The last days (hp+pjo)

4. Say what now.

The bickering demigods ran after Annabeth and the wizards. Mrs. Weasley was telling Harry, Ron, Ginny, and Hermione where they needed to go. The group's first stop was "Flourish and Blotts" for spell books and Annabeth and Hermione to freak out among all the books. 

"I can't believe there are so many books on wizard history! Guys look! They have all our books in Greek!" Annabeth squealed. "Here. Percy, you and Nico can carry all the books." She started to load all the books they needed into Percy' s arms. Nico laughed until she started giving him books to carry. 

"Blimey Harry, she's just as bad as Hermione!" Ron said. Harry agreed with him and watched in awe as Annabeth loaded more books into her boyfriend and Nico's arms. Then she dragged them around the store grabbing a book on pretty much everything wizard she could find. Percy laughed as Nico had to carry just as many books as he did.

The rest of the wizards were a bit shocked at Annabeth' s reading habits too, except for Hermione, who was right along with her. She seemed excited that she had found somebody who shared a love of reading with her. After they all had spent a good thirty minutes waiting for Annabeth, Mrs.Weasley did a spell to send all the books back to the house. Next on their list was Madam Malkin' s robe shop. It took a while for everybody to be fitted. While they were waiting for Harry and Ron, Annabeth decided to ask Hermione some questions.

"Does all the mail get delivered by owl here?"

"Yes. Scared my parents when I first got my letter!" Hermione laughed. "But they were so proud to have a witch in the family once they found out about the wizarding world. They're dentists you see, so they never even thought wizards were real. "

"So you're a muggle-born. Me, Percy, Thals, and Nico are all half-bloods. Does mudblood mean dirty blood?" Hermione looked a bit surprised then replied, 

"Yep. Mudblood is a huge insult, by the way, don't go calling anyone that. Where did you hear that anyways?"

"I didn't. It's written on your arm. Who did that to you? Why?"

Hermione looked down on her arm like she'd forgotten that that was there. "For the past few years it hasn't been a good time to be a muggle-born. Voldemort, through his spies at the ministry, made it illegal in fact. All the muggle-borns were hunted down last year and had to prove that they were descendant of at least one wizard or else they were sent to azkaban, the wizard prison. The ministry was handing out pamphlets and propaganda that muggle-borns should be taken out of the wizarding community. Those who were smart went on the run or left the country. Harry, Ron and I were the most wanted wizards. We were on the run, hunting down horcruxes, pieces of Voldemort' s soul in certain objects. Unless the hocruxes were all destroyed, Voldemort couldn't be killed. We spent the year on the run looking for them and destroying them. I got the scar when we were caught by some of Voldemort' s followers. I had put a charm on us so they wouldn't recognize us, but they went into our tent and saw we had something that they thought belonged to Bellatrix, Voldemort' s second in command. They brought us to Malfoy manor. Luna and a few others were trapped down in the basement. They put us down there with them. Then our charm started to wear off. They brought us up to Draco, his mother, Bellatrix, and a few goons. She asked Draco if Harry was Harry or not, and he said that he couldn't tell, and then no. He tried to save us! Draco, who had never said a nice word to any of us before, tried to save us." Hermione took a moment to take a deep breath then continued, "Bellatrix saw straight through my disguise. She had Harry and Ron put back downstairs while she started to torture me. She wanted to know how we had gotten into her vault at Gringotts. She was worried we had destroyed the horcux in it, which we had. I wasn't telling her anything, so she used the cruciartis curse on me. That didn't work fast enough for her, so she craved "mudblood" into my skin. Then Harry and Ron got upstairs and came to the rescue. There was a small fight. We ended up losing Dobby. He was the house elf who had warned Harry of serious danger before, and had been a good friend to us. When he was apperating us to Bill's cottage, Bellatrix threw a knife that hit him square in the chest. He died a little after we got to Bill's. Harry took the death pretty hard, and personally dug his grave. "