Harry Potter and the Norse Gods

{20} Hogsmeade

ALEX'S POV

dear annabeth,

sorry i haven't written you lately, skool's been busy. listen, we've found out something about voldemort's ally - the rightful king. it's he-man. y'know, the old norse god. i wanted to ask what you think our next steps should be.

love from your cuz,

magnus

I grinned as I folded up the piece of parchment and slid it into an envelope. Besides me, Magnus himself was barely managing to contain his laughter as he wrote another letter - probably reading much the same as mine. The two of us had picked a random pop culture figure for our misdirection scam. Hopefully, no one would realise who we were actually talking about for a while.

"Done?" I asked.

"I am now," Magnus answered with a smirk, sealing his letter inside of another envelope.

"Come on then," I said, bouncing to my feet and over to the window in our common room.

I unlatched it and pushed it open with one hand, and then dangled my letter outside. Magnus followed suit, but neither of us let go.

"So... do we just drop it?" Magnus inquired, peering at the ground, presumably for any sign of a wind spirit.

"I guess so?" I answered, "Hey! Wind spirits!"

"Don't yell at them," Magnus hissed.

I was about to snap back a retort when the wind began to pick up beneath the window. I saw a flicker of a woman's face before it faded into the air again.

"Hah!" I laughed.

"Yeah, yeah," Magnus muttered, rolling his eyes.

He dropped his first; I dropped mine a moment later. The letters plummeted several feet before being picked up by the wind and flying in the direction of the Forbidden Forest.

"Is that the way to America?" he questioned.

I shrugged, closing the window and latching it shut.

"Does it matter? We're not actually intending for our friends to read them."

"Fair point," he conceded.

We stood in silence for a few moments, the only real sound in the room being the crackling fire.

"So... what do we do now?" Magnus asked.

"I heard something a trip to 'Hogsmeade'," I suggested.

"I think I heard people talking about that. That's the town, right?"

"Sure. Why not have a town called Hogsmeade?"

"I know. It sounds fairly ludicrous. Wanna go?"

"Oh, absolutely."

= = =

Hogsmeade was both overwhelming and underwhelming at the same time.

It looked like a typical small English village, just with some magical shops, and restaurants and bars that served magical food and drinks. The joke shop looked exciting, but its stock was mostly gone. It looked as though it would shut down within the next few weeks. The candy shop - Honeydukes - was probably the best part of the whole village.

I got a bunch to strange sounding candy, like Acid Pops, and Chocolate frogs - which actually jumped - and Cockroach Clusters.

All-in-all, the trip was going rather well until we ran into Nico and Will leaving Honeydukes.