Percy and Nico Undercover at Hogwarts

Chapter Forty Three (Percy's POV)

Percy's POV

The next thing I knew, I was falling forward. I quickly moved my hand in front on me to catch myself before I face planted onto the mattress.

Nico had left.

He had shadow traveled away.

He had left me.

Why?

Why would he do that?

He told me he felt and by some miracle, it was exactly how I felt.

Ever since I talked with Leo at the bottom of the lake, I'd been trying to figure out my feelings, and I had.

I'd taken a while, but once I admitted it to myself, it felt natural. Normal. It felt just like it did when I was crushing Annabeth, and that's how I had known it was real.

I moved my hand and let myself flop face first on the bed and let out a groan of frustration, thinking and over thinking what had happened.

Jason already knew Nico had a crush on me?

Does Nico still like me?

Why didn't Jason tell me?

Why did I kiss him?

I shouldn't have kissed him.

I should've just talked to him and then kissed him.

Maybe.

After I had asked his permission or something like that.

That way I wouldn't've scared him away, causing him to shadow travel away in a panic.

Wait... if he left in a panic, then he probably didn't know where he went.

What if he ended up in a China? Didn't he say that he sometimes goes there by accident? What if he didn't have then energy to get somewhere safe?

I quickly got off Nico's bed and left there room, running out of the Gryffindor Tower, ignoring Ron and Harry as they tried talk to me as I went through the Common Room.

I paused outside of the painting, making sure that I wasn't going to be followed by the overly-curious boys.

"You can't leave this time of night!" The Fat Lady said to me. "It's past curfew!"

"It's an emergency," I said and she rolled her eyes.

"Oh, an emergency, that changes everything," she said sarcastically and ignored her and started running down the stairs.

After about six flights and countless turns, I was in the DADA room. I ran to the back of the class, went up the few steps and paused to knock on the office door.

"Come in," a muffled voice said and I entered the office and walked up to the adjacent door that led to Apollo's room. I knocked as I walked in, already talking.

"I kissed Nico and he shadow traveled away and the lights were on and it was in a panic and he's probably in China or something and he probably needs help and-." Apollo cut me off my rambling by holding up a finger. That's when I took in the picture in front of me.

Apollo was sitting on a made bed, holding a pen, surrounded by crumpled up pieces of paper.

"Would you like to hear a haiku? I've been working on some," he said and gestured to the mess around him.

I really didn't, but since I was about to ask for his help, I was willing to suffer through a few lines of poetry.

"Sure."