Heroes with Wands

Chapter 13

Annabeth

I'd had a nightmare about my arachnephobia, I'd woken up the whole house screaming, and then we went downstairs to eat a nice fancy-dancy breakfast Mrs. Weasley cooked.

As Leo would say, YOLO, right?

I knew my face was still chalky. Everyone kept looking up at my plate to see if I was all right. I pretended not to notice, but it kind of bothered me.

I hated being the center of attention. I hated when people went all soft on me. I hated when they acted all nice and friendly when all I wanted to do was punch something.

Breakfast was awful. Percy and Jason and Leo kept trying to make small talk, but it died out quickly. Hermione and Ginny were talking to Hazel and Piper. Harry and Ron kept looking like they wanted to say something to me, but didn't know how.

Pretty soon, four owls arrived. They were from the owlry in Hogwarts.

Each owl had two letters. One had mine and Percy's, another had Piper and Jason's, the third had Frank and Hazel's, and the last had Leo's and something else addressed to the seven of us.

Professor Dumbledore said we were welcomed at Hogwarts. We'd be sorted with the first-year students, but we would take classes as sixth-year students with Harry, Ron, and Hermione. Ginny was younger than we were, but only by one year.

He invited Coach Hedge to be a teacher for us demigods as, like, combat training away from camp, I guess. Any wizards who wanted training could attend.

Mrs. and Mr. Weasley were taking us to Diagon Alley, where we could get all of our supplies for school. Coach would also be attending.

We weren't going to use wands or anything. Just learn about the wizards and everything, you know?

"Guys, open that letter," Harry said. "Let's see who it's from."

Percy unsealed it and read the letter. His face turned from a breezy expression to a concerned one. "It's from Thalia," he said. "She said Gration, the anti-Artemis giant, came to camp with two drakons and a Cyclopes early this morning."

Us demigods gasped. "What happened?" Leo, for the first time ever, sounded serious.

"He said that the giant destined to kill each of our parents were going to attack sometime," Percy said, eyes scanning the paper. "The Ares and Athena cabins killed a drakon, and the Apollo, Demeter, and Hephaestus cabins killed the other. Everyone else fought the giant and the Cyclopes."

"Was anybody killed? How's camp?" I asked nervously.

It was bad enough I'd had an arachnephobia nightmare again, but now camp being attacked?

"No one was killed, but a few were seriously injured," Percy said. "A few trees were burned. The naiads fixed that. Thalia said the dryads went mad on the drakons."

"Oh gods," Hazel said. "Dryads angry are not the people you want to run into." Nobody asked how she knew.

"Anything else?" Piper asked, sounding concerned.

"No," Percy said. Then his eyes landed on the bottom of the page, and he let out a laugh. "Oh, Annabeth, Clarisse said they really could've used us there. I think that's the first nice thing she's ever said to us."

"Wait, what? What did she say?"

"Oh, and there's this, look."

He handed me the letter and I read it aloud:

"'And PS. You will never hear me say that again until the day Olympus burns to the ground. And Prissy, DO NOT repeat that for Wise Girl's amusement.'"