way. As a way of making up for their perceived mistakes, some wizards continued to perform these sacred rituals and to this day older wizarding families still pass down heirlooms of these days long past to their children. Though they have lost much of their social standing and possess only debatable legality, it is assumed that some cults or cult-like societies have persisted as well and still worship the Olympic deities, which showcases-“

He frowned, and fought himself out of the light doze he had fallen into. Olympic deities- the term sounded vaguely familiar, but he was absolutely sure he had never heard of wizarding gods- or religions now that he thought about it.

“Hermione?” he called out softly. She didn’t react, too absorbed with her schoolwork. “Hermione?” he tried again, a little louder. Then he threw a spare bit of parchment at her, which managed to get stuck in her hair. She sent a somewhat annoyed look in Ron’s direction, only to frown as she realized that he was snoring. “Hermione?” Harry called put again, “What are Olympic deities?”

She frowned at him, still irritated. “How can you not know that?”

“I grew up with muggles, remember? And-” he jumped in as he saw Hermione opening her mouth, “not all of us read as much as you do.”

She rolled her eyes at that. “They’re well know in the muggle world too, you know? How do you think the Olympic games started? Or what about the star signs and planets named after famous mythological characters? What was the city Athens named after if not the Olympic goddess?”

“Hermione,” Harry said slowly, attempting to grasp what she was trying to tell him, “Are you saying that the Olympians are muggle gods?”

She sighed heavily and stared longingly at her halfway finished essay. “They’re neither. People believed in them before there was a divide between our worlds.”

“Before the divide?”

“Yes Harry,” she said, “before the divide. Of course, the religions developed independently from that point on, with the wizarding beliefs being rooted in the supremacy of wizard kind and the muggle essentially staying where they are except for pop culture variations and names, since they started to belief in more monotheistic religions soon after.”

“So it’s all made up, then?”

“Well,” she responded furrowing her brow in the way she did when trying to explain something she hadn’t quite managed to work out to her satisfaction yet. “I don’t know,” she finally settled on and looked as if she were biting into a lemon as she said it. “There is, of course, no logical argument to be made that gods exist, but some creatures that are thought to be mythological by the muggles do exist, like centaurs and werewolves and basilisks- also, like with all myths and legends, it is likely that some of the stories surrounding the divine can be traced back to true occurrences, but possibly with wizards as the heroes instead of demigods- at least that’s how their mostly told in the wizarding versions. There are theories stating that magic used to be a lot stronger back then, until it suddenly became either weaker or harder to manage, causing a mass hysteria to break out in which wizards desperately tried to appeal to their gods since they assumed they had somehow accidently slighted them. This decline in magical prowess could explain how mythical displays of power were often described to be much stronger than anything a modern wizard would be capable of. But of course,” she amended, “the stories could just as well be strongly exaggerated.”

“What are you two talking about?”, Ron yawned.

“Well,” Hermione closed her books soundly causing dean next to her to be unceremoniously roused from his own slumber, “you would know if you hadn’t slept through the lesson and actually paid attention like Harry and I.”

Harry stared at her, long and hard, and then at her essay. Hermione shook her head imperceptibly and shoved the parchment into her bag as hard as she could without crumbling it.

…

October 3rd, 1996, Grimmauld Place, Great Brittain

So, here’s the thing: Percy wasn’t actually upset he hadn’t gotten into the school. It was a school for Olympus sake; Percy didn’t exactly have a good track record with them. So, in the end he hadn’t lost any sleep over whether or not Dumbledore might let him go, even though the thought of having to wait for Dumbledore’s allowance for anything somewhat annoyed him.

He did not care whether he went to Hogwarts, but he did care about whether Sev thought he should. And him arguing against it hurt more than it should.

It was for good reason, Percy told himself. He is not your friend, he is the guy that was forced into babysitting you and now you went and imprinted on him. Sev is right in his assessment. You are unstable. You are volatile. You- You upended a whole nation with a series of destructive storms without even noticing it for Olympus sake!

He was still bitter.

He watched as the order left the halls, Tonks almost tripping over an armchair on the way out. Sev- Snape stayed behind. Percy carefully kept a look out for a still furious ex-convict, but surprisingly, it turned out that Sirius wasn’t the one he should be wary of.

“You!”- Remus grabbed Snape by the front of his robes and slammed him against the nearest wall. “I had thought you could at the very least ignore whatever prejudice the other´s might have- you were a Death Eater yourself!”

“Come on, Moons,” Sirius carefully tugged at the werewolf’s sleeve, while still managing to send a withering look Snape’s way. “It’s not worth it.”

Remus let go of him. Snape somehow managed to gracefully slide down a wall and composed himself in a matter of moments. “I am not as foolish as the both of you,” he snarled glaring at the both of them, “It would be unwise on our part to support him in this endeavor.”

“Because I’m too volatile?” Percy interrupted cooly from behind him. Weeks of wearing robes had done him well, he had slid down the railing of the staircase and landed silently the way the Stolls had taught him to.

Snape noticably stiffened and his eyes widened for a second but then his expression smoothed out again. Sirius and Remus seemed to be too preoccupied to notice anything amiss.

“Because it would seem suspicious to him for all of us to support you so publicly after such little time.”, he replied evenly. “Regardless, no matter what you could have said, he wouldn’t have agreed to it.”

“But he did agree to it,” Sirius pointed out. “He said that if Percy-“

“If I catch up on five years of work within a couple of weeks”, Percy snorted, with far more resentfulness than he thought himself capable of. “Yeah sure. Then he’ll consider it.” Percy flopped down the wall in a far lease dignified manner than Snape had just done. “I can’t even cast a light charm without nearly blinding myself. How would I do that!”

“Well, we can’t do nothing!”

“Sirius is right”, Remus agreed softly. “We cannot do nothing. It wouldn’t be fair. But what do we do?

Snape removed an invisible speck of dust from his robes. “I will assume it was you plan to stabilize Perseus’ magical core via practicing potions, correct? Lessons you planned on having him receive from me?”

“Yes,” Sirius answered in Remus stead, clearly irritated, “but since Percy isn’t even allowed to bloody go to school and your greasy excuse for a smell detector couldn’t even be bothered to-“

“Sirius”, Remus said in a warning tone.

“Do you think it could have worked?” Percy asked, turning his stare away from their lovers’ spat and back onto Snape. He was still a little pissed off, but he did genuinely want to know the man’s opinion.

“It still could,” the man countered.

Remus narrowed his eyes “What are you suggesting?”

I am free on Tuesday and Thursday evening, at 7pm sharp. He takes potion lessons with me at Hogwarts. Then, once they’re over he returns to this… lovely house.” -Sirius snorted almost in spite of himself- “without ever having interacted with any student or teacher other than myself.”

“And how do you plan of getting him there twice a week without anyone noticing?”

“Via floo, of course” Snape replied snidely. “The fireplace in my office isn’t connected to the rest of the network. Never has been. It was one of my requirements for taking up the role of Slytherin head of house.”

“This is dangerous too,” Remus interjected.

“I would argue it is far more dangerous to let a wizard with an unstable core live in one of the most renown hotspots for dark magic. But who am I to judge your truly immaculate sense of-

“Would you stop arguing!” Percy snapped. The vase next to him exploded in rather spectacular fashion with muddy water splattering all over the place, except for the artifacts Kreacher so adored- his magic must have developed a soft spot for the grouchy elf.

Percy sent a now dripping wet Snape an almost apologetic look, in a true I-see-what-you mean-now-fashion. “I’ll take the lessons” he said. “It’s the only way I have even a slight chance of making it before the deadline.”

“And if you don’t?”

“Then I don’t.” Percy shrugged. Though it might have come in handy every now and then, he had never particularly needed magic in his seventeen years of life. He certainly didn’t need to know it now.

Sirius stared at him. Percy stared back. Sirius shrugged.

Chapter Text

Sally will always remember the first time she had seen one of them.

It was a week after her arrival in the Lethal Lands. She had run out of the canned foods that had remained in the cabin, despite her best efforts to make them last forever. Saffine had, for all intents and purposes, been a rather pampered child. She had never had to suffer hunger before. She never had to prepare her own food before. Neither did her mother in fact. They had a house elf back home, the kitchen restocked automatically, every mess she created, every scrap she sustained vanished with the flick of a wand.

She had none of those things now.

So, there she was, stumbling disoriented through the streets of a suburban area. She was fascinated by the prospect of strangers, and muggles at that, existing in the same places she frequented. Dozens of souls like atoms, being drawn to each other, repulsing each other, building and dissolving bonds, yet never touching. Eternally separate and yet united in all the ways that mattered, and her watching over it like a scientist over his experiment.

She had always been rather observant.

Suddenly, there they were, in a random parking lot. Two big men with only one eye each, one of them holding a basket with a nine headed monster in it. The other tried to feed it some sort of meat- wet and dripping a fluid as black as coal. A muggle woman with a toddler balanced on her hip walked past them, cooing over the slobbering and absolutely terrifying creature, as if it were a mere puppy.

Her breath quickened and she hid between two muggle driving contraptions- cars, her mind supplied- and hoped they wouldn’t find her. She waited-one, two, five minutes. She felt incredibly foolish.

These were the Lethal Lands. Of course there would be monsters. Of course they would find her.

They walked right past where she was perched behind a car. One of them looked at her oddly.

“Are you okay miss?”
A stranger- a middle-aged muggle man- frowned down at her, a mixture of confusion and annoyance warring on his face. Self-consciously she looked down at herself, kneeling between the meager rations she had picked out herself, and felt yet again incredibly foolish.

All her life she had wanted to become part of the world, despite her father’s insistence that they alone were far superior to anyone else. And now that she was- even if it was a muggle settlement in the deadliest place on earth- she felt as if she had fallen out of step, despite never having learnt to walk at all.

Inferior

“Uhm, if you don’t mind, I would like to-” He awkwardly pointed to the door she was apparently leaning against.

“Oh, uhm… yes, of course!”, she blushed and hurried away. Once she reached a reasonable distance she looked back towards the parking lot. The monsters caught her gaze again. Then they looked away, disinterested-

Disinterested.

Of course they were. She had known, otherwise she never would have gone here. She had no magic.

Foolish

She took whatever little belongings she had and wrapped them in the bag Lily had fashioned out of what used to be her wizarding robes and sat down on a lonesome bench facing the street to catch her breath. Then a bus drove past and the world seemed to slow down.

There on the other side of the street sat three impossibly ancient women.
One of them calmy knitted away at what seemed to be a blanket. The one on her right held the yarn for her; a nice, sea green color that even from the distance seemed to shine and shift colors ever so slightly like waves churning at the shore. The third woman weaved a thread of gold into it, every second just the tiniest bit more, barely noticeable, until it had slung around the sea green so tightly it could not be separated anymore.

It needs to happen , she found herself thinking, the sound of her own thought intermingling with something otherworldly, something that could only be called inevitability. It needs to happen like this. There had never been a choice.

A car drove past, and the women disappeared without a trace.

The very next day she met a man at the beach.

…

October 8th, 1996, Grimmauld Place, Great Brittain

Sirius was quiet, uncharacteristically so, as he walked beside him through the hallway leading to what Sirius had called the ‘floo foyer’. It was not really a foyer; Percy had quickly realized. Wizards just liked their alliterations as much as they disliked logic.

“You seem troubled”, he settled on saying.

“Not troubled just-”, he shrugged, “perturbed.”

“Same thing, just a nicer word, you snob.”

Sirius looked at him and the fact that he didn’t immediately counter with some clever remark betrayed him more than his eyes ever could.

“You don’t want to leave me alone with Snape” Percy guessed.

“Just-”, he sighed, “be careful kiddo.”

Percy frowned. Even if he wanted to, Snape did not even remotely pass for a threat- at least not for Percy. Then again, his usual adversaries were monsters, deities or a mix between the two and even they rarely posed a threat. Still, somehow it annoyed him to be perceived as that- powerless. Weak, for a lack of a better word. It bothered him an uncanny amount.

Then again, he might just be wrong. Even though the two of them had been living under the same roof for the past few weeks, he didn’t really know Sirius all that well yet, and truthfully, he wasn’t on top of his game as of right now, especially since he had started actively containing the storms. Combined with practicing magic, it had left him feeling increasingly clammy with his skin constantly pulling too tight as if it could not quite contain him anymore.

Snape was part of the order. Snape and Sirius don’t get along. Snape was a teacher- specifically Snape was a very reluctant teacher in a subject he did not want to teach at a school which Sirius Black’s esteemed godson attended, whom he has exhibited a strong dislike towards. None of this explained Sirius’ apparent belief that Snape could prove a danger towards Percy.

Information that he didn’t quite understand in their entirety was swirling around in his head like all the little fish in the aquariums he had visited as a child, always moving so fast that he could not make them out, but also too slow to properly become background noise. He wasn’t like Annabe- like a child of Athena that could process Information as fast as a computer could. He was just Percy Jackson, the boy that had the sort of school record that made people think it was possible for him to be a national terrorist at the age of twelve.

In short, he was out of his depth.

“You said Hogwarts is the safest place on earth”, he settled on saying.

“No place on earth is truly safe.”

“Well, maybe Harry ought to teach me how to protect myself then?” Percy countered with a grin. Yesterday he had listened to Mrs. Weasley complaining for hours about three of her sons- one of whom was apparently Harry Potters’ best friend- being part of a technically illegal Defense study group thingy, which was- unsurprisingly enough- led by Harry Potter. Percy would judge but he feared that would come of a bit hypocritical. Sirius meanwhile had been grinning from ear to ear and pressed the messenger- a man of small statue with a shifty look about him- for increasingly obscure details.

Percy tossed a handful of floo powder into the fireplace and declared his destination.

When he arrived, Snape was already sitting in his empty classroom with a stack of essays in front of him. There was a distinct sneer on his face as he scratched out several paragraphs and wrote passive aggressive question marks on the side.

Percy looked right. And then left. Then right again. The entire room gave him a strange sense of Deja-vu. It was old, but obviously meticulously kept and frequently in use, the way a room of this nature should be. The lack of windows and distinct earthy smell betrayed the fact that they were currently under the surface- a strange choice for a potions classroom that certainly needed airing out every now and then, but then again, who was Percy to argue with people that had magic and obviously weren’t afraid to use it for anything and everything.

What really seemed familiar was the feel of magic on his skin- something that in his dream of drowning had felt like a protective cloak, a helping hand and guiding force now had a different tinge to it- still inherently protective but more as if the castle was trying to protect its inhabited from Percy rather than seeing him as one of its own. As if Percy was but a grotesque, twisted version of something it had once known, a parody of what was once intimately familiar. Something it couldn’t quite make its mind up about.

You and me both, he thought.

“My, my, don’t we look dashing” Snape commented in a slightly mocking tone once he looked up to give Percy an obligatory nod. Percy was wearing the by now fifty years old school robes that he had initially assumed used to belong to Sirius brother, but were actually his father’s cast offs that Regulus kept presumably out of sentimental reasons because he ‘had always been an ingratiatingly naive son of a bitch that one’. It was mostly black, with green and silver details as well as a stitched crest with a snake on it. Sirius had lamented this fact loudly for some reason that Percy did not at all care about and despite his slightly ridiculous efforts to procure a set of robes that weren’t ‘slimy’ (which as per Remus’ orders did not include just leaving the house and buying some), he ended up being unsuccessful. So, old, slimy robes it was.

Remus had distracted himself from Sirius’ wallowing cries of shame by doing his best to hide Percy’s slightly abnormal white streak of hair. According to Remus it was in their best interest to make him look as unmemorable as possible just in case some student or the like did end up seeing him.

Percy just thought Remus wanted an excuse to make sure Percy’s hair had been combed once in the weeks he had spent at Grimmauld Place.

He sighed. “Can we please just start?”

…

October 8th, 1996, Hogwarts , Great Brittain

Yesterday’s revelation of the extent of his connection to Voldemort had shaken him- badly so. Every time he closed his eyes he could feel it, like trying to remember memories long thought lost, brief flashes of all-encompassing anger, bouts of pleasure and a deep-seated hunger. He merely saw the outline of things- impressions of thoughts and emotions he didn’t own.

The only thing that remained utterly clear in bis mind was the sight of the long, winding hallway, but what really haunted him, despite its profound obscurity, was the strange sticky kitchen counter he had seen weeks ago in one of his dreams. The taste of orange on his lips and the knowledge that he had been- inconceivably- fooled. The sensation of being bereft. A flux of emotions he didn’t understand. A bit of everything, loathing and disgust intermingled with fondness and pride. Harry did not want to think of what sort of object would illicit such a response, but he could only imagine that it had to be something on par with the diary. A permanent impression of his self on the world, like a fingerprint on clay. An indescribable feat of magic. Something that he had lost.

If there was one thing that Harry knew, it was that an orphans’ possessions were always incredibly precious.

He took care not to fasten his steps to the point of risking being seen- he had grown much over the years, but the cloak had not. While sneaking around was still possible but required him to somewhat bend down to avoid his feet showing beneath the rim of cloth.

Was it the weapon Sirius was speaking of? Was not the American wizard the weapon? Or was it something the wizard owned, something that allowed him to withstand the brutality of the Lethal Lands?

But Sirius did say that they did not know how the wizard survived there- that meant that even if it was a weapon, that allowed the wizard to fight the creatures the Weasleys’ told him about, it couldn’t be the weapon the order was referring to , since it would mean that they did in fact know how the wizard did it- or at least know to an extent. No matter what, if the order had an inkling of an idea on how the wizard survived the Lethal Lands, acting as if he had no idea how he could have possibly survived would be quite strange and- above all- illogical.

There was also the fact that Sirius claimed that the visitor had nothing to do with the war- despite Harry’s recent irritation concerning Dumbledore’s actions, he did not think that the man would ask Sirius to lie about such a thing, nor did he thing that Sirius would oblige if he were to be asked. Omission was one thing, outright lying to his godson and the child of his dead best friend was the other.

And Sirius wasn’t even a fan of omission, so it couldn’t be that.

Fortunately, the door was still open when he arrived. Purely by chance, had he seen Snape, one of the Slytherins in tow, vanish down a corridor on Marauders’ map and in the spur of the moment he had grabbed the invisibility cloak and made a break for it. Or rather, it was less as if he had chosen it than that he had just sort of found himself storming down the hallway with the cloak, his map, and probably more curiosity that what was healthy. If Snape had closed the door directly behind him, there would have been no back up plan, only a silent walk of shame back to the Gryffindor tower as he stewed in thoughts about the first DA meeting tonight.

Then again, Harry thought, continued thinking, never stopped thinking, how did the weapon match the emotions he had felt through the scar? What could orange juice have to do with it? Was it some sort of potion? What sort of potion tasted like oranges and looked like blood?

He stroked the spines of the books with his finger and started methodically searching for something that sparked his interest.

Dancing with Shadows: A Treatise on Dark Magic and Its Price

Roots of Power: Harnessing Magical Plants for Spells and Potions

Hex-Breakers and Curse-Crushers: Essential Counterspells

The Auror’s Handbook: A Professional Guide to Dark Magic Combat

Maybe it really did have something to do with these strange storms. Something that allowed the wielder control over the weather. Monsters might be resistant against regular magic but surely, they weren’t against the forces of nature, and the storms did wander over to the UK before seemingly stopping without explanation.

From Mandrakes to Moonflowers: An Encyclopedia of Magical Flora

Shattering Shadows: Advanced Techniques in Dark Magic Defense

Harry paused at this title, considering. What was happening to him could have been dark magic, but the book was probably still too general a topic than for it to be likely that his condition was included. He could not afford Snape noticing that his books went missing. He probably needed something with ‘mind’ or ‘mental’ in the name to be on the secure side of things.

Spells in Suspension: A Study of Enchanted Liquids

From Flesh to Flame: The Mortal Lives of Demigods

His finger stilted. It was a thin book, well-read judging by the cracks in the spine. The writing on it seemed almost timid despite its bold implications.

Demigods. Snape owned a book about Demigods.

Roughly he pulled it out of the shelf and almost managed to take The Tome of Tempestuous Tinctures with it. He stumbled a little and hit his knee against the shelf in his haste to stuff the booklet into his bag only to turn around and catch sight of-

“Are you even trying to hide?”

Behind him leaning against the railing and, instead of a wand, loosely holding a ballpoint pen of all things, stood Tom Marvolo Riddle.

He was older than the version in the diary, but not by much. He also seemed significantly more tangible for the lack of a better word, as if Harry could just reach out and touch him, an actual person made of flesh and blood that could prance around and infest the world with his destructiveness. His Hogwarts uniform, the same one the diary shade had worn with the only difference being the missing prefect batch, suited him well, but still looked strangely out of place on him.He sported a brooding, but border lining bored expression on his face, that was only softened by what appeared to be an amused smile playing in the corners of his eyes. None of this diminished his handsomeness however, as well as the way every small movement, from the slight tilt of his chin to the impatient tapping of his finger against the railing, screamed of power and self-assuredness, as if he was utterly convinced that Harry could not possibly pose a threat to him.

But I do, Harry thought with grim satisfaction, I’ve defeated him multiple times.

Harry had pressed his wand against the boy’s sternum faster than he could think.

The boy, Riddle quirked his brow, somehow appearing both taken aback and wholly unsurprised. “Rude”, he muttered under his breath, just loud enough, that it was clear that he had meant for Harry to hear it.

“I will go to Dumbledore” Harry wheezed. “I will tell him that you’re here.”

“I’m not doing anything.” He said, sounding strangely offended. “I’m studying. If anything, you’re the one in the wrong, You’re trying to steal books without permission while hiding under a glorified blanket. Perhaps I should be the one talking to Dumbledore.” He crossed his arms over his chest as if wholly unconcerned by the wand still poking at him. He also seemed strangely petulant like the teenager he appeared to be. Harry felt increasingly off balance. He remembered the diary shade like it was yesterday. The whole event was imprinted into his memory, as if he could just close his eyes and be there again. He remembered Tom Riddle, the boy who felt like an old friend he had forgotten about, and not the stranger he really was. This boy was a stranger too, but now that Harry knew about what he was, he actually felt like one.

Harry tightened the grip on his wand. He hoped Riddle could not feel the tremors against his chest.

“I won’t let you hurt anyone” he said firmly and tried to shrug the cloak he was still wearing off of his shoulders. It had gotten caught on something during Harry’s dramatically-turning-around stunt and now weirdly hang of off him at an uncomfortable angle.

Riddle made no move to help him out of this predicament, even though Harry noticed his eye resting on the point where the cloak had gotten stuck, as if he did want to reach out, if only for his own peace of mind. Infuriatingly enough, he looked somewhat taken aback by Harry’s accusation. “Who said anything about hurting anyone? I told you I’m trying to study-” with one hand he vaguely gestured behind him where- indeed- a cauldron sat on one of the desks, dangerously close to the edge, bubbling merrily.

Against his better judgement Harry removed his wand from where it was pressed, leaving a red impression behind. Slowly he walked off the platform while keeping an eye on the boy to where the cauldron was situated, never once lowering his wand. Constant vigilance, said a voice in his head, that unsurprisingly sounded like Moody. He briefly overviewed Riddles’ work as well as the plethora of ingredients littered haphazardly over the desk.

Harry frowned. He glanced at the book next to the cauldron, to make sure his eyes weren’t deceiving him. “That’s a first-year potion.”

“Yeah, well can hardly expect anyone to start with the difficult stuff. That’s not how studying works, dummy. That’s not how anything works, actually. You need to start at the beginning.”

Harry blinked.

“Whatever.” There seemed to be an eyeroll strongly implied in that statement. Riddle then smirked, as if just having gotten an idea. Concerned, Harry stepped back. “- You know, it can be whatever you want, if you just make it be.” He then waved his hand, and Harry immediately took another step back, this one significantly larger, his magic gathering at the tip of his wand in preparation. He faintly noticed Riddle eyes flickering to it, as if he somehow registered the flow of his magic. Nonetheless his smirk didn’t falter.

All of a sudden, the cauldron bubbled stronger, and then almost spilled over as if coming to a broil before coming down to a simmer again. It was different now though- gold in color instead of a sickly green brownish brew. It matched the picture that was depicted in a sixth year book next to it.

“Felix Felicis” Harry muttered.

“Interesting name for a potion, right?” Riddle shrugged again, more pleased this time. Something like excitement had swung into his voice. He was staring at Harry as if expecting some sort of positive encouragement. A nod, a smile, curiosity, awe- maybe? Finding none, he averted his gaze a little, as if sheepish. His voice returned to a more casual timber. “Fitting I suppose, considering what it is supposed to do, but a potion that is called the Lucky of the Lucky is a bit on the nose, don’t you think?”

Harry didn’t respond, just kept the wand trained on him.

Riddles shrugged again. He was still tapping with his finger on the railing, but the gesture seemed more instinctual than the practiced show of humanity Harry would have expected of a young Voldemort. “Definitely more useful than that boiling solution- I mean, seriously, how often does that happen? Quick, get the frog eggs, I need to get some boils on me right now!” He smirked again, seemingly barely holding back a chuckle, his eyes shining with what appeared to be childish mirth corrupted with bitterness. Harry noticed that he had come closer, without him noticing. “Luck though-,” he continued, suddenly wise beyond his years again, “I think we all could use some more of that, but oh well-”, with another flick of his wrist the potion returned to its original color and consistence. “You know what they say. We might try to disguise it, but at the end of the day we can’t help what we are.”

“What are you doing,” Harry asked. It barely sounded like a question anymore. He felt stupid and off kilter and at this point it had hardly anything to do with the fact that it was Tom Riddle standing in front of him, rather than the fact that it was a stranger that immediately caught Harry, despite the invisibility cloak, and then proceeded to just wandlessly and non-verbally turn one potion into another and then back again. Long rants of Hermione’s had taught him that such a feat was impossible, and this boy just casually did it.

Riddle shrugged again, and it made Harry want to punch him. He wondered how he would react to that, being harmed by something as muggle as a punch.

“I told you I’m studying.”

“What are you really doing?”

Riddle rolled his eyes, his expression bordering on dangerous. Harry gripped his wand tighter, but Riddle still didn’t even try to reach for his wand, as if such a thing like grabbing a wizard’s primary defense object did not even occur to him. “If you don’t like the answer I’m giving, then perhaps you should try a different question?”

“What do you mean?” Harry asked warily.

“I mean that you tripped over your own feet trying to get this,” Riddle geld up the book. Harry panicky patted himself down only to discover it missing. Riddle was full on grinning now. It was not a kind grin. It was not exactly mean either. It was expectant, almost wary.

“You’re interested in demigods,” he stated, “Why?”

“I’m the one asking the questions.”

He quirked his brow. “Then ask.”

“As if I’d ever ask you anything.”

He rolled his eyes again. Hard. “You just did multiple times. Loudly too. You might want to keep it down if you don’t want yourself to get caught. I’d definitely rat you out, you know?”

“You’re not supposed to be here.” Harry flet like record player, stuck on a note.

“Neither are you, I had thought we established this already.” Riddle smirked again. He was getting a kick out of this. With the weird way he was acting, he probably was.

Harry narrowed his eyes, „Why would you do this? What do you have to gain by being here?”

Riddle quirked his brow. “By being in a school? Have you ever heard of an education?”

“Enough with the games, what do you want!”

“I don’t know?” he rolled his eyes again, and Harry idly hoped they got stuck there. “Peace? Quiet? You not threatening random people you’ve never met?” he snorted and moved to walk behind the railing towards the back of the classroom again, skillfully ignoring the way Harry's wand moved with him. Once arrived, he gingerly, almost gently placed the book back onto the shelf. “For one I could do without you screaming your ear off about my presence. I doubt Dumbledore would listen to you anyway, He’s stubborn, he won’t accept anything that goes against what he thinks should be happening.” He paused as if he was considering something. “Probably accuse you of having magic messing with your head too while he’s at it. I peg him as a hypocrite too...”

“Don’t insult him!” Harry’s tone was loud and firm, but the venom it seemed to have had been slightly bittered by his own feeling on the matter. An American wizard in Grimmauld Place, that he had yet to meet, a secret weapon no one was willing to talk about, an order he wasn’t allowed to be part of- Dumbledore seemed pretty intent on shutting Harry out of everything while still keeping him in the loop enough for him to be some sort of unwilling figurehead for the whole movement.

The boy continued, undeterred “But what I really want to know is what is up with this interest in demigods. What do you know of them?”

“What do you know about them”, Harry bit back.

Riddle stood unmoving, his back till turned to Harry. It made something inside him bristle, to be disregarded so completely. He didn’t understand why. He didn’t want Riddle to look at him. He wanted him gone.

“I know that they used to live among us.” Harry spoke calmly, his words clipped and burning with poorly restrained anger. “There was a war,” he continued, voice rising slightly towards the end, “Then they disappeared.” His words and his tone spoke of a statement, but buried inside lay a question: Why did the demigods disappear? What happened to them?

Riddle smirked, as if he had heard. “Nothing”, he says. “They just- moved, I guess?”

Harry’s eyes widen.

“The Lethal Lands,” he gasped. Instinctually he lowered his wand. The Moody in his head was screaming at him. He ignored it. His knees felt weak. Were they alive? Had they been killed by the creatures, too, the way so many wizards had been in the past? Were they the creatures?

“Yes,” Riddle agreed. As if it were simple. As if it made sense. He was still tapping his finger on the railing. It appeared to be an omnipresent subconscious habit, rather than a tick born out of boredom.

Harry frowned at him. He thought of Ron’s uncle, who had been brought home in a plastic bag. “You know an awful lot about the lethal lands. How?”

This made Riddle turn back around again. For half a second, Harry felt something like triumph. “You’re awfully interested in my opinions, considering you still think I want to hurt someone.”

Harry raised his chin in defiance. If he were to close his eyes, he was sure that he would hear it again- the high mocking laughter, devoid of anything that could resemble humanity, warm blood trickling down his arm, bow before death, Harry. Harry ignored all of it. “All wizards are interested in the Lethal Lands. They say it’s hell on earth.”

“Well, I say that wizards are dramatic. There’s much worse places. If you were to ask me I’d say-“, Riddle stopped tapping. The silence felt deafening. A slight frown marred his face. “Hey,” he asked, “What’s that on that parchment?”

“My parchment, I-” he pulled it out of his bag and caught sight a set of footsteps rapidly approaching the classroom, in which Harry stood right next to-

No one.

According to the map, there was no one in this room beside him. According to the map, Harry was alone.

The map was never wrong.

He looked back up into sea green eyes. Had they been green this entire time? Tom Riddle had brown eyes; he was sure of it.

Suddenly, everything seemed hazy and awfully clear at the same time

“You-,” his voice cracked. He held his wand loosely now, so loosely that it almost fell to the floor entirely. Constant vigilance You’re not real, are you?

The boy, who wasn’t actually there frowned. “What do you mean I’m not- I’m standing right in front of you.” He perked up. His body language was tense now. His self-composure was dead, sunk to the bottom of the ocean. Everything looked different now. Harry felt his reality crashing around him, as if he were confronted with something that couldn’t be understood. “He’s coming! You need to leave!”

The command shocked him back into reality.

Harry hastily hid under his cloak. The fake Riddle looked at him in confusion. Probably because the boy he just been talking to had just turned invisible. Probably because he wasn’t real. He wasn’t real. He wasn’t real. When Snape whooshed inside with his coat trailing behind him like an overgrown bat Harry swiftly made his exit before the door could close behind him.

…

That evening Harry practiced basic dueling spells with the DA. The entire time he felt that if he were to turn around, he would see the boy standing there like he had been in the classroom. He felt as if he had never met anyone that was quite like the boy had been. A boy that seemed to control every sliver of magic in his vicinity, while failing to brew a first-year potion. A boy that kept trying to joke and tease and banter, while wearing the face of the enemy. A study in contradiction. A harmony.

The DA meeting was a roaring success.

…

There was nothing natural about the fear that instilled his entire being when he heard of them.

Of the demigods, Of the lethal lands, of the demigods in the lethal lands. It was horrifying beyond measures even though he had only first heard about it all a couple of weeks ago. It wasn’t like Voldemort, a name he could speak without fear, for he had seen him. He had crossed him, even defeated him, and lived to tell the tale. There was one person that could say the same of the Lethal Lands. No one could say the same of demigods. The fear was genetic to him, it was his birthright, it flowed through his blood a long-forgotten memory brought back into focus once he had been reminded of its existence. Lethal Lands. Demigods.

“I’ve been seeing things,” he found himself saying that evening in the common room. The fire was still burning brightly, but the logs had been refilled for the third time that night. Hermione was knitting, her hat bearing more resemblance to a windsock. Ron was bleary eyed, staring into a book on transformation of inanimate objects. Harry had been staring at the fire as if it contained all the secrets in the universe. It had been the quiet that had brought on this conversation, not necessity.

“Have you been dreaming again?” Ron asked. There was something eager to his voice, and the tome he had seemingly been pouring over lay abandoned on the couch in a matter of seconds.

Hermione looked up from her needlework. “Harry, you should really tell Dumbledore about these dreams. If they’re trying to tell you something, if they’re somehow-”

“It wasn’t a dream.” Harry frowned. He couldn’t find the words to describe the weird sensation that had overcome him when meeting the boy. It all seemed distant, even now. It was like a dream that had only made sense in that moment, until disappearing into the unknown fog of the human consciousness. There and then gone. “Well not really,” he amended. “It didn’t feel like the other dreams I had, and I wasn’t asleep anyway. At least I don’t think I was. My scar didn’t hurt either.”

Hermione and Ron glanced at each other. “What happened then?”

And Harry told them.

Chapter Text

November 7th, 1996, Hogwarts, Great Brittain

The boy reminded Percy of Nico in the first few weeks after the gigantomachy.

Dark shades under his eyes and equally dark hair which stuck up in every direction. Skin, that should be a rich brown color, pale and sickly. Bony wrists and, while not necessarily small, not as tall as he could have been. He had a slightly hunched-over quality about him when he had entered the room as if all the weight of the world was upon him and he might escape its wretched claws as long as he made himself as small as humanly possible, while still maintaining an air of stubborn pride, the world had failed to rid him of.

He had lost this quality as soon as he had caught sight of Percy. Then he stood straight and as tall as he could, his feet angled in what Percy presumed was a wizarding fighting stance- it would do nothing in physical alterations. His eyes, hidden behind thin wired glasses glued together with tape, were green- strikingly so- and distinctly unlike Percy’s own shifting sea green.

They were also glaring at him.

His face was set in a deep scowl and his whole figure betrayed his wariness and fear. Percy caught sight of a scar once as he pushed the wild hair out of his face- shaped like a lightning bolt and while fully healed, oddly red as if it had been recently irritated. He wore robes similar to the ones Percy had borrowed, but significantly newer, and red instead of green, with what seemed to be a lion crest.

Of course, the strangest thing about him had been the fact that he was hiding under a blanket as if he expected nobody could he was there, as long as he was covered by a very ugly Persian pattern.

He saw him whenever he closed his eyes, again and again, and each time more vividly than the last. It was like a missing puzzle piece facing the wrong direction, but whichever way he turned it, it did not fit into the picture.

He was missing something, and he feared it might be something annoyingly obvious. The mystery drove him damn near insane.

A smooth voice shook him out of his musings.

“Show me your casting stance.”

“What?”

“Your casting stance.”

Percy raised a brow in poorly hidden amusement. “I thought we were doing potions.”

“We were doing potions. Now I am making sure that Lupin has instructed you correctly.”

Or you want to play DADA teacher for a little while there, Percy didn’t say, because he wasn’t suicidal. Yet.

They were in another classroom this time, this one above ground. It was a beautiful day. Quite warm for a November in Scotland, if only for Apollo’s light that stubbornly heated everything in its way. The birds that had not flown southwards were chirping outside and Percy could almost feel the pleasant breeze, carrying the salty scent of the lake he had spied outside, that would sweep across the room if his self-assigned defense teacher were to open the window.

Snape did not open the windows. He was blind to possibilities in that way.

The wizard slowly walked around him, critically inspecting his stance for any previously ignored flaws. “While slightly unusual, your footing is impressive for a beginner. Your upper body stance is the issue. You’re not using some muggle stick. If you were to be in combat, minimizing might seem instinctual but ultimately proves to be suboptimal for your defense since casting requires your stance to be more open for optimal flow. Such a stance would be putting you at a disadvantage specifically for more powerful attacks since it inconveniences the flow of magic from your core.”

Percy huffed but obliged. This new stance felt completely foreign to him, as if he were running into battle in only his underpants. Underpants and fancy dress robes, he thought to himself. How the wizards had survived thus far was a mystery to him. “What is the core for anyway?”

Snape raised a brow at him. It seemed to covey a very unsubtle message of ‘are you stupid?’, combined with an undercurrent of ‘is Lupin stupid? He should have taught you this ages ago.’ All in all, Snape was a very pleasant person to be around.

“To access your storage of magic?”, he drawled, and the way his voice tilted upwards to the end seemed to imply that he was waiting for Percy to ask him what exactly a ‘core’ was.

Percy resisted the urge to roll his eyes. “I know that,” he said. He did, in fact, not know that, because he had forgotten about it, but he didn’t want to sound stupid. Or more stupid. “But why use my own storage of magic when there’s magic everywhere?” he settled on saying instead.

Snape was staring in the opposite direction when he stopped at his track.

“There is not.” he said decisively. If this was how he talked to every student, Percy could not imagine he ever had a problem with defending his authority. Perhaps he spoke this way because of it. Because he had defended it for so long, that preemptive hostility had become natural to him.

Preemptive hostility had never stopped Percy though.

“But there is!”, Percy countered, pointing wildly all around him as if it would make it any easier for Snape to understand.

Snape turned to stare at him and raised an unimpressed eyebrow at him, while somehow still skillfully avoiding direct eye contact.

“I read about it.” Percy lied. “Back at Gri-” he caught himself, barely, and cringed slightly for good measure, “-back at the headquarters. It said magical buildings are oftentimes warded and that the wards are permanently powered by ambient magic. So why not use that as a source?”

Snape sighed. “Wards are wards. You are a wizard.”

Percy relaxed slightly. The man had not noticed his slip up. “That’s not an explanation.”

“If you were a little more patient you might receive one.”

Percy snapped his mouth shut, a little sheepish. Snape stared at him unabashedly. “Sorry”, Percy said, without feeling even remotely sorry. The wizard’s expression didn’t change. He just nodded stiffly and began speaking.

“Magic is typically divided into two categories.” Snape resumed pacing the room, clearly in teaching mode again. “Light and dark- it is a common misconception both in muggle media and in the wizarding world itself, that this refers to the morality of spells. The moniker ‘dark’ is used to refer to indicate that a branch of magic is largely unknown and thus potentially hazardous. As its natural linguistic antithesis, the moniker ‘light’ refers to comprehensible magic. In most cases light magic is the magic of a wizard’s own core. The caster is familiar with it, the magic is purified and can be directed and therefore controlled easily with a wand.”

“It is, however, also possible to use another wizard’s core magic while casting- in the case of healing spells it is quite necessary, lest the healer overexerts themselves. But core magic, despite being the magic our kind thrives on, is only a small part of all magic. The vast majority is ambient magic- or as most call it- dark magic.”

Snape paused dramatically, turned to look at him again as if to make sure Percy was listening. “If light magic is familiar, pure and easy to direct and shape, dark magic is the opposite: unknown, wild raw, and entirely impossible to predict or direct. Impossible to control. But it is the largest reserve of magic there is, and so some wizards have decided to experiment with it anyway in hopes of becoming more powerful. It isn’t impossible to cast with it, but the amount of dark magic one can use safely at once is predefined by the strength of one’s magical core and inherited aptitude. Those who do not know their limit or are foolish enough to ignore it" – he lifts a hand, the fingertips ware charred and blackened- “always pay the prize.”

Percy, once again, found himself talking, without thinking. “You aren’t just a teacher, are you?”

“What are you referring to?” A raised brow. A reprimand, perhaps. Percy decided that he might as well dig this grave to completion, now that he had- figuratively speaking- shoved his shovel into the dirt.

“You might think I have no possible way of knowing anything about you, but I’ve been told I can be surprisingly perceptive. And as opposed to everyone else I’m probably the only one who isn’t prejudiced about- well everything magic, I guess? Cause I can’t be, I literally don’t know shit.” He realized at that point that he was still holding the ridiculous pose Snape had directed him into. He shifted into a normal stance, something deceptively loose. “That being said, when I first met you, I had a lot of thoughts and ideas about you. Being a soldier wasn’t one of them. “

Snape looked at him, blankly. The ground was soft. Percy found himself sinking into it.

“What I mean to say is don’t let yourself be pushed into roles you’re not. I’ve seen people fall victim to this and I’ve seen what it has done to them.” Silena Beauregard, spurned by the death of her lover, lying dead in a puddle of her own blood wearing Clarisse’s armor. A traitor to all and yet a victim until the end. Clarisse, trapped in an unspeakable rage, holding vigil over her dead friend with the Drakon’s tail speared on her weapon and bloodlust in her eyes.

“Just- well, you know, uhm -” His voice was shaking, and Percy somehow just knew Snape would take it as the naivety of a child instead of what it really was- a strange mixture of anger and regret as well as the inexplicable feeling of walking on eggshells. “Do what you think is right, think about what you actually want and go from there. It’s no use doing anything else. It only- well it only leads you astray, you know?”

Achilles dragging the body of Hector behind him for miles on end. Slaughtering his enemies on the battlefield in the name of his dead lover. Meeting his own demise at the hands of Hector’s brother Paris. Percy himself inflicting misery on the goddess Akhlys in Tartarus for a love that he now knew had already been doomed. The circle, continuing and restarting again and again and again without anyone ever having the courage to break free from it. He thought of the boy, who looked like Nico, staring at him blankly while Percy was telling him, was urging him to understand We can’t help what we are.

Snape was still staring at him. Percy, at a loss for what to do and kind of taken aback by his own bout of badly worded wisdom, wordlessly stared back.

“I can ensure you,” Snape drawled in is most condescending tone of voice that did nothing to hide his underlying irritation, “that I know far better what I’m doing and that I do not require advice from a teenager without any experience of importance, magical or otherwise.” His right arm twitched, as if in pain and Percy felt a subtle nudge of magic racing through it. Did the man want to jinx him? Snape suddenly stood up and turned to leave.

Percy shrugged, knowing Snape could not see him anyhow, and acted as if his supposed indifference didn’t make him yearn to strike up yet another storm. If the man was upset enough at Percy stating the truth, that he wanted to flee, he might as well deliver the final blow. “It’s true though, whether you like it or not. The dead of your past are just that- dead. And the only thing love to the dead can bring us is ruin.”

Snape came to a stop just as he was about to cross the threshold into the hallway. He did not turn around nor did he speak loudly and yet his every word cut into the stony silence of the room.

“I remember your grandfather once saying something like that.”

The door closed with a soft thumb.

All of a sudden, it was quiet, as if the birds, he had just heard outside, had ceased to exist and the winds had been forced into stillness.

Percy stared into nothingness for a second. Then once he figured that Snape wasn’t about to return for quite some time, he looked at the book he had brought. Beginners’ potions, it said. He knew that was what it said, because he had used a rune to translate it to the Grecian alphabet. Now he could read it without hindrance. He had discovered an issue and adapted.

Demigods were nothing if not adaptive, he found himself thinking grimly. Everything they did was to tear just a little slip of time from the world’s wretched, possessive arms and then wield it as if it was a weapon to return victorious from battle, only to do it all over again the very next day.

None of these were his words or ideas. It had been Annabeth that had told him this one night, a night which had passed countless night ago, as they were lying beside each other flat on their backs in the rain, back when rain had only been rain and not a harbinger of doom, back when they still had been too blissfully preoccupied with each other to notice the cruel tilt of a deity’s mouth, the way their lives would once again descend into madness and- if nothing else- stay that way, perpetual, like a photo taken at the wrong moment.

She had told him this, as she had told him many things. She, the girl who had grown up amongst her brethren, and he, the boy who had spent his life in boarding schools for delinquents and the streets of New York. She had taught him divinity and he in turn had taught her humanity. It was funny, he supposed, how that was what had driven her away in the end. They both had taken what they needed and moved to go their merry way. A regular transaction, if it weren’t for him foolishly having grown used to her presence, having grown to rely on her, her presence, her brilliant mind, and the wonders it could produce.

They both had lost sight of who they had been, who they had strived to be a long time ago. That was, as he was aware, the flow of time, sieging though his fingers until there was none of it left, or until his hand was worn to the point where he couldn’t even attempt to grasp it anymore and he himself would turn to dust for someone else to cling to.

He was only clay after all. Moldable, until it became breakable.

He gazed at the cauldron to his right. He should retry that boiling solution.

Snape did not return.

…

November 7th, 1996, Malfoy Manor, Wiltshire, Great Britain

When he was younger, he had made a habit of practicing his mother’s religion. Not avidly. Not even remotely correctly. He performed hardly any rites, and every offering he made could only be described as lacklustre. It was only the motions of deference, the pretence of devotion that Severus offered to these imaginative greater beings- imagination after all, was all they were to him.

It brought a spark to his mother’s eyes, though, when he joined her during her prayers, even though the prayers he recited were only the ones he had dutifully learnt by heart.

Then, of course, she had died a couple of months into his first year at Hogwarts at the hands of her brute of a husband. Her prayers had not helped her. Severus had placed a polished galleon on her cold chest and whispered a blessing for a safe descent. The book his mother had given him, the one with the illustrations of Apollo in his chariot, Demeter bringing spring in her daughter’s honour, and Poseidon controlling the tides with his fearsome trident, laid abandoned in his house on Spinners’ End, where one day Wormtail might stumble upon it.

Severus Snape had no room for the gods in his life. Gods were fairy tale creatures the desperate believed in, to give their life a semblance of meaning. He did not think himself above desperation, Merlin knew he had been desperate, when he first joined the Dark Lord as a naïve teenager, or when he had begged his lord to spare his only friend or when he had pleaded to Dumbledore to protect her. He did, however, believe himself capable of learning. And he had learnt that praying never helped anyone, that the only thing that did help was taking action.

So, when he had felt the dark mark burn that evening, he did not waste time praying to a god he did not believe in, that Perseus would be sensible enough to stay in this room, or better yet return to the headquarters. He simply turned and left for the nearest apparition point.

Severus felt the wards wash over him like a cool shower. His surroundings seemingly distorted for a second, then the world came into focus again. Now, instead of a bleak forest an opulent manor stood in front of him, with gardens that seemed to stretch into eternity. Several smaller buildings were littered across the grounds, in a carefully careless manner, while the bushes, flowers and trees were trimmed to perfection and arranged in the most unusual of shapes. It made for an intriguing mixture between the French garden, which both the Blacks and the Malfoys drew their roots from, and the English garden, which reflected their current standing, or so Narcissa had told him. She liked to ramble about gardening when drunk.

Severus, who did not care for gardening, beyond growing potions ingredients, kept his eyes downcast, tried to briskly cross the rows upon rows of rosebushes and head straight for the main building, but the tugging in his arm would not let him.

He lifted his head to glance in the direction the mark was leading him. Gleaming in the last rays of the lowering sun, the large conservatory seemed to mock him from its pedestal.

Before he entered, he cleared his mind and restrengthen his occlumency walls. Despite the improbability of the dark lord probing his memory at this time, it would not pay to get careless now. Then, without fanfare, he pushed the door to the conservatory open.

A lesser man would have gaped at the scene in front of him. Even though the sun’s light had already been almost completely distinguished, inside it was almost painfully light, as if it were still midday. The complicated structures that made up the conservatory was made of glass reinforced with marble beams. Lusciously green vines grew form the sky like emeralds and to the left and the right an abundance of flowers and plants decorated the walls, all varying shades of silver. A lavish banquet was spread across the refectory table in the centre of the room, with heaps of grapes, olives and fruits, slices of bread, artfully arranged meat cuttings, roasted legs of lambs and an arrangement of different kinds of cheese.

Amongst the attendants Snape recognised only the inner circle. Yaxley, the Carrows, Avery, Goyle, Crabbe, and Nott were assembling their dinner onto their plates with varying degrees of enthusiasm.

“Severus, I dare say you’re rather early. I trust your duties have not been keeping you?” the voice was deeper than the last time he had heard it, but the inflection remained the same. There had always been a mocking edge to his words, that Severus had once believed to be unique. Now he knew it was hereditary.

Severus bowed shortly at the hip. “I have only one duty, my lord”, he drawled, and did not finish the sentence. Most misjudged the Dark Lord in this way. Excessive flattery was not only unneeded, it was also rather irritating, regardless of whether or not it was genuine.

He was rewarded with a short chuckle, that managed to almost sound human. Out of the corner of his eyes Snape detected the Dark Lord’s snake, Nagini, lazing on a stone, her belly suspiciously round. An unfortunate muggle perhaps, that had gotten too close to the wards, or just another one of Lucius’ prized peacocks.

“I hope you don’t mind that we have started without you. As a small consolation I have taken the liberty of preparing this weeks’ dose myself.”

Only years of training of having to watch bull headed Gryffindors carelessly toss hazardous substances into their potions kept Severus’ eyes from widening. Most others did not have the same fortune. He vaguely heard Crabbe choke on a slice of bread. Severus looked up, at the Dark Lord’s face, hoping to catch some sort of clue.

This time he could not keep his shock hidden.

The Dark Lord was almost lounging in his throne like chair at the head of the table. Behind him grew a massive tree, practically glowing with magic, its branches seemingly touching the sun. It illuminated him from behind like twisted parody of the archangels in the new muggle religion. He had shredded his reptilian appearance like a snake.

He had hair again, dark as midnight and short with a slight curl toward the ends. Shadows spanned his checks like spider webs. He was still pale, but not inhumanly so. Instead, his skin tone almost seemed to highlight his otherworldly appearance, like something cut out of ivory. For a second the Dark Lord did not look like the Dark Lord. He looked like Perseus. No. That was not it. It was Perseus who looked like the Dark Lord. His grandfather.

His eyes, still a burning red, peered out of this new face as if daring him to comment. Then, he smirked, as if he knew what Severus was thinking. Cautiously, he probed his mental barriers. Still intact.

“That is- quite thoughtful if you, my lord”, Lucius responded, being the first to regain composure. He was seated to the dark lords right, while the chair on his immediate left was still unoccupied- evidently delivering the letter had made both him and Severus regain his favour.

“It is,” Severus agreed, still unable to tear his eyes from him. “Thank you, my Lord.”

The wizard did not respond to this, sans for a satisfied tilt of his lip and a wordless gesture to his left. An offering, not an order, though often these two looked the same under his service.

Severus sat.

The potion the dark Lord had brewed, was nit only an expensive one, but also extremely complicated as well as- naturally- rather illegal, when one is not a licensed Medi witch in St. Munges or something the like. Circumstances however required most of who sat at this table to acquire it at least once a month.

They passed the potion around the table as if it were liquid gold. Each wizard filled a few droplets into a small vial, that had apparently been specifically laid out for it, and then greedily empty it into their waiting mouths, most not even bothering to hold back their sighs of relief.

Severus, ironically, received his portion last, but the effect was just as strong. The shadows that he had collected under his skin receded instantly and the charred digits he had shown to Perseus earlier turned back into his usual pale complexion.

The dark lord, meanwhile, did not have such a vial sitting next to his own plate, nor where there any traces of blackened fingers, or the blown pupils, that were a side effect of the potion. He did, after all, not require such a thing nearly as often as the average wizard. Even if one is to take his larger than average magical core into account, that could only rival Dumbledore in strength, the wizard still had a remarkable resistance against the dark. Any other man would surely be dead by now. The dark lord, however, was stronger than ever.

Dumbledore had told him once about the man’s ancestry. A half-blood descended from the Gaunt line who traced themselves back to Slytherin himself. An illustrious line must be in possession of numerous creature inheritances, if the legends were to be believed. It was one of the only upsides to incest then, that those gifts had stayed strong in their blood despite the centuries that had gone by.

A stroke of luck, if one could call it that on the Dark Lord’s part. Such an inheritance would be quite difficult to come by nowadays, after all, without any demigods left to hunt.

“There are some promising options on the continent,” one of the carrows noted, swinging their wineglass, as if to appear to be at ease. Her hand shook faintly. “We could relocate recruitment effort there.”

“That would be wise my lord,” her sibling agreed, unsurprisingly, “there are still dark families in France who have aided us the last time. The Fontelles, for example, or the Duchamps, if only for their coffers. Or the Beauregards perhaps?”

“The Beauregards only current male heir is their disowned squib, that fled to the Lethal Lands.”

The Dark Lords eyebrow quirked in interest. “Is that so, Nott.”

“It is the widely spread story, my lord. The Beauregards have admitted to it themselves. There was word that he had a bastard daughter with some muggle woman around the same time he left, and that he left for the child’s sake since the muggle had abandoned him, to spare themselves the mockery, but she died almost two years ago. He did not seem interested in returning.”

“Interesting,” the dark lord replied absentmindedly.

“Alright, so the Beauregards are blood traitors. The Lacaus, then? They had been valuable allies in the last war”, the Carrow woman thew in almost desperately.

Severus subtly looked up to see whether the dark lor would react to this and noticed that Lucius had done the same. There was a silent exchange of glances. The dark lord did not take notice of this. He sat so still and ridged in his seat now as if he were a statue. Only the slight up and down movement of his chest dissuade from this illusion.

“Most disappeared,” Nott countered. “The last heir available was a woman. She married a mud blood and refused the inheritance. It has been frozen by the goblins in case another heir showed up.

“They suspect another heir?”

"Merely standard procedure form what I’ve gathered, though there had been rumours of a Lacau woman having had a child a few decades ago, it couldn’t be proven since she had disappeared without trace. In another two years or so the vaults will most likely go to the Malfoys, since the Blacks are incapacitated. Maybe sooner if we made a ruckus about it.” He glanced at Lucius and nodded slightly.

Lucius gulped and hid it by attempting to cough discreetly. Taking Saffine Riddle’s inheritance must be the last thing he wanted, if only to avoid her father’s rage.

“I do not believe that to be necessary, Tiberius,” the Dark Lord cut in mildly. Nott fell silent.

Lucius took the opportunity to speak. “These possibilities are neither here nor there. We currently don’t have the resources to send scouts to the continent, and it would draw more attention than it is worth anyway. We are best advised to leave the matter until we have freed our own from Azkaban. We need our forces here.”

“And what of after?”, Yaxley thew in.

“In the far future,” he countered curtly. “It is of no significance right now.”

“Remind me, Yaxley when can we expect our friends to join us?”

"We were able to move out predictions up by two weeks. In the middle of January most likely, beginning if we’re lucky."

“Pity those werewolves died,” Goyle mumbled. “Dirty, but effective, the lot of them. Can Greyback not get us another load?”

“Greyback is still recovering from his injuries. Still confused. Half the time he keeps insisting that Lupin summoned the flood, the other half that he saw a ghost stumble out of him. Apparently, he can’t quite make up his mind about it.”

Mild chuckles broke out across the table. Severus forced something like a satisfied glint to enter his eyes. It would not do to remain completely emotionless.

“Crazed pack, all of them”, Crabbe shook his head.

“We can hardly expect anything more out of these creatures,” the male Carrow supplied. He looked quite haughty about it, as if talking about how inferior werewolves were, somehow made him any smarter.

“I propose direct our focus onto the younger generation. There must be some intriguing students over at Hogwarts,” Avery said suddenly once the commencing chuckles had died down. “Children are the future after all, would you not agree?”, he smirked and glanced at Severus, “Professor?”

Severus wanted to strangle the man with all his might. He refrained. He did however shoot the man a mild glare. His distaste for his occupation was quite known in this circle. “Most are dunderheads,” he replied, his voice even as if he were talking of the weather and not of including children into a war. “At least according to their performance in my lessons, he added, “I cannot, however, make an accurate argument concerning their other strength or beliefs that they may exercise in private.”

The Dark Lord hummed, then glanced to his right. “Your son, Draco,” he said, his tone inquiring, “he is in the fifth year, is he not?” His voice was velvety smooth. He did not wait for an answer. It was, after all, not a question. “A Slytherin prefect, and second best of his year, I’ve been told. You must be quite proud of him.”

Lucius nodded once sharply, and said in an almost shaky voice, “I am my lord.” Despite the shaky voice no one could deny the truth of his words.

The Dark Lord hummed again, satisfied and leaned back in his chair. “He would be in an ideal position to look for those with- the right potential, so to speak. If he is amenable to it, of course.”

“It will be his pleasure, my Lord” Lucius bowed his head in deference. “I will inform him of his task as soon as possible- discreetly, of course.”

The dark lord turned his head to Severus. “Any other news, of the order, perhaps? I’m sure everyone here is burning with curiosity. You have our undivided attention.”

Mocking as it sounded, the statement was completely accurate. All eyes shifted to Severus in anticipation.

"I have heard of a new wizard being inducted into the headquarters. Rather young. A foreigner, one that is still rather- unfamiliar with his magic it would seem. But powerful."

The Dark Lord inclined his head in amusement. “So, the order favours strength over skill now? That was not something I had thought Dumbledore liable to doing.”

“Perhaps they favour numbers,” Nott commented, having regained his courage. “As opposed to us, they do not have the luxury of being able to strike at whatever moment they want- they are in the defensive position.”

The dark Lord raised his eyebrows in approval. A smirk broke out in Notts face. “Would you agree with that assessment, Severus?”

He shook his head. He still felt quite uneasy about this topic, but even Dumbledore, for all his secrecy had pressed the importance of the dark Lord learning this particular fact from him, and no one else.

“I doubt there is any intention to make him a member of the order.” He spoke carefully, measuring each word as if it made the difference between life and death. Perhaps it did. “Officially he is there as protective measure, but Dumbledore seems to dislike him. It is unclear whether the measure is supposed to be for him, or against him.”

Most attendant were leaning forward in their seats. Things had been moving slowly lately, apart from the unnatural storms, the death of the werewolves and the accidentally successful poisoning of an ambassador a few weeks ago. Recruitment had largely halted: raids were impossible in their current situation. They were ready for something new, something exciting.

The Dark Lord, however, sat completely at ease once again.

“Do continue, Severus”, he drawled. Interest gleamed in bis eyes, despite his earlier words, and perhaps a little impatience. Severus quickly calculated whether asking him to continue the discussion in private would earn him a Cruciatus.

“It’s a boy named Perseus. A half-blood, seventeen years of age with not magical education,” he paused, considering. “Born and raised in the Lethal Lands.”

Whispers broke out, some seemed stunned into stupor, others, Avery, slyly suggested that Severus was more like Bellatrix than they had previously thought. The Dark Lord raised his hand. Silence reigned once again.

“Continue,” he said, without inflection.

“Grandson of Aurelia Lacau,” Severus added.

The Dark Lord seemed almost impossibly still. His eyes were blown wide as he gripped onto the chair for dear life, and he did not even care to correct it. Shock was written into every crevice of his being.

“Tell me about him,” he ordered. His voice was raspy, emotional. No one else seemed to notice, still too distracted by what Severus had previously said.

For a second he felt reminded of Perseus again, him staring at the burning closet in that dammed shack in the Lethal Lands, a boy that had just witnessed magic for the first time in his life, and yet whenever he had looked away Dumbledore had stared at him as if he were merely a calculation to solve, yet another chess piece in his cursed game, that he could use and sacrifice at will.

Suddenly caution didn’t seem to matter anymore. Lily had sometimes used to say that Severus would have made for a fine Gryffindor; Lily, he now realized, might have only died because Saffine Riddle had chosen to hide from her own father.

He stared into the red eyes of his Lord head on and spoke.

“He looks just like you, my Lord.”

Chapter Text

November, 26th, 1996, Grimmauld Place, Great Britain

“Reducto,” he thought to himself. He mentally rolled the word over his tongue again, the intent, the shape, the path the magic would have to take from the core to the tip of his wand to the object in front of him. How it would fly through the air in a long, controlled arch, and land right under the tree, ripped to shreds. He thought of the advice Remus and Snape had drilled into him in turn. Make the magic work for you. Only suggest, don’t force, only guide it. Leave your grip firm. Do not let the magic slip anywhere it’s not supposed to go. Control yourself, lest the magic will do it for you.

“Reducto”, he repeated.

Nothing.

“Reducto,” he spoke a little louder.

“REDUCTO”, he bellowed. The pillow remained unperturbed.

“I think it’s a bit greyer now,” Sirius said. It sounded more like a question than a statement.

Percy sighed and closed the book with a little more force than necessary. It immediately caught on fire. Percy threw it into the lake. Sirius handed him another one from the stack of replacements sitting next to him. He didn’t open it.

For a few seconds it was almost peaceful. The garden of the black house was surprisingly English as if plucked right out of a fairytale scene. A lake, trees, the sun shining through the leaves onto them as if they were the main characters of a Shakespearean stage play.

“It’s no use,” he said finally. The sun was beginning to set, and he had practiced the same spell over and over again since midday with only very little improvement. Two days ago, his mother had IM’d him. She was six months pregnant. Magical children usually showed their first proper sparks of magic at the age of five. The last wizarding war lasted more than ten years. They didn’t have time for Percy failing at being a wizard. “We have been practicing for almost three months, and we have nothing to show for it.”

“That’s not true,” Sirius countered. “You are way ahead of schedule when it comes to theory.”

Small wonders. He had never studied so much in his life, not even during a prophesised war against immortal beings’ intent on destroying humanity and ruling supreme over earth. This was supposed to be a vacation; he thought with some bitterness. No life-threatening quests, no relatives out for your blood, no prophesised wars.

Not true, something in him whispered. You only wanted to get away from Annabeth.

Shut up, he did not say, since that would make him sound immature and crazy, and he was both mature and sane enough to know that that was not a good combination.

Percy flopped onto his back and let his hand dangle into the lake, revealing in the lack of Remus’ surprise tests, since the man had stayed inside. He felt his mind clear, and strength leaked back into his limps. If only magic could be as easy as reading a book on creatures, he was already largely familiar with.

“I’m sure I will do fine at magic schools being able to recount and analyse the differences between monkshood and wolfsbane and how it is fostered in aquatic or overly humid environment.” Percy half-heartedly blew a strand of his hair out of his face. It had gotten rather long, maybe he’ll ask Kreacher where he stored the scissors later. “The whole practicing magic part is probably not all that important anyways. Except for- you know-”, he shrugged, the fact that he’s still sprawled in the dirt making the motion awkward, “-the fact that it’s a magic school, and that’s literally the only thing I’m supposed to be doing.”

Sirius threw him a look halfway between concerned and chiding. “You’re being a pessimist. Stop it.”

Pot and kettle.

“I’m being realistic.” Percy sat up again. Kreacher always lectured him on keeping himself clean. He could be as hypocritical as Sirius sometimes; with the dirty rags he wore. Percy had offered to lend him some of his own clothes, and Kreacher had started crying and glaring interchangeably. Then he had offered some untorn, unstained fabric and Kreacher had reluctantly accepted. “Dumbledore has it out for me. He doesn’t want me to go. And then I will have to go on watching you and Remus eye-fucking each other across the hallway for the next few months.”

Remus would blush at these words if he were here. Sirius only snorted and then shrugged in a what-can-you-do manner. They matched each other’s freak quite well, Percy thought to himself. How they thought he hadn’t noticed them sleeping in the same room the last few weeks was beyond him. “I thought you didn’t want to go to Hogwarts,” Sirius countered. There was a grin in his words.

Percy threw a look at him that hopefully managed to convey an eloquent are you dense? “I don’t. I just want to get better at this. I’m no use when I’m just stuck here for the rest of the war!”

Internally he winced. He knew Sirius hated being stuck here as well, but he had no easy way out. He belonged to this world; it was his only home. It was this or death by dementor kiss. He braced himself for a fight.

Either Sirius didn’t notice, or he was kind enough to be willing to ignore it. “You’re not supposed to be of use. You’re seventeen. You’re supposed to stay safe.”

It was Percys turn to laugh. Age had never stopped the gods from throwing shit at him. Apparently, it had not kept anyone from involving this Harry Potter into their political machinations either.

He looked down into his lab where he had subconsciously started to fiddle with his fingers. The wizarding garb he wore had become weirdly normal to him by now, but right now it stood out like a sore thumb. It felt like a costume. It was a costume.

“My mom is still back home. In America.” Sirus covered a flinch. “For now, she’s safe, but if Dumbledore and Snape could get to me, then so can-“

“Your grandfather.” Sirius finished for him. “Listen, I know you don’t want to talk about him, but if there’s anything you need to get of your chest then- well, you know you’re not the only one with a difficult family history.”

Percy choked out a laugh.

It was quiet for a couple of seconds, but not uncomfortably so. Birds chirped in the distance. When he closed his eyes, he could almost hear the waves of his father’s domain crashing against the shores.

I don’t know him, he wants to say. Instead, he says-

“I look like him.” Sirius gaze snapped into his direction. He hadn’t expected Percy to respond beyond a shallow deflection. “Dumbledore mistook him for me when we first met. He called me by his name.” He tugged at the sleeves of his robes, at the tie around his neck the cuffs at his wrists, but not the painted beads strung around his neck. He huffed another laugh.

“You’re not him.” Sirius countered.

Percy looked him in the eyes, long and hard. “I don’t know him.” He said because it was important to him that Sirius understood. It was different. Sirius’ family had raised him and abandoned him. Percy was- it was different.

“I don’t know him,” he repeated. “I know his name. I know he’s powerful. I know he has done many terrible things. I know that he will do them again. I know that a lot of people rely on him during this war and that he probably thinks he’s only doing what he needs to do. But I don’t know him.”

Idly he extended his senses to the lake and allowed it to gently sway back and forth. Sirius didn’t seem to notice.

“My mom knew him though, And I think she loved him. Maybe she still does. But she’s still afraid and maybe she always has been. Maybe she told herself she could handle it. Maybe its-” his breath hitched. Sleeves. Tie. Cuff. The beads around his neck were suffocating him. He stopped seeing what was in front of him. Suddenly, he was more aware of the blood flowing through his and Sirius’ veins than ever. “Maybe it’s only the things he does and not the thing he is.”

“Something‘s changed while we were down there.”

Sirius only sat and let Percy talk. There was no judgement in his gaze, but his voice was firm and left no room for debate when he turned to respond.

“We cannot afford to think in these terms. It only harms us in the end.” He moved to sit up and idly vanished the books. Percy gaze followed his wand, with a small amount of envy. “You need to take a break. I’m going inside, Remus is making his enchiladas.”

Percy almost smiled. “I think I’ll stay here another couple of minutes.”

“Don’t overexert yourself. Remus says you’re still developing your core.”

“And then there’s your power,-”

“Yea, yea, mom.” Percy swatted a fly out of his face. Sirius barked out a laugh and stepped inside, leaving the door slightly ajar.

“-You’re always using them.-”

His mind was churning, he felt as if he was standing in front of a wall about to make his breakthrough. He had all the pieces, he merely needed to connect them.

“-And I feel bad for it, but sometimes I’m afraid.- ”

Wizards need magic to survive. They take it from around them, they purify it. It is in their blood and flesh and their souls. In one of the older books, they called the core ἀληθινὴ καρδία. Verum Cor. The True Heart .

“You’re not so different from me, demigod,” the naiad had told him at Geryon’s ranch. “Even when I am out of the water the water is within me. It is my life source.”

Water was his life source, not magic. His blood was infused with ichor, not magic. His flesh came from his squib mother. His soul had been bound by prophecy and broken oath. When he was fourteen the goddess of magic had sent her empousai to kill him. He had killed them, not with magic but with a sword.

He had only learnt how to properly wield a sword after he had found one that suited him.

”-Afraid that one day you will take it too far and never return. -“

Dumbledore had told him he was a wizard. And he was right. Inside his chest there was another beating, albeit a weaker one, a slight thrum of power just beyond his reach.

But it was no heart. It wasn’t integral to him. it was if it had been artificially sewn into him, like a parasite his body had learned to accommodate. It did not feel like him.

”- Afraid that you will leave me.-“

The sea does not like to be restrained, Percy thought. The dead of our past are dead.

The water was within him, but that wasn’t the entire truth. He was part of the water as well. That why it answered to his call. They were one and the same.

Percy thought of Grimmauld Place and of all the cleaning they had done. The feeling of the new magic interwoven into the old wood. How Percy always liked it best in the rooms that still felt old. Untamed.

Snape had told him that magic was everywhere.

“- I’m scared of how much I need you.-”

Wild magic. Uncontrolled magic. Magic that turned like his father’s tides, magic that overwhelmed like his sister’s storms. Magic that was like him. Like the sea he was part of.

Percy’s fingers found the hilt of his wand. It was warm in his palm, perhaps for the first time since he had bought it in that strange shop, as if in anticipation.

He looked at the open door.

“- I don’t think we can keep on doing this.”

He reached outwards instead of inside this time and felt. The water was infused with it. So was the tree. The ground sang as he caressed it with the back of his hand. It was everywhere.

He didn’t focus on his core. He didn’t focus on the way he gripped his wand.

“Collorportus”

The door snapped shut.

Percy stood up abruptly, wand still in hand. He breathed for a second. In and out. He still felt the magic pulsing through his veins. This time, he wasn’t exhausted.

He hesitated. Then he lifted his other hand and rested it atop of his chest, right next to his heart. When he concentrated, he felt it still. There it was. The slight thrumming of magic. Usually, it fluttered wildly whenever he attempted to cast. This time it was undisturbed like a frozen lake.

He glanced at his fingers. Snape’s had been black. His looked the same they ever did.

He raised his wand again and reached outward. The magic shifted again, it was as if it was a fluid, like water.

“Reducto.”

The pillow was ripped apart.

He sent out another spell, then another, until eventually he discarded all incantations and just blasted.
Then he blasted and he blasted until it all became shapeless, formless, until it just poured through him like the rain poured out of him, wave after wave after wave after-

By the end of it he wasn’t exhausted. A strange power was enveloping him, caressing him, tying him down. Strings. No, threads. His core felt numb, neglected. He was acutely aware of everything. Voices were whispering his name, calling to him, crying, begging, praying.

Then, with as wish of his wand. Everything was restored to its original conditions

…

That evening he received an invitation for the winter solstice. He set it on fire.

Tomorrow he would tell everyone that he figured the whole magic thing out. He would mess up a few spells up on purpose to feign a natural learning process. Then after the holydays he would go to Hogwarts.

He would do what he had to. No one would find out what he had done. It would be fine.

Everything would be fine.

…

November, 28th, 1996, Hogwarts, Great Britain

With a flick of his wand the office’s heavy wooden door slammed shut. Snape indicated to the chair he had summoned, while he himself sat down on his own. There was a brief pause where both were breathing heavily, albeit for different reasons. Then, once the professor appeared to have gathered enough of his composure to not start yelling as soon as he opened his mouth, he made to speak.

“What were you thinking!”

He glared at Professor Snape and settled back into the cushion as if unbothered. “I only did what I had to.”

“Your mother will be extremely disappointed. She has done her hardest to keep you out of this war and you’ve just successfully thrown yourself onto Dumbledore’s radar.

“As if he hasn’t already been suspicious of me. He knows who I’m related to.”.

“You are a child.”

“I’m not a child. I haven’t been since I have gotten this.” He reached under his collar and revealed his necklace. “I know what I’m doing. The Weasleys are all blood traitors. Potter is a muggle lover.” He gritted his teeth and shock his head so that strands of hair fell into his face, obscuring his sight. That stupid ‘Weasley is our king chant’ had been stuck in his head for weeks now. At least everything had worked out as they had intended. Well- except for the fact that they had lost the match. “They had it coming. It’s people like him, that have ruined everything for us. They are enemies of the Dark Lord and of magic and so they are my enemies too.”

Professor Snapes glare softened imperceptibly. “Draco,” he whispered. Suddenly he was Uncle Sev again, the man who had gifted him his first potions set complete with little carvings of dragons on the kettle. Back when he was a small child that could hardly light a candle with their magic, he had used to trace the lines on it, entranced by the way they flew around, and spread their wings proudly.

Now he traced the carving on one of the pearls strung around his neck. There was a dragon on one of then too; it didn’t move like his dragon did, but he didn’t mind.

The necklace was the most important family heirlooms the Malfoys had. A remnant of a different age before the Divide. It was-

“Have you been practicing the dark arts?”

Draco looked downwards. “I have the creature inheritance and the beads,” he replied. “It doesn’t bother me so much.”

Snapes’ scowl deepened. “They don’t ward off everything. Foolish boy! The dark is too dangerous!”

Draco glared at him accusingly. “You were younger than me and you don’t have pearls. I need to learn. You can’t stop me.”

Snape breathed in deeply and pinched his nose. “Show me your hands.”

He did; there was no reason not to. They were still unmarred. Snape inspected them, turning them this and that was. When he was finally satisfied, he let go of them. “You need to be more careful. Once you start showing signs-”

He rolled his eyes. “- Dumbledore will know. I understand.”

“It’s not just that. The dark can destroy you if you don’t pay enough attention to it. Once you start showing signs, you will never be able to stop practising. With every spell, it will eat away at your core, but as soon as you stop using it you will wither and die.”

Draco gulped. The spells he had tried had all been very minor things- incantations that only existed in the dark arts. They were difficult, but he had found himself liking it, even if it made him feel a little ill at times. The rush of power was heady but left his body feeling strained and heavy. His core always hurt, too, unused to the amount of magic it had to cleanse.

“I will be more careful,” he amended.

Snape nodded, but didn’t dismiss him.

“What is it?”, Draco asked warily.

Something complicated played out over Snapes face. Like wince, only more intentional. Then, as if having come to a decision he clasped his hands over each other.

“The Dark Lord has expressed an intent of marking you.”

Draco snorted and hoped the necklace hid the way his hand trembled at the though. “I know that I will take the mark after graduation. It is my duty.”

“He will have you take the mark this Solstice.”

Draco’s gaze snapped upward. “What?”

Snape was looking the other way. “There is a task he wants you to accomplish. He wants assurance of your unwavering loyalty.”

“My father has already told me of a task. I am to look for potential recruits among the students. There had been no mention of the mark.”

“This is a different task.”

“A different task”, he repeated. His head was still throbbing from when one of the Weasley had slammed him against the ground. “What task?”

“He will reveal it to you once the time is right.” His voice was even, no inflections. Draco remembered that Snape had taken the mark when he was little older than him. he wondered whether Snape had been like this back then too. It was hard to imagine otherwise.

A small trickle of blood splashed from his nose onto his white dress shirt. Perhaps Potter- no it must have been the Weasel; Potter was more of a scratcher- had hit him harder than he had thought. After this he might need to visit Madam Pomfrey.

His thumb found his way to the bluish pearl with the trident carving on it. It was his favourite pearl by far. These days he traced it whenever he tried to fall asleep. It felt as if it would protect him, as if there was something looking out for him through the pearl. Someone. Maybe there was. Demigod beads did have strange magics on them after all.

The pain lessened. Draco didn’t notice.

“What task?” he repeated.

Snape looked at him. “You are unlikely to come to any harm, but-” he sighed, “be careful, Draco. I have never encountered anything like this.”

He nodded; There was nothing else he could do.

…

The Slytherins were celebrating when he returned from the medical wing. They had been in high spirits all year, since the Dark Lord had returned, but today they were a wild, cheerful bunch, pushing over tables and chairs and jumping around like drunkards, all traces of pureblood training abandoned and forgotten.

Pansy greeted him by almost throwing the both of them onto the ground with the force of her hug.

“They’re out! The Weasley twins and Potter are out of the team!”

“What? Pansy-” he spluttered, one of her strands of hair had fallen into his mouth. He did not understand- they had lost the match, why were they celebrating? Before he knew anything, Pansy had managed to wrangle them onto the couch next to Crabbe, and now her wand dug into his rips from where she was leaning against him. Pansy was giggling uncontrollably. “What do you mean? What does that mean, they’re out?”

“It’s the punishment,” Blaise replied, from behind them. Draco almost yelped, he had not heard him coming. “Umbridge had them thrown out of the quidditch team, because they attacked you.”

“She can do that?”, he asked.

“New decree, or something like that.”

“Does it matter!”, Pansy spoke-yelled, still gleeful. She had somewhat regained her composure and was now redirecting most of her effort into rearranging her hair.

It did in fact matter. A lot. But he chose to disregard mentioning this since reality was beginning to kick in. A grin bloomed o his face, and suddenly he was smiling so hard his cheeks hurt.

“So, they’re out? They’re really, actuallly out?”

“That what I’ve been telling you! We’ve as good as won the cup!”

Laughter bubbled out of him, and out of Pansy too. Then Theo and Blaise joined them reluctantly and suddenly they were all laying there laughing, and for the day he forgot all about the Mark, the Dark Lord and the strange task looming before him.

Outside it was raining again.

Chapter Text

December 20th, 1996, Grimmauld Place, Great Brittain

Percy stared at the two gods, standing in the room he had claimed as his own, wearing matching chitons and shit eating grins, like the gods’ forsaken menaces that they were.

“Absolutely not.”

Their smile dropped a few degrees. Percy, to his credit, remained largely unperturbed, slammed the door shut into their faces and turned around to leave.

Naturally, they followed him.

“Aww, come on, Percy, favorite cousin of mine, it’s just one evening!”

Percy turned to glare at Hermes. “I’m not going. Flattery will get you nowhere.”

Apollo teleported himself right in front of Percy, effectively cornering him. “No wonder your girlfriend broke up with you, with that mindset.”

For a few seconds, Percy just stared at him.

It seemed to dawn on Apollo that he had just majorly fucked up.

“Wait, wait, wait, Percy, I didn’t mean! It- it was a joke, it was a joke, it was a joke- it was a- turn around, damn it! It’s- wait, no- Percy, go away- Percy, you can’t just- put that knife away-

Percy did not put the knife away, since it was not even a knife in a first place, but rather a dagger, and Apollo was really old enough to know the difference, but he did turn around in a very Snape-like-fashion, with his robe billowing around him and everything, and made for a dramatic exit towards the courtyard.

He sensed them behind him, one faster, directly at his heels, the other- presumably Apollo, whom he had, after all, just threatened with castration - hesitantly at a distance. Clouds were gathering in the sky, the thick smoky wades banishing the sun. He faintly felt their ichor running through their veins like tiny ropes he could grab and pull as he desired. For the moment he relished the feeling. Then, in the next he felt guilt hitting him like a tidal wave. He elected to ignore both sentiments. There was only so much he could process at once.

Apollo shivered, but only a little and not out of fear. The lines blurred. The wind picked up a notch, but the sun returned, and its rays seemed to caress the wind, as if calming a frightened animal.

Percy put the dagger back into its sheath; he had borrowed it from Annabeth, and then never bothered to return it. Maybe he should.

Hermes stood right next to him; Percy hadn’t noticed. At some point he must have had a growth spurt, since they stood at eye level now, where once Percy would have had to tilt his chin up just a little. There were the slight sprinkles of burning gold that rimmed his iris that revealed his true nature- almost human, but not quite.

“She won’t be there, if that’s what you’re worrying about,” he said. “She’s at university or something, it’s only the kids from Camp. It’s a small gathering, really- just the family and the demigods at camp and-”

“Is there a prophecy?”, Percy interrupted him.

Hermes rolled his eyes. “-and your father wanted to see you,” he finished. His tone was admonishing. Percy would have felt chastened, but the shame didn’t manage to cut through the thick layers of numbness that encompassed him these days.

“So, there is a prophecy.”

“There’s always a prophecy- it’s- well, you know, threads of fates, tapestry of the universe, the illusion of free will and all that jazz,” Apollo swatted his hand through the air, as if the illusion of free will was a joke whose punchline was to be executed through a literal punch. Perhaps to the face, Percy mused. “Look at this way, -” the sun god continued. He slid one of his arms over Percy’s back; It burned a little. “You are a wizard as well as a demigod. You are- the- the bridge between worlds! So, when it comes to this pesky little-” he hesitated, looking for the right term, “issue, you are the ideal candidate to resolve this.”

“There was a prophecy,” Percy concluded.

“Nothing concrete,” Apollo said. His hand slid off Percy, as if self-conscious all of a sudden. “But yeah… prophecy,” he finished lamely.

“Prophecy,” Hermes agreed. There was a grin in his voice. Apollo glared at him, annoyed. Percy shot both a confused look. Hermes winked.

“So… solstice?”

He should say no. He wants to, sort of. It’s not like he doesn’t want to see his dad, but he also doesn’t want to get involved in any divine schemes again.

But then again, Percy would get involved whether he wanted or not. He already was involved. He had decided to get involved when he decided to give this magic thing a shot. This way, he would at the very least be kind of informed of what he was getting himself into. Also, it was a good way of making sure the gods weren’t planning on just eradicating wizard kind and getting on with it. They had almost done it with humanity; he was under no illusion that they would feel any scruples about this.

Percy shrugged. “I guess.”

Apollo frowned and looked him up and down. “Not in this outfit you’re not.” He snapped his fingers and suddenly Percy was wearing a chiton as well. He cast a look at his reflection in the pond and for a good few seconds, he just stared- not angrily or irritated or even slightly surprised. Just silently and profoundly rethinking all his life’s choices and finding them severely lacking.

“Do you like it?”, Apollo grinned.

“I still have that dagger,” he answered.

…

It had become cold in New York by now, the familiar rooftops of the cities skyscrapers down below tipped with snow, but on Olympus the weather was still pleasantly warm. An eternal summer, without winters’ cold death pushing nature over falls’ edge. For gods there was no rebirth. Only birth and its aftermath. It was befitting, if nothing else.

The torches and fires surrounding the area seemed hilariously superfluous; Everything up in the sky was bright and clear, an aura of divine glow emitted from every available surface. Annabeth had created a masterpiece of marble and gilding, elegant arches and rich vines circling railings almost predatorily, sprawling gardens and bubbling fountains right next to an abyss. And under it all laid Manhattan, slowly being tipped into obscurity, but glowing faintly on its own like a moon reflecting the sun.

There was not a trace of magic to be found, ambient or other, except for Percy’s core, that had soaked up as much magic as it could back in London, rather reminiscent of a starving animal. Percy wondered what Sirius would think of a place like this, or perhaps Remus. He was a werewolf after all, so maybe there was some sort of exception to the rule for him…

Then again, maybe separation was for the best. The last thing CHB or New Rome needed was another war.

He was pulled out of his thought by a familiar giggle. Small hands were pulling at his chlamys. Smiling, he looked down.

“Hey, little guy, what up? “

Levi grinned, a small gap between his front teeth. His chiton was a little big on him and he did not wear the great chlamys of the Athena cabin, since it most likely would have swallowed him whole, but he didn’t seem to mind it. “Anni got me a gift!” He shoved his hands upwards and almost stumbled over in excitement. Percy took it with the reference befitting of holding the treasured possession of a child. Gently and with appropriate awe.

It was a cardboard city builder, but with a miniature version of Olympus instead of a city of the mortals; Percy recognized it immediately. It was the one she had used to visualize her ideas while designing it; she had built it up in his cabin, since her own had been too full. She had talked about taking it with them to New Rome; setting it up in their shared apartment in New Rome. A memory.

They had never had a shared appartement; they had wanted to look for one after getting confirmation from the university. The winter semester started weeks ago. Annabeth must have long since moved by now; she must have redecided.

Percy just smiled. “That’s nice of her. Did you say thank you?”

“Yea,” the toddler grinned and nodded, the tiny ponytail on top of his head bobbing up and down with the movement. Pery grinned back; it was only half forced.

“Okay everyone, back to your groups!”, Malcolm the current Athena cabin head called out. A bunch of campers were already trotting behind him like a small army of ducklings. He walked over and picked Lewi up without fanfare. “Now say bye-bye to Percy.”

“Bye-bye, Pwecy!”

Percy waved at them overenthusiastically, then, as soon as Lewi was sufficiently distracted by the fireworks, he exchanged brief nods with Malcolm. They left and he stared after them.

Before the abandonment could hit him with full force, Nico came from the side and handed him a glass. It was a yellowish color, leaning towards orange with a golden sheen to it. Percy took a sip. Orange juice, with nectar mixed into it. Next to him Nico drained the whole thing in three gulps. Percy shot him a look. Nico shrugged. “What? I was thirsty!” Percy snorted and took another sip.

For a few minutes they stood beside each other in companionable silence, watching Apollo flirt with a nymph that seemed less than impressed and equally appeared less than impressing to the god, but apparently humored him well enough, while Hermes told the Stoll siblings an anecdote on how to sabotage Apollo’s dates.

Then, eventually, Nico began to speak. “I told Argus what you told me to tell him.”

“Uhm… Oh, yea! What did he tell you?”

“He said, ‘oh yea forgot about that one.’”

Percy turned to face him. “He forgot about that one?”

Nico waved his empty glass about, like it had personally wronged him. “I know right? Like you’d think you’d remember losing an eye. But he just told me that, yea, it happens all the time! Apparently, Zeus’ Fist was actually Zeus’ real fist! He just regrew it at some point.”

“How did he lose it?” He was pretty sure he did not actually want to know, but morbid curiosity had him in a chokehold.

Nice shrugged. “I don’t know. Extreme arm wrestling? A very violent handshake? A papercut?”

He huffed out a laugh. “Ah well”, Percy shrugged. There was no such thing as arguing about the guy who apparently beared enough resemblance to a rock that his own father did not question it. “So, Argus really doesn’t want me to- you know get it back?”

“Nah, he says he has enough of them. How did you find that eye anyways?”

“Oh, well you know how it is with lost limps”, said Percy lightly. “Someone else was wearing it.”

Nico stopped on his track; sharply. Some minor deity almost walked into him. Percy sent them an apologetic, but vaguely warning glance. The deity, while still irritated, must have decided that pissing off two demigods and their respective godly parent wasn’t worth it, since he just left without picking a fuss.

“Wearing it,” Nico croaked out. His voice was faint with bewilderment.

Internally Percy was grinning. Externally he put on his bravest impression of Snape, who regarded everyone and everything with a look of utter indifference.

“Yes,” Percy replied, casually playing with a small ringlet of water around his index finger. “You know, like in their eye socket. They had lost one of their eyes and now they were just wearing that one. It was weird when I first met him ‘cause like- he kept calling me an intruder and I kept calling him an eye thief- which mine was true at least, but whatever. Still, not how you start close acquaintanceships built on mutual trust and appreciation, you know? Also, he’s super paranoid and probably hates me. But I’ll make it work-“ he paused, and the ringlet of water fell onto the floor with a very underwhelming splash. “I think.”

His cousin was still staring at him. “You know a guy who lost his eye and just- what? Exchanged it with a godly one, that just happened to be lying around? What were they up to? What the Tartarus have you been up to?”

Percy shrugged. “Nothing much. I’m honestly so bored over there. I mean- I fought some werewolves, but other than that- I mean there were a couple of owl incidents, but I lost those ones pretty soundly, so do with that what you will”

The disbelief in Nico’s voice deepened. “Owl incidents?”

Percy shrugged again. His shoulders were starting to hurt with ho kittle he cared about things these days. “Yea… Athena isn’t exactly happy with me, I’m afraid- not that that’s a surprise. But what about you? Anything interesting happening at camp?”

“Oh, I don’t know I haven’t spent a lot of time there lately. You’ve been missed though, or so I’ve been told. I’ve also heard of a group of demigods who have been sent out for a quest, but it’s nothing important or particularly dangerous and they seem to be skilled enough to get antsy, so it’s quest for quests sake if you will. Just to pass the time I guess.”

“Just to pass the time,” Percy repeated. He grimaced. “It’s things like that that turned Luke against Olympus in the first place.”

“We’ll, its things like not getting quest that turned others. They’re no Luke Castellan.”

“The gods should hope that they aren’t,” Percy replied, unable to keep the hint of bitterness out of his voice. Nico sent him a warning glance, but did not reply. He was right; he usually was. Olympus was not exactly the ideal spot to be critical of the gods, but it was the only spot he had for now.

He folded his hands over each other to keep them from fidgeting and blew a strand of hair out of his face. Then, he caught sight of a bunch of nymphs staring at him and giggling and turning towards each other when he stared back.

He looked down on himself, but nothing seemed out of the ordinary; the same chiton that everyone wore, with a blue chlamys with silver wave stitching on the edges, fastened over his right shoulder with a plain brooch. He had not liked Apollo just switching his clothes without permission, but since it seemed silly to waste time changing, he had just grabbed proper shoes and spare clothing he could change into before he got back to Grimmauld Place and went with it.

Somewhat confused, he turned to Nico. “Do I have dirt on my face or something?”

“Huh?” Then he caught sight of the ever-growing gathering of nymphs as well. “Oh. Or something most likely,” he snorted. “I suppose you’ve been missed up here too.” He looked up. “My Dads over there.” He pointed towards a corner of the hall, where Hades was glaring at some other deity Percy didn’t know. “He wants me to help with something, so I got to go- but Percy?”

“Yea?” Percy shifted his attention from the bubble of a fresh portion of orange juice-nectar mixture he had been trying to transport into his very much regrettably empty glass.

“If you want to have a mutually respectful acquaintanceship, I recommend not stealing any organs or limps from them.”

He grinned. “No promises.”

Nico snorted and trotted off towards his father who was by now very much looking murderous.

For a second, Percy was at a loss of what to do next.

Then he spotted her, almost clouded by mist, between another gathering of nymphs and a delegation of Ares campers in the back. She was quite beautiful, wearing a purple peplos with a belt reminiscent of an ouroboros, a snake biting its own tail. Her skin was deathly pale and her long, midnight black hair was partially pulled to the back and elaborately braided. When she turned, Percy took the chance to look into her eyes; they were dark, almost black.

Music was playing, had been playing the entire time, they had been up here. Annabeth had once explained to him, that it sounded different to everyone, that it changed based on whatever his personal preferences were. It had a mind of its own, like Ariadne’s thread, pulling him through the labyrinth.

The music changed; some couples on the raised dais in the middle of the room separated, others joined in. From across the hall Apollo caught his gaze and winked, looking much too smug for comfort, entangled as he was with yet another nymph. He raised a hand towards her, as well as a questioning brow; she grasped it, giggling.

It was as good a sing as any, he supposed.

Before he could decide differently, he strode forward, with purposefully long and assured steps. Around him, the inhabitants of Olympus shifted, and the mist seemingly grew thicker. His vision tunneled until all he could see was her.

He pulled one of his hands into a fist and moved it upwards in an almost violent fashion. Then he lightly tapped with it over the middle of his sternum.

The woman looked at him seemingly confused. For a second it seemd as if everything froze. Then, motion resumed, but without them as if there was a small invisible barrier that divided them from the rest of the world.

Percy smiled, and cocked his head, in a manner that Rachel had informed him made him look charming, opened his fist and offered it to her. “May I have the next dance?”

The wizard will always do this when asking a partner to dance, Kreacher had explained to him. he had been enthusiastic that day. He had managed to save some small token from Mirs. Weasley war path, and had almost started jumping with joy after Percy had asked him to tech him bits and pieces of pureblood etiquette. Beneath your sternum is your core; by placing a fist over it and giving it to them you symbolically offer your partner a piece of your magic.-

She blushed, almost shyly and took it. She stroke with the tip of her finger across index finger over his heel pad over to his thumb. He responded in kind.

A sophisticated witch or wizard places much value on the authenticity of their partner- of course muggles would never be invited to social gatherings, nor would anyone be able to feel the magic of your partner, but the practice is ancient. It stems from a time before the separation of muggle and wizard kind, even before the Great Divide.

He, of course, did not feel anything, despite him having the ability, but he did not mention it and instead drew nearer and led her to the dance floor, her hand in his.

“You are surprisingly charming for a demigod,-” she spoke, the first words she had spoke to him. She was cold underneath his fingetips, and yet her voice was warm. She allowed him to lead the dance, but at points her grip proved relentless, unyielding. A warning. “- Especially for a son of the sea.”

He heard what she was really saying. I know what you are.

Percy, for his part, merely continued smiling. “I’m trying my best, my lady,” he said lightly. “I’m afraid it doesn’t come as naturally as hurricanes though. “

Do you really?

She squinted. “You know who I am, don’t you godling?”

Percy could almost see the two other women behind her right then, one a slightly older woman and the other a fully wizened woman, each holding a torch. He blinked and they were gone again, leaving only the oddly ageless goddess. Responding seemed superfluous, and yet he still did, if only because she had requested it of him.

“You are the Lady Hecate, goddess of magic.”

“I am indeed.“ The goddess smiled. Not kindly, but not with cruelty either. The smile was as honest and disingenuous as anything could be. It was both and neither.

“What has brought you here, hero?”

He twirled her again in lieu of an answer. Then, when they stood chest to chest again, so close that he could have felt her heartbeat, had she had one, he whispered. “I am hoping for a crossroad.”

She laughed softly and continued in the same whispering tone. “I feel like you’ve had quite enough of those lately. You were faced with the decision to stay in New York or enter the wizarding world. You left. You had to choose whether to abandon your family for their safety or leave your pathway open to them at their risk. You stayed.” She smiled, and this time it was kind, like a mother.
“You either had to reject the dark and unknown but stay weak or embrace it and risk judgement. You are faced with many dilemmas, so many problems that require your guidance, you-“, she said and pulled away from where they had been pressed against each other, “-are very much like your coin.”

She held up the drachma. Before he could stop himself, Percy’s hand automatically went to his pocket only to find it empty.

“I would like to have it back,” he said, voice carefully blank. “Please,” he added, the word like ash on his tongue.

“Really now?”

Yes, he wanted to say, It’s mine.

“I will need it,” he said.

She smirked. “You will, but not in the way you expect.”

She closed her palm, and all of a sudden Percy felt a small weight in the pocket of his chiton.

For a second everything felt so loud that it, paradoxically, became utterly silent. An incessant drumming, like his heartbeat trying to outrace the sun. Then it was gone, and they started dancing again.

“War is dawning on the magical world,” he said.

“I have heard of it”, she responded. The beat picked up, the steps she was now guiding him through made them glide across the marble floor as if they weighted nothing. “Vaguely,” she added and looked to the side, as if overtaken by grief. “It is the world I created, but not one I am able to oversee very much. I have no stake in this war, as much as it saddens me.“

Percy remained silent; he felt it was best to wait for her judgement. He twirled her again and then he circled her, once, twice, as if he was but a planet orbiting the sun.

I’m listening, it said.

“Ive heard of you learning dark magic,” the goddess said eventually. I’ve heard of most things you’ve accomplished these past weeks; you’ve been quite the hot commodity these past few years. Regardless: be appeased when I tell you this: I would have visited you myself, laws be damned, had you not figured it out on your own.”

“I’m not affected by the dark, because I am a demigod.”

She smirked. “Yes and no.” They turned together, she stepped forward, he backwards. “Not all demigods can practise magic. In fact, almost none of them can. A core cannot be substituted. You either have it or you do not. And if you don’t, magic will be as unreachable to you as a tree is too a fish. A fish is not a bird and a demigod is not a wizard.” He regained the lead; the speed was still picking up, leading up to a crescendo.” You, however, are both. You have a divine connection to the world as well as a core that makes it attainable; It’s in your blood, in every sense of the word, it is the ichor that flows through your veins and the magic you channel though it. It grants you the ability to use dark magic without concern. In fact, you cannot handle anything else. Magic and divinity have long since stood at odds; your divine nature hinders the development of your core-”

“- but it also somehow prevents the damage dark magic does.” Percy finished. His mind was running a mile a minute “It can’t corrupt my core since it does not even attempt to flow though it. But why does dark magic need to be-“his eyes widened. “It is cursed. Wizards aren’t supposed to use it, so it harms them.”

She nodded. “You are far more cunning than I’ve been led to believe. I suppose you’ve inherited this from your grandfather.”

Percy quells his surprise at the revelation that the goddess knew of this- knew him. Instead, he gently turned the conversation back to where he wanted it to be.

“I’ve inherited more than that. As has my unborn sister - an American witch, the first in centuries if my information is correct?”

Hecate breathed a small laugh. It was deep, resonating. “Do not be fooled, hero, there is no shortage of Muggleborn magical infants. She will be one of many magical children for as long as she lives- however short that might be.”

Percy nodded to himself. “As long as she has magic, she will be hunted,” he said, his tone grave, but clipped. Factual.

“She will.”

He took a sharp breath. “So- ”

She pulled out of his light grasp and turned around to face him, and for a second, she towered a foot in the air above him. Her hair twisted like Medusa’s snakes, and he felt the presence of her power acutely, pressing into his skin. “So. what.” She pressed. “Little godling.” Her tone was light now almost mocking, but not quite. Percy was walking on thin ice. Regardless, he continued unperturbed.

“So, take it from her.” He shrugged. “Do not condemn a child. You are the goddess of magic; it is your domain, your hand that makes a wizard. You chose who is blessed by it and who is blessed to be without it.”

“Most of wizard kind would consider this to be exceptionally cruel.”

He shrugged again, as if it did not matter. As if nothing mattered to him at all. “It’s either the death of her magic or the death if her.”

“Having no magic is a fate much worse than death in the eyes of wizard kind.”

Percy almost rolled his eyes at that. “Well, I’m not wizard kind. Or if I am, perhaps I am merely the exceptionally cruel part. It wouldn’t be a surprise- in their eyes at the very least.”

She glanced at him again, her features softer this time. Her writhing hair calmed down and was now floating in gentle waves around her head like a halo. They had stopped dancing, but around them the faces of unknown dancers twisted their steps echoing in synch. It almost sonded like a liquid splashing on the floor in small droplets. Drip. Drip. Drip. Drip. It was enough to drive anyone insane. “I’ve been led to belief that the goddess Hera has offered you a different solution.”

He glanced down, as if ashamed, since that was truth. Truth turned into play. Something to be shown where it would otherwise be hidden. Semantics, once again, in its purest form, and yet it mattered to him at this very moment. Regret was not in a hero’s nature, but it was in his.

“I could not accept her terms.”

The goddess raided a brow. “Will you accept mine then, godling?”

He did not say what he thought in truth turned play. Did not tilt his chin up at the goddess, square his shoulder and defiantly look into her ichor rimmed eyes, different than those of Hermes, or Apollo, or Dionysius, and yet the same in all the ways that mattered to him, the ways that made her other and above. He would not look at her as if he too was other enough to be above and he would not say it. The truth stripped of play.

I will only accept my own terms.

Instead, Percy looked at her and nodded, his head dropping a little deeper and lingering there for a moment too long than to be considered a natural movement in any sense of the word. The closest thing to a bow he could stomach and still, it upset him beyond mortal terms. Inside of him the waves rebelled, and the ichor burned, the dripping mocked, but he didn’t let it color his tone when he told her, what he had told himself he would tell her when the moment was there. Play turned truth for as long as it served his purposes.

“I’m at your service, my lady.”

The goddess smiled. As far as anyone was concerned, it was real.