Running (Harry Potter/ Nico Di Angelo)

Apologies.

Back at the cells, they sat Nico down again while Harry gathered his confiscated items.

Ron, who was supposed to lead the interrogation, looked up from his phone and towards Nico, "Fortunately for everyone, the plea your cousin snatched includes my investigation being terminated."

"Thank Zeus," Annabeth breathed out from Nico's right. Nico noticed her hands shaking as she tucked her hair in place and wondered how in the world she still had performance anxiety.

"Yeah..." Ron trailed off, raising an eyebrow at her choice of words.

Harry came back before any questions could be asked, "Your ring and your jacket." He handed off the items to Nico, who jangled the cuffs to remind them all he was still wearing them.

"Right, yes," Ron said, though Harry's eyebrow suggested the ginger hadn't actually forgotten. He unlocked the cuffs slowly and placed them on the table behind him.

"Thanks," Nico said shortly as he put his ring and jacket back on. He felt the pockets for a second before turning to Harry, "Are you sure this is everything?"

"Yup." Harry responded a little quickly. Nico knew for sure that wasn't it, that his pockets were much lighter than they were before, but didn't want to bring it up in front of Annabeth and consequently let it drop.

"Harry'll see you out," Ron said as he clapped a hand on Harry's back, saying quietly to him, "Meet me at Hermione's office?"

"Yeah, yeah, sure." Harry agreed as Ron left the room. He held the door after them and ushered Annabeth and Nico outside.

As soon as the fee had been taken care of, goodbyes had been said, and the two demigods had left the Ministry (with Nico promising to visit Harry) Annabeth proceeded to slap Nico so hard it left an imprint.

"Ah!" Nico barely had time to exclaim, gingerly touching the damaged cheek.

"We have heard NOTHING from you in two years! We get home for a month and you suddenly pop of?!  Where the hell have you been!?!" Annabeth scolded him, not caring that they still stood in front of the Ministry building.

"Traveling," Nico kept it short for he knew her rant was far from over.

"Oh, of course traveling. And the only time we hear anything about you is from HADES HIMSELF saying  you had been arrested! What- why didn't YOU call us?" Annabeth ranted on, shaking out her ponytail as raining her hands through her hair in frustration.

"My father? He came to you?" Nico furrowed his eyebrows, both at his father's communication with the heroes and with his father's knowing of the arrest.

"He just casually popped up in Camp Half-Blood at 10 in the morning asking for my help! Like it was nothing new! Just-just how many times have you been arrested, Nico? How many times did you not call us??" Annabeth looked at him with tired eyes, as if the boy three years her junior was a child she had to look after.

"I've only been arrested like ten, twelve times? Usually I don't get caught." Nico said quietly, figuring it was better to be honest up front. Lying wouldn't make it any better.

"Twelve—" Annabeth cut herself off, "You know what? I'm too tired for this. I had to prepare that entire speech AND catch a plane to London in the span of four hours and I'm done. We're going back to Camp Half-Blood where you're going to explain to everyone where you've been."

She latched on to his hand, and Nico had a brief thought of how he was taller* than her now, even if only slightly, and smirked. Annabeth seemed to notice as well and squeezed his hand to get him moving. Nico grumbled but soon enough they were sucked into the shadows.

~

They popped back up in the woods of Camp Half-Blood, Nico not in the mood to pop up in the middle of everyone to spook them. He tried to remove his hand from Annabeth's really strong grip but she was having none of it.

"Nope, I'm not letting you go just so you can shadow travel away." Annabeth snapped at him, dragging him by the hand towards the center of camp.

"Do you live here now? I would've thought you guys would be in New Rome by now." Nico asked after getting tired of the angry silence.

"We're visiting for Piper and Jason's engagement party. They were going to hold it in New Rome, but we wanted to include Leo and Calypso." Annabeth explained before stopping suddenly and turning back to him, slapping him once again with more force, "THAT is for missing the wedding! Do you know how much we wanted you there? How much Percy wanted you there?! We even tried to Iris message you only to find you drunk out of your mind!"

Nico rubbed the now throbbing cheek and cast his eyes downward, "I can't even remember that. I'm sorry, Annabeth."

"You can't even remember? How drunk were you?" Annabeth looked at him with such disappointment Nico felt like disappearing right then.

"I-I don't even know when you called. Being drunk has become a pretty regular occurrence for me." Nico admitted, sticking his other hand in his pocket as he tried to hide behind his raggedy hair.

"We'll discuss that later, let's go find the others." Annabeth lowered her voice as well, though Nico couldn't tell from fury or pity.

He clutched onto the contents of his pocket before finding a bit of paper that wasn't there before. He uncrumpled it the best he could one-handed and read the scratchy handwriting.

Nico,
Sorry for doing this to you, but three flasks that big is just unhealthy. It's also pretty excessive, but what am I to lecture on that? Anyway, I left you the half-full one so you can't be totally angry with me.

If you ever want to talk or want to visit, my number is 020-7946-0444 and I'm free to talk anytime. Hope everything goes well until then.

I'll see you around,
Harry Potter

~~

*The problem with this fic is that it takes place about four years later than all the info we have in the books currently. In Riordan's books right now, Nico is 14 and 5'6" (remember how I warped the timelines? It also made the war end two years later. Whoops). I tried plugging in some heights to see where Nico would end up at 18 but I didn't like the results. I used the average height for an adult woman in Italy (5'4") for Maria, and a "very tall" height for Hades (6'6") and the calculator gave me Nico's height at 6'1". My problem with that is that not only does that seem a little tall for him, but Nico would have a lot of nourishment issues— both from his limited eating after Tartarus and his newly developed drinking habits. So I've pegged him as 5'10-11" to keep him on the taller side, but not at his full potential. And yes, I really did that much research on a fictional character's height. I am that dedicated.

Anyway, please leave feedback, and I hope you enjoyed!