Annabeth Chase the Triwizard Champion

Chapter One

 Annabeth was fuming. How could Hecate just shove this quest on her and send her into the past with basically no warning and absolutely no time to tell Percy and her friends? And Chiron hadn't done anything at all to stop her! How could he let her do that?!

And now what, she was supposed to spend a school year away from everyone she knew? Sure, it would only be like twenty days from them, but for Annabeth it was almost ten months. Hecate had said she could write to her friends, but how was she supposed to even do that?! How would she even get the letters to then? Heck, how would she write the letters, with her dyslexia? How was she supposed to do this? Any of this?

Annabeth wanted to punch something. She stomped over to the nearest wall and threw her fist at it with as much force as she could muster.

That was a mistake, seeing as the wall seemed to be made of stone and Annabeth's knuckles were now throbbing and bleeding. The pain jerked her out of her thoughts, at least, and activated her logical mind.

Her dagger was still strapped to her thigh, luckily. Maybe she would stab something later. Scratch that, she would definitely stab something later. Maybe a particular goddess. Or two.

She looked around. She was standing on a cobblestone street, what looked like a shopping block. Crowds ambled every which way, entering and exiting every store. Well, almost every store.

The one she was standing in front of, The Leaky Cauldron, was completely ignored. No one even looked at it. Annabeth deduced that this, being the Inn Hecate had mentioned, was probably invisible to the mortal eye.

Annabeth realized there was a trunk at her feet, and a bag on her back. She was reluctant to go along with this after Hecate's abrupt and completely rude abduction, but she knew, past or not, being out in the open so long was dangerous. She didn't like the crowds, moving too fast for her to analyze threat levels, and she needed to get somewhere with less people and some sort of vantage point.

So, against most of her better judgments, Annabeth grabbed her trunk by its handle (based on how little it weighed, it was empty), opened the door to the inn and went inside.

The main room was dimly lit, with candles on the walls instead of overhead lights. There was a bar to her left, complete with stools and a hunched over man wiping a glass with a stick. Everywhere the stick touched the cup, dirt and grime vanished into thin air. Annabeth didn't see how that was more efficient than using a towel. Tables were scattered around the room with no apparent rhyme or reason, and the entire space had a musty feel to it.

A rickety staircase with no banister ran up the far wall, turning at the corner.

The room was mostly empty, but a few patrons sat at the tables and one person sat at the bar, drinking from a goblet that seemed to almost glow.

Annabeth walked over to the bar, wheeling her trunk behind her. She didn't see any other employees, so she decided to ask the man behind the bar, if you could call him that.

The man had a hunch in his back, and he seemed to only have a few teeth. His face was long and narrow, his nose jutting out farther than was natural. He looked more like a warlock than a man.

"Excuse me," Annabeth said cautiously, "are you Tom?"

The man/warlock looked up from his glass. His irises were completely black, and the whites were slightly bloodshot.

"Yes," He said.

Annabeth nodded. "I booked a room. My name is Annabeth Chase."

"Miss Chase? Yes." Tom set down the glass and rummaged for something under the bar. He came up with an old fashioned metal key with the number 12 engraved on it. "Your key. The room will be up the stairs, take the right fork, and it will be on the right."