To Find What is Lost

Chapter 31: Spying

"No, Pansy, I'm sorry." Nico was trying his best to deal with the situation reasonably, but Pansy was a living monster. Nico groaned, "Please Pans me and Will have to do something really important and we can't go clothes shopping with you now."

"Why not?" was demanded angrily.

"We went shopping with you the day before yesterday!"

The two opposing parties, or to put it more clearly: Pansy vs Nico & Will, had come to a standstill. Pansy wanted to go clothes shopping, as she said none of the boys had anything to wear to the ball. It was true, of course, but Nico was starting to panic. The reality of his mission was finally starting to dawn on him and he really needed to get on with the plan, tomorrow was the ball and then they only had two days before Will left, if Will left he might crumble into dust, the blonde was his only hope at the moment.

But Pansy just wouldn't back down. No matter what! She was almost as stubborn as Percy. And to make matters worse Blaise was on her side; not that he really had a choice of course. Just when Nico was starting to lose his patience Will finally stepped in.

"Look, Pansy. I know you want to go shopping but me and Nico have a very important assignment from our American school that we need to do today. It's essential that we do it, but after that we can go shopping with you?"

Pansy hesitated, she looked between the two boys and finally let out a low grumble of consent. "Fine. But don't blame me if you don't like what I picked out for you!"

So apparently they were still getting clothes. Nico wondered if that was a good or a bad thing, he wasn't sure he wanted Pansy picking out his clothes for a ball. However, now that she had decided to go without them Pansy was gone almost before they could blink, dragging a helpless Blaise behind her, and the two boys were left standing alone in the common room with a group of terrified first years (first years seemed to be perpetually terrified, it was strange).

Draco was gone again, he had disappeared after the snowball fight yesterday and no-one had seen him since, but Nico wasn't very worried. He disappeared a lot.

Now that Pansy, Blaise and Draco were out of the way, the demigods had no excuse to put off the mission any further. Grudgingly, they sat on the common room sofa in front of the fire and tried to think...

But the crackling of the fire was so lulling...

For the life of him Nico couldn't think of anything. It was like the mission had blown up somehow in his mind to an impossible scale of a million steps, get to know Granger, find out what she's doing somehow although they had no idea where she even did whatever she was doing, then what? Convince her to give it up? Destroy it? They didn't even know what it was! What if it was some kind of animal! What if it couldn't even be seen physically!

Nico didn't notice that he had fallen slumped down over the sofa with his head in his hands until Will shook his shoulder gently.

"Look, Neeks, I think we're going about this the wrong way."

Nico looked up at his boyfriend with a desolate expression. "Yeah?"

"Yeah!" the son of Apollo continued to explain excitedly, and suddenly he looked delighted, grinning widely at Nico as the lightbulbs hit.

"We don't have to do all this! These are just some ideas we've come up with before that are bogging us down now, think about it. Let's just break it down into really simple pieces."

Nico sat up a little more interestedly, could Will have found a solution? The blonde continued.

"So the mission itself is very simple really: Granger is developing something, we have to stop her. Simple."

Nico growled in frustration and rolled his eyes, "Well that helps so much, thanks, I really couldn't have figured that out myself."

Will too rolled his eyes and said slightly impatiently, "Oh get off your high horse for a second and listen, we've been going about it the wrong way, we thought we had to get to know Granger, when really all we have to do is find out what she's up to and stop it."

"So what do you suggest, we spy on her?"

Will nodded eagerly, "Yes! We follow her around and at some point she's bound to lead us to whatever she's developing."

Nico hesitated for a second, and then his eyes lit up, "You know what, that's actually a good idea!"

At this the blonde snorted with a smirk, "Of course it is Neeks, I'm a genius."

Nico swatted at his boyfriend but he was grinning. Of course Will would be the one to come up with a solution, his wonderful boyfriend. Actually now he came to think of it the son of Hades wasn't really sure how he could have missed this for so long. Maybe it was... what was that thing called? Mind block? Something like that.

After coming up with this ingenious plan, the boys sat awkwardly for a few minutes, did they go start spying now? How did one even really spy? Just following someone around Nico guessed.

They had just decided to play some wizards chess when a third year came scurrying up to them with a message for Nico,

"Professor McGonagall wants to see Mr. di Angelo in her office immediately."

Nico was curious as to what she wanted, but the third year wouldn't tell him anything; only saying, "Only Mr. di Angelo, his friend was not invited."

So after a quick bye Nico left Will alone in the common room and headed toward McGonagall's office. The last thing he saw before he left the common room was Will trying to ask the mortified third year her name, stupid wonderful polite son of Apollo.