Remember those days when I updated once every two weeks? Lol now I've finally updated after two and a half months.
Hahaha sorry to keep y'all waiting. I don't really have an excuse for not updating so...
I'll just...
I'll just get on with the chapter.
Sorry again :(
Meanwhile...at Hogwarts
It was the day of Circe's wedding, and about 10% of the school was nervously chewing on their lunch in the Great Hall.
Not everyone was at the Great Hall. Some were at the library, their common rooms, or the rooms closest to the place they were guarding. They agreed that it was far too dangerous to have everybody in the Great Hall. Somebody could drop a big Greek fire bomb and take us all out.
Dumbledore was at his podium humming a happy song to try to keep the mood from turning too gloomy.
Anyone above second year were allowed to stay and fight. Before the Second Wizarding War parents had taught their kids additional defensive and offensive spells, so even a little second year can cause some trouble.
This was the Third Wizarding War.
Or the Second War extended because the two wars were like, less than half a year apart.
Those poor, poor, wizards.
"Poor you," Leo told Kinzie.
Kinzie, temporary leader of the Amazons while Hylla was away, was sitting at the Gryffindor table with the rest of the demigods and a few students. Her Amazons were patrolling.
"I do not like this arrangement," she growled.
Kinzie was scaring the other students (especially the guys) with her stares, and the fact that Thalia was stressed and was also glaring at everyone wasn't helping matters.
In an effort to distract Kinzie from her glaring, Leo prodded, "Remember the plaann?"
She wrinkled her nose at his tool belt, as if imagining that it should be an iron collar around his neck instead. "Of course I do."
"But we have no plan," Percy said, sounding lost.
"Shh," Nico said. "Don't tell anyone that."
Annabeth stopped scraping her food into the Greek fire and blinked at them.
"Just kidding Wise Girl," Percy grinned.
"Seaweed Brain!" she scolded. Then she sighed, "I'm not going to mention any names, Percy, but I'm afraid there are people who don't quite understand the plan. So I will explain—"
"No no I remember it," Percy protested.
"We're going over it anyway," Jason said, "since we don't have anything else to do."
"The enemy could attack from either end," Piper said. "Including the Chamber of Secrets, since a mysterious vortex has appeared in there."
"It totally didn't arouse my curiosity," Leo commented. "I only threw about thirty-four hammers into it."
Kinzie's nostrils flared, "Your male did what?"
"Piper stopped me!" Leo said quickly. "I threw zero. None. Nada."
"Two actually," Piper muttered.
"We decided to forget the stunt Leo pulled with his hammers to prevent ourselves from throttling him," Annabeth said. "Though I did hope he hit someone on the other side. Anyway, Leo bombed—Yes Kinzie, he had my permission—Myrtle's bathroom so most monsters can't use that path. One teacher and about twenty students will be situated there. Traps and similar things were placed everywhere outside Hogwarts and enchanted so a student couldn't spring them. Snape, Dumbledore, and McGonagall will be running around in the school assisting anyone in need. Right now most of the teachers, prefects, and members of the Order are patrolling."
Jason nodded, "Yeah, and once everyone's done with their lunch, or whenever the enemy attack, everybody will run screaming in an orderly fashion to their posts."
Thalia frowned like You're so stupid bro. "How do you scream and run in an orderly fashion?"
"They'll be fiiiiiine," Leo reassured them, dragging out the word so it sounded like they wouldn't be fine.
"And how do we plan to get rid of the goddess of night?" Kinzie demanded. "None of you have given me a straight answer."
"Well," Leo said, "we do some stuff. Then some more stuff. Then we win."
Before Kinzie could strangle him, Piper quickly passed her some mashed potatoes, "Just have some potatoes."
Instead she had a dagger in her face.
Which she caught, of course.
The Great Hall exploded into chaos.
Immediately the demigods split up.
Kinzie, Nico, Jason, and Piper flew (and Jason literally did), out the door and out of the castle. They were going to fight on the outside.
Thalia stayed in the Great Hall. She shot an arrow into the air without looking, which embedded itself into a dracanae's forehead. The snake woman let go of the ceiling and plummeted onto the Slytherin table before turning to dust.
The twelve Slytherins on the table scattered while the rest of the demigods burst through the doors to their own places. Dumbledore helped Thalia with the ceiling, which was crawling with monsters shrouded in shadow.
Thalia left Dumbledore and the other students to deal with the creatures in the Great Hall and dashed to Moaning Myrtle's bathroom to make sure nothing got past Leo's traps and into the rest of Hogwarts.
Percy and Annabeth bolted to the moving staircases, where they could easily spot any student in need of assistance.
Along the way, they passed Bill Weasley battling two Cyclops, and Fleur Delacour fighting an empousa.
To their surprise, there were many students from the other two wizarding schools in Britain who came to battle.
Anyway, barely two seconds after Percabeth arrived, Dean Thomas got shoved off the fourth floor by an enemy Athena boy.
Annabeth shot a levitating charm at Dean, and he came to a stop inches from the ground before she released the spell.
"DUDE!" Seamus Finnigan yelled down.
"I'M FINE DUDE!" Dean shouted back, giving him two thumbs up.
Percy, Riptide already uncapped, slashed and vaporized three telkhines. Then he spun and stabbed a Hellhound, which melted into shadows.
Amidst the fighting, he shouted, "Wise Girl! I know I've asked this exactly seven times, but where in Hades is Hemera supposed to be?"
"My guess is the Chamber of Secrets, but nobody can get near the vortex without fainting or dying. If there's anything behind it, there's no way we can get to it. We'll figure something out later!"
"It's already pretty late," Percy observed, sidestepping a Cyclops's club and slicing the monster in half.
"Percy," Annabeth said, "I don't know how we're going to free Hemera, okay? I don't know."
***
Thalia stopped in front of the girls' bathroom (or what it was) to stare in disbelief.
Leo had bombed the bathroom, so it looked devastating enough, but Padma Patil, Zacharias Smith, Colin Creevey, and Professor Flitwick were all on the floor, dead.
There was a dirty wet footprint on Smith's white shirt, and Thalia looked at where it was pointing.
Indeed, there were more footprints, it faded after a few yards, but now she knew the direction (unless it was a trick, but she decided not to dwell upon that).
First she poked at the wreckage, making sure there weren't any random demigods cowering under the rocks.
She found nothing, but figured any enemy demigods (or whatever attacked these people), were already long gone. Parts of the wreckage was missing, so someone/something had definitely come out of the restroom. She quickly blocked it up again right when two Amazons came. The three of them shared a brief nod, the Amazons would guard the Myrtle's bathroom.
Right before turning the corner, she heard a student screaming nearby, and ran out just in time to fire five arrows at once into the back of a laistrygonian.
Neville turned beet red when he saw her, embarrassed to see that someone had heard him scream, "Oh, thanks."
"No prob." Thalia raced off. She decided there was no way she could track anyone like this, she wasn't a Hunter anymore. She sighed.
She climbed another flight of stairs. She passed five friends in Ravenclaw who were fending off a horde of telkhines. They were doing fine, so she moved on.
Thalia positioned herself at the window. With a bow, she was better at long-range anyway. She squinted down at the people below. She was surprised by how many monsters were out there. She took down a cyclops about to club a third year in the head. Then she stopped for a moment and thought. It was strange...why hasn't she seen at least one demigod under Nyx's control? Not even outside...
Well, she hadn't been all over the ground floor yet, but still, pretty weird.
Sixth sense told her to look behind her. She did, nobody was there, and she heard nothing close by. The big battles were on the first floor and the outside.
Sixth sense told her to look again.
She peeled her eyes off a nice Hellhound target and looked.
Nothing there. Wait...why is this place darker than the outside?
The former Hunter raised her loaded bow. It was pure instinct that when Michael Yew burst out of the shadows, she shot him in the heart.
***
The outside situation was a bit difficult.
Many of the people patrolling had been killed, which was why the attack had happened so suddenly. Most people on the first floor had been warned, so casualties weren't soaring through the roof just yet.
The Chimera and the manticore were really causing headaches.
When Nyx rose out of Tartarus for the final time, she seemed to had pitied the monsters sulking around vowing revenge, and brought them up with her.
Leo's traps were working excellently.
He'd set them up all around the perimeter of Hogwarts, and nearly all of them had sprung. Leo was currently running around resetting them, and anyone who dared disrupt him got a hammer in the face.
Kinzie was beating up the Chimera while Piper and Jason dealt with the manticore.
Hermione helped them by shooting pretty lights everywhere to confuse and blind the monsters. Other people caught on and pretty soon the chance of going blind rose by 35%.
The manticore AKA Dr. Thorn, kept thinking the lights were flaming arrows and he wasted his time dodging them and deflecting them with his tail.
Unfortunately when he swatted at the lights with his tail, thorns shot in all directions, and eight students had already been poisoned.
Hermione threw Shield Charms over injured students and then joined Nico in holding off a wave of Stymphalian Birds, who had already killed two students, and were currently attacking Nico's five skeletons.
Someone was in the bell towers clanging the bell like a lunatic would. That just made the birds go crazy and fly faster. They didn't leave.
Hermione Conjured up a large net and caught about twenty of them, but there were still thousands swarming the sky.
Jason, and Kinzie killed the Chimera, and Piper was attempting to calm the birds down, but there were too many.
Jason stopped putting out the fires the Chimera had set and ran over. He made a pushing motion with his hands, and the carnivorous crows got squeezed all together.
He glanced at Pipes like, What now?
Hermione raised her wand and yelled in a powerful clear voice, "IMMOBULOUS!! IMMOBULOUS"
The Freezing Charm literally stopped the birds in their tracks.
Jason wiped the sweat from his brow and gave Hermione an impressed look before running off to help Nico and Piper kill the manticore. Nico seemed very eager to take down the Dr. Thorn.
The few stray crows were taken down by a Slytherin, Mythlina Voclain (StarfireStella). She'd been claimed as a daughter of Hecate, and was doing a spectacular job.
Leo Valdez rewound one contraption and stuffed more Celestial Bronze bullets into it. He had really stocked up on those things, melting the rusty and broken-beyond-repair weapons and armor that'd been abandoned in Bunker 9 (after drawing them so he could make them again, of course).
An empousa was rude enough to interrupt him, "Heyy therrreee."
"Can't you see that I'm working?" Leo grumbled, not even looking up as he threw a screwdriver at her face.
She dodged, and in her anger, her hair burst into flames, "HEY!"
"Oh sorry wasn't looking," Leo carelessly threw a wrench at her donkey leg.
"You're going to scar me!" the demon lady's nails elongated into talons and fangs sprouted from her mouth.
"Dear me, how dreadful."
She hissed with tremendous irritation, eyes glowing with rage.
Leo decided he must deal with this crazy lady with his undivided attention.
He stood up and calmly raised his two-faced Celestial Bronze hammer with silver spikes on the ends. The only thing that made it not very intimidating was the fact that it was pretty small.
Sniffing at it in distaste, the empousa lashed out at him with her talons.
He swung once and smacked her in the shoulder. She shrieked and scratched his arm, which made him drop his hammer.
He pretended that this wasn't all planned. He struck a grave face, "Lady, you can take my hammer...BUT YOU CANNOT TAKE AWAY—" Leo pulled out his real hammer, "—MY BACKUP HAMMER!!"
The vampire's face went from triumph to Hades' underpants I'm confused.
He buried it in her face and she exploded into dust, wailing in outrage.
***
I finished writing this chapter and now I'm like...where the hades is Drew at this point? I just forgot her lol.
I guess she's in the library keeping Ethan occupied.