Hey guys! I know I said I was going to update soon, but I have no idea what to write, so its going to take longer, so sorry because this chapter isn't very well thought out in my head, so yeah... consider this a back to school present. All Rights Go To Rick And Rowling!
Nico
When Percy got back from his detention, something was off. I couldnt exactly tell what. It could have been the fact that I was sensing Harry's invisibility cloak, since it had a distinct smell of death to it,
but right after Percy and Thalia had manipulated the mist and charmspoken "the chosen one", I knew that wasn't it.
I closed my eyes, and concentrated on the feeling as Harry stumbled out the door, a dazed smirk on his face. I could hear Percy filling Annabeth in, and them finally cutting the Iris message connection.
"You OK?" Percy asked tapping my shoulder, and I immediately felt it. There was something wrong with his life aura.
I focused on the strong sea green glow, which was now slightly tinted red from his extensive control over fire, that surrounded the son of Posiedon, and found that there was a small break in it. A tiny part was missing, right near the small of his back. I knew that the break in the aura and the achilles heel spots were a coincidence, but that was still dangerous.
A quick lesson on life Auras:(I'm making this up) Ths stonger they are, the stronger you are overall. If they grow weak, that means you're weak and close to death. If there's a hole in it, that means you are weak in the one spot where there is a puncture. Combine this spot with an old Achilles heal, and this was a recipe for disaster, aka death, in a demigod's case. The only was that this could have happened to Percy was an evil object from the depths of Tartarus, an object that had just so conveniently gone missing years ago, believed to be sold to some unsuspecting mortal.
"Nico!" Thalia sent a little shock through my body.
"Percy," I looked him right in the eye,"Part of your life aura is missing."
(I was going to end the suspense right here, but I decided not to, cuz im merciful like that! But heres something to look forward to. In the AN at the end, I'm going to reveal something big about the plotline.)
Thalia gasped, the twins looked at me nervously, but Percy just looked at me, his face expressionless.
"What?" he asked, his voice scary, like the calm before the storm.
"At the small of your back," I explained. "it's was where you were most vulnerable, so that was the spot it dissapeared from. You usually could withstand a blow to your old Achilles spot, but now, you're twice as vunerable."
"How?" Thalia asked.
"Long ago, in the depths of tartarus, there was an evil object, nobody knows exactly what it is, but it was stolen, long ago, by some unknown theif. The gods sent out their best warriors. Hecules, ares, Hephestus, The Hunters and Athena.
They were hot on his trail, so the man gave the object to a random mortal he came along, a king. When he was finally caught, the man gladly died, and his last words were, "You'll never find it now. It will destroy the one you will treasure the most!"
The object, whatever it was, as never found, and so it's still out there, and someone has used it on you. You will regenerate, but slowly. It will take at least a day for the aura to regenerate. Until them, make sure you dont get direct hits on your back."
He nodded, and thalia looked a bit guilty.
"Do you have any idea what this object could be? " Fred asked.
"Some say ita a book, or a pendant, a locket, a ring, or a cup, or maybe even a quill!" I told them, mentally combing through all the tales I had heard in the underworld.
At the mention of a quill, Percy had a horrified look on his face, but quickly fixed his composure, so I was sure I had imagined it.
"I think we need to let out some stress!" Thalia called, and we resumed our battle stance.
Percy drew his sword, and Thalia grabbed her bow, while I drew my stygian Iron blade.
We resumed to slash and hack at each other, even though it was more of a showdown betweeen thalia and I, since we were kind of hesitant to hurt Percy in his weak-ish state.
At around 3 o'clock, we finished out little battle, with Percy glancing at us with a bored expression, and Thalia with her spear at my throat.
We woke Fred and George, who were sleeping on the bench.
We walked to our common room, and talked for a while about the prophecy, before going to bed.
Time skip!!! Its Morning! Sill Nico's POV!!!
I woke up to Percy shaking me awake.
"What time is it?" I mumbled.
"You have 4 minutes till class starts!" He yelled. He was already dressed, and had his books in his bag.
"What!" I screeched, and proceeded to pull on my robes, and grabbed my books, running out of the dormatory.
"No breakfast?" I asked.
"Not for you. I got up three hours ago." he smirked, then his face went serious. "Nightmares. I didn't want to go back to sleep."
I nodded, then glanced at my watch. "Holy Hera! We're late by three minutes!"
"Nico! Hurry up!" Percy called, dragging me as I had stopped to stare at my watch.He ran really fast, his long legs carrying him a meter or two with each step.
"If only time would stop!" He called in frustration. Our first class was defense Against The Dark Arts, amd Percy seemed to be reluctant to get another detention, even though he was only writing lines. I glanced down at my watch again, hoping it was fast and that we weren't actually five minutes late to class, as the classroom was on the other side of the castle, but only to see my watch standing still.
I yelled in annoyance," My watch stopped!"
In front of me, Percy stopped dead in his tracks.
"Its just a watch! Not a big deal! Keep running!" I yelled. For some reason, Percy, Thalia and I had actually had started to like school, and we were actually making an effort.
I rushed forward, and stopped right next to Percy.
Right in front of me, I saw Collin Creevy, rushing towards a class, but the weirdest part was, he was frozen mid run, a terrified expression on his face, and a potions book in his hand.
"Percy?" I asked hesitantly. Had he just done this? after all, everyone had only frozen after Percy had wished time would sto-. No Way had Percy just stopped time!
Percy's eyes were wide, and a look of concentration came on his face. Suddenly, Dennis started to walk backwards, from a hallway on the right. The staircase we had just came on moved away to somewhere else, where we had boarded it, amd kids were spilling out the hallway, backwards. I stared down at my watch, watching as It moved backward half an hour, Percy looking over my shoulder in awe.
"Did I just turn back time?" he asked, his face pale.
I nodded slowly. Everything was moving normally again, but Percy and I were rooted to the spot, still staring at my watch in horror. Now, there was a lot of activity in the hallways, as people were streaming out of the great hall after breakfast in groups.
"where's Thalia?" Percy asked, his forhead already beaded in sweat. Controlling time must have tired him out, like my first time shadow travelling.
"Well, around this time, she was eating breakfast with Harry, Ron and Hermione," Percy remembered.
I dragged him off to the great hall.
We ran towarda the gryffindor table, ignoring the looks everyone was giving us as we almost knocked a first year down.
"Thalia!" Percy yelled. "Can you come over here for a moment?"
she gave us a questioning look, and the trio looked at us curioisly.
I gave her a look that screamed.'it's important!'
She nodded, and said bye to Harry, Ron and Hermione.
"We'll see you at DADA(Defense against the dark arts)!" Percy yelled, before rushing out of the room and up to the room of requirement. We would be safe and uninterrupted there.
"This is no time to train! " she hissed. "We're going to be late for the toad's class."
"I'm pretty sure with Percy, we'll never be late," I chuckled darkly.
"What do you mean?" she asked as we walked into the room.
"I can somehow control time," Percy told her. Thalia's jaw dropped.
"What!?" she asked in disbelief.
As a reply, Percy willed to room to change to help him explain, since the room of requirement was awesome like that. A huge clock appeared in the corner.
Percy closed his eyes, and the huge clock stopped. Thalia froze, and so did I. The next thing I knew, Percy's hand was on my shoulder and I unfroze. He did the same to Thalia, and her eyes widened. She opened the door and peeked outside. Everyone was standind still, frozen.
Percy closed his eyes and the students began moving forward really fast, as if someone had pressed fast forward.
When Percy opened his eyes, the flashed gold for a split second, before returning to sea green.
Time started to move again, and Percy turned to Thalia, her eyes wide and her jaw dropping.
"Do you have your books?" He asked her.
"No, but we still have like fifteen minutes right?!"she asked nervously.
"Sorry, but we only have two minutes to get to class, and im too tired to rewind time," he said.
"that's fine, Accio bag!" Thalia called, and her bag zoomed to her hand, "Let's go!"
"Wait!" I yelled.
"What?" Thalia asked in exasperation.
"I just wanna see if Percy's life aura has healed yet," I explained.
I concentrated on the strong light that surrounded Percy. I had to admit, Percy's was the strongest I had ever seen, shining bright green and fiery red around the edges. But I quess it made sense. Percy was the strongest demigod I had ever seen. That was when I noticed something shocking.
"Percy?" I said. "Your aura mended, but its golden, in that one spot."
Ron
The day passed by fast, with homework from every teacher. Harry had told us yesterday what Umbridge was making Percy do for detention. We had all agreed that we would tell Nico and Thalia about it while Percy and Harry, had gone to detention. They didn't seem to know about it, then we would tell Percy and Harry about our plan. I knew Harry would protest, and Percy might too, so we had brought a bowl of murlap essence(?) to try to win him over. His hand would probably be aching.
When Percy, Harry, Nico and Thalia walked over to join Hermione and me, I kept my eye on Hermione. I might have had the emotional range of a teaspoon, but I could tell that Hermione had a major crush on Percy, so did Ginny, and Padma and Parvati Patil, and Lavender Brown, and pretty much every other girl in the castle. He was a really good looking bloke. He sat down and smiled at the two of us. Next to me, Hermione blushed.lb I scowled slightly.
We talked about Quidditch for a few minutes, then the six of us started to do homework, sharing answers and generally having a good time. Hermione wasn't even grouchy when Percy upstaged her by finishing all his homework before her and even helping her with hers. About an hour later, Harry and Percy got up to go to their detention, and Thalia and Nico got up as well, probably to go up to the dormatory.
"Wait!" Hermione called. "Thalia, you're moon chart is wrong! Yours too Nico! Look!"
They walked back over, sulking, just as Harry and percy left the room.
"what's wrong with it?" Nico asked.
"Nothing!" Hermione told them. " but we needed to talk to you."
"Sure, what about?" Thalia asked.
"Well, Harry told us that for detention, Percy and Harry are doing lines," I started.
"That's what Percy told us. I must not be annoying!" Thalia snickered.
"What Percy left out was the bad part." Thalia stopped laughing.
"They weren't using their own quills, but special quills from Umbridge. They carve out words that you write in them on the back of your hand."
Thalia and Nico didn't take it the way we expected them to. They stared at us for a while, then Nico said," well, it's just a bit of pain, I'm sure they can handle it."
"What!?" I asked, utterly confused.
"Well," hermione said, flustered," you should know that Umbridge stopped using the quills for Harry, so Percy's the only one who has to do it."
At Thalia's confused look and Nico's unreadable expression, I started to explain further. I told them about the mysterious words on the window that seemed to be from You-Know-Who, and the little shock that seemed to go through Umbridge the moment he started to write.
Thalia muttered something that sounded distinctly like," Stupid Flaw." Whatever that meant.
"There's more!" Hermione said hurriedly.
Thalia and Nico watched us wearily.
"Well, since You-Know-Who-" hermione started, only to be interrupted by Nico.
"voldemort. You can say his name. Fear of a name increases fear of the thing itself."
"Alright. So since he has risen, we know that he'll attack soon. We also know that there is no chance for us to protect ourselves with a bogus ministry teacher like Umbridge. That's why we were thinking, with Percy and Harry's skill and experience, why not create a Defence Against The Dark Arts group taught by those two?"
"Does Percy know about this?" Thalia asked.
"No. Nor does Harry. We were going to fill you two in, then you can help us convince them when they get back from detention." I told them.
"Fine, but Thalia and I are going to go on a walk now. We will be back in about an hour, when Percy and Harry come back from detention." Nico informed, then walked out the room with a confused Thalia behind him. Hermione walked away, saying she was going to go get the murlap essence.
I sat down, groaning about all the homework I was going to have to finish by Monday.
(I'm gonna do a quick pov change to 3rd person so that we can see how Nico and Thalia's walk is going. Unfortunately, no thalico, cuz Thalia is still a hunter. Sorry!)
As soon as Nico and Thalia were out of earshot of the castle, Nico started to speak.
"umbridges quills are the evil life aura erasing object. She obviously doesn't know what they are, but she likes the results. This is why there were holes in Percy's life aura. He's been forced to use the quills. Percy didn't know what they were, but he knew they were bad, which was why he didn't tell us, and why he somehow got Umbridge to stop using on harry."
"What about the weird thing that happened to Umbridge every time harry wrote?" Thalia asked her cousin.
"It must have been the same thing that happened to Fred. Percy never told us about it or explained it though."
"We'll then we have to tell someone!" Thalia yelled," or do something about it!"
"We can't tell anyone. We might get moved away from this school if they think we can't handle it. We could steal the quills. Ive been doing research, and The myths always said there was one to three objects, so we are looking for three quills at the most."
"Let's do it tonight,"Thalia agreed. "Instead of training."
Nico couldn't help but wonder what they would do with the quills though, once they got them. It had weakened Percy considerably, but when his aura had healed, it had returned in a different colour with a new colour. It had given him a new power, which was amazing, but nobody knew what the object could of, because it was deemed too dangerous, and thrown Into Tartarus. Even though it had all it's perks, it had been throw into Tartarus for reason. It came with disastrous side effects. Nobody knew what, but we would have to wait and see.
"We should get back," Thalia broke the silence.
They walked back to the castle, and walked into the common room to see Hermione and Ron carrying a hravyvbowl filled to the brim with an ugly green liquid.
"What is that!" Thalia called as she sat down on the armchair by the fire.
"it's our way of winning percy over. It helps heal wounds, or at least soothes them. It will probably help Percy, because of those horrible quills," Hermione explained.
"They should be here any minute," Nico glanced at his watch. They had been gone longer than they had taken yesterday.
Finally, after what seemed like hours, Harry walked ito the common room looking bored and tired.
"Where's Percy?" Nico asked suspiciously.
"Umbridge said he wanted to have a talk with him. He will probably be here in a few minutes. What's with the bowl?" Harry asked.
Hermione was about to answer with a detailed description on how to brew the stuff, when Percy walked in, not noticing the five Standing in the corner by the fire. He seemed to be talking to himself, muttering something like," Grover! Are you there? "
Nico and Thalia looked scared, while The Golden Trio seemed worried for the mental health of their friend.
Thalia was about to call out to him when Hermione stopped her.
"I want to see what hes doing," Hermione whispered.
Thalia seemed hesitate, but then nodded.
Percy gave up on talking to himself, and sat down on a sofa made for two and stared sadly at the other end of it.
"Please be ok, annabeth, i can't lose you!" he muttered in a depressed tone.
Now, thalia and Nico looked seriously spooked.
Percy srtaightened up and took a square of some kind of desert out of his pocket, when Thalia reacted. Her eyes wide, she slightly moved the rug, making a sound that Harry and his friends wouldnt be able to hear, but percy would probably react to.
Nico stot her a confused look, to which she replied with a look that said," when he eats the ambrosia, he will heal immidieatly, and that's suspicious and we don't have an excuse for it, and what did he mean by "Please be ok, annabeth"?"
Nico's eyes widened slightly, which was a pretty serious reaction for him, then he shrugged.
As soon as the rug rustled under their feet, moved by Thalia's wind(i wasn't sure if she can control that!), Percy got up in a flash, and before they knew what happened, he was standing there, riptide in his hand and his other hand hovering over his sheild/watch, the ambrosia on the sofa forgotten.
"Hey mate!" Ron called nervously. Even without Riptide in full form, Percy looked intimidating.
The son of Posiedon visibly relaxed." Oh, itt's just you guys!"
His hand moved away from th watch and he slipped riptide into his pocket, without attraction any attention to the cncealed weapons.
"How was detention? Are you O.K?" hermione started to pour over Percy, asking him all sorts of questions and demanding to check on his hand, who all but Nico, Thalia and obviously Percy were horrified about.
"Here, this will help!" Hermione fussed, and gently placed Percy's hand in the bowl. He looked a bit disgusted, but then he relaxed and sat down.
"What was that stuff you were eating?" Ron asked curiously.
"Why?" Percy asked him.
"Just curious," Ron's answer was proven wrong when his stomache let a giant gurgle.
"Ronald!" Hermione scolded. "That was rude!"
"Sorry." Ron didn't look very sorry.
Percy and his two cousins let out the breath they hadn't realized they were holding. They had drawn the conversation away from the ambrosia. Without anyone noticing, Percy pointed his wand at the square, whispering," accio!"
The little square of godly food zoomed into his hand and he stuffed it into his pocket.
"What we were actually trying to tell you," Hermione tjrned to Harry and Percy while glaring at Ron," is that we had an idea about Defence Against the Dark Arts. Since you-know-who is back, we will need proper training to be able to fight the death eaters, and Umbridgd isn't exactly doing that, so we were thinking, why not start our own defence group?"
"That sounds great!" Harry exclaimed, surprising the others. "We could get Lupin to teach us secretly!"
"Actually, " Hermione said, wringing her hands nervously, " we were thinking Percy and you could teach us."
What will they say! It's kind of obvious, but I was running out of my midnight deadline, plus its a school night, and im kind of sick ish, so the next chapter, in thalia/hermione pov will continue from here! I still haven't publisjed the Percy meets Paul story, but I will soon. I also have to say, thank you so much for all your reads, votes and comments, and I kind of suck at third person writing so bear with me. Oh yeah, and I said there was going to be a spoiler in here, so it will be at the bottom, so you can avoid it if you want. Continue being awesome, and see you next time!
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This will eventually become a Chaos story!