Daughter of Poseidon, the Girl Who Lived

24. We're stuck between a rock and a hard place (no, literally, look it up!)

Getting through the Panama Canal took a little over six hours as Harriet had to slow down to normal boat speed. Once we were through she predicted that we would reach the entrance to the Sea of Monsters in another six hours after speeding up again. It had gotten dark and I decided to spend the time sleeping. That was a mistake, as the nightmares came to me as soon as I closed my eyes.

~~~~~~~

I stood at the top of the Astronomy Tower at Hogwarts. Dumbledore stood near the edge, I could only hear one word he said.

"Please."

A green flash, and he fell.

Harriet held something in her hand, it was fake, she explained. After all the trouble and the high price they had to pay, it was fake. She told them how she was going to forgo her last year at Hogwarts and instead go search for the real one. How maybe she would visit Godric's Hollow, where she lived with her parents before Voldemort killed them. And if she happened to run into Severus Snape...

I was home, but surrounded by people who all looked ready to kill someone for the fun of it. A huge snake slithered across the table and swallowed a witch I recognised as Professor that teaches muggle studies at Hogwarts.

Harriet stood just outside the forbidden forest. She was holding a golden snitch. She held it against her lips, her eyes was bloodshot.

"I am about to die," she whispered and the snitch opened.

~~~~~~~

I woke up in cold sweat. It had all felt too real, but as I sat on the mattress panting my memory of it was already fading. Only that one sentence mercilessly remained.

'I am about to die.'

The worst was that this dream wasn't about the past. This dream was a vision of something that would happen in the future. And the future didn't look bright.

My thoughts were interrupted when I felt the boat start to shake a little and coming to a stop. When I climbed up on deck Harriet held a telescope to her eye, looking at something in the distance. I walked up to her.

"That's the entrance to the Sea of Monsters," she said. "Between Scylla and Charybdis. Both horrible creatures in different ways. Scylla has six heads with necks long enough to dive down and catch you within a second. Charybdis swallows the sea, dooming any ship nearby, and then spits it all out again. We have to sail between them to enter the Sea of Monsters, and if we try to avoid one, we'll only pass too close to the other. We need to pick one."

I looked where Harri was pointing ahead of us. I saw some high cliffs and could hear the faint sound of something like a toilet flushing.

"And we can't sail through right in between them?"

"Nope! Their ranges overlap each other. But go ahead if you want to face them both at the same time."

I jumped up in surprise. The voice came from my right and both Harriet and Severus was on my left, either focused on the problem ahead of us, or throwing up in a paper bag.

The stranger looked to be around nineteen or twenty years old and the ghost of a smile was playing on his lips, as if my sudden fright amused him.

I took a step back while Harriet stepped forward. Her hand hesitantly resting on the handle of Nico's black sword that hung from her scabbard. It made me feel a bit safer. Harriet could definitely win a one on one swords fight should this newcomer turn out to be hostile. But, of course, I didn't know anything about how good of a swordsman this man was.

If our change of positions bothered him, the green clad stranger didn't show it. He just smiled mischievously.

"No need to be aggressive, Poseidon's daughter. I've come to offer my help."

Harriet didn't move. She observed him. Trying to decide whether she should trust his words or not.

"What kind of help do you mean?"

"Well, you have of course realized that you have to encounter one of those two monsters if you wish to achieve your goal. I can help you with that. After all, this little boat don't have much of a defense against either Scylla or Charybdis, but I have a few tricks up my sleeve that could be helpful." He smirked at us.

This guy made me feel incredibly uneasy. Hadn't Harriet stood between us I might have tried to escape by running away or hiding. But we were on a boat in the big ocean. There were no place to hide or run.

"Why would you want to help us?" Harriet asked. "Is it something you want from us in exchange?"

"I don't want anything, you'll get your chance to repay me eventually."

"What do you mean?" Harriet carefully kept her guard up.

The guy sighed as if he pitied us.

"Oh, the bliss of being mortal and so unaware of what is to come. Even you are floating in uncertainty, though you're only half mortal." He looked at Harriet. "You have a hard path ahead of you. The forces that you will have to face are already awakening. Dare I even say, you have actually seen the glimpses of it two times. Powerful allies might one day be fatal for your success."

The guy, whom I now suspected was yet another Greek god, looked over at Severus, who had barely noticed our companion.

"The puker over there are already willing to go to great lengths to protect the legacy of his loved one, but he does not realize exactly how great those lengths will be."

His eyes now met mine and I felt a chill go down my spine. Those cold green eyes was figuratively piercing through my soul.

"And you, your role in all of this might always be looked at as trivial. But your involvement will in the end be the difference between failure or success."

I shuddered again.

"What measures you take to grant you success is not important to me, but it is in my interest that you don't fail," he said and looked back at Harri. "As to why you should trust me, you don't have much of an option if you want to get through this rock and hard place."

Harriet seemed conflicted. She looked over at Severus, who was momentarily done puking. He met her gaze.

"It's your quest. You make the decision," Severus said.

Harriet looked from Severus to Charybdis and Scylla to our black haired intruder. She took a deep breath and announced her decision.

"If you can swear on the river Styx that this isn't some kind of trick for your own gaining, I'll accept your help."

"Sure! I swear on the river Styx that it isn't some kind of trick."