When Myths Meet Magic || 5

31|| Nico

"Hagrid's done what?"

Annabeth and Jason stared at them, open mouthed.

"He's brought a giant into the forest," Percy said grimly. "And I'm not talking Hagrid-size. He's a real giant, sixteen feet tall and he's got on this brown loincloth and he looks like Thalia a bit."

Thalia whirled around, her knife aimed at Percy's throat. "Excuse me?" she demanded.

"Like his skin is this weird blue-gray," Percy said, not at all fazed by the blade at his neck. "Like Thalia's glow. The skin really reminds me of her."

Nico pursed his lips to hide a smirk. "And the hair too. And the nose."

"And the stench," Percy choked in laughter.

"Everte statum!" Thalia snarled, pointing her wand at Percy then Nico. "Locomotor wibbly!"

Percy was suddenly thrown backwards by some invisible force, arms flailing and smacking Ron in the face on the way.

Annabeth marched over to Percy. "Episkey," she muttered and Percy's wrist, which was bent quite awkwardly to the left, snapped into place.

"Sorry Ron," Percy apologized. Ron scowled at him and restacked his already messy papers.

Luckily, no one had noticed the sudden aggressiveness. Everyone was either back in the dormitories or in the library or, if they were outside, furiously trying to study like Hermione was. She hardly looked up as Nico collapsed, his legs spewing all over the place as they turned to jelly.

Because the final exams were coming up, and it wasn't just the final exams for them. The very mention of O.W.L.s seemed to add a few extra gray stress hairs to the fifth years heads. There was no more homework being assigned; all the teachers were trying to imprint everything they had ever learned in their minds. Five years of knowledge crammed back into their minds and more; especially for a few particular demigods who rarely paid attention in class because they didn't need to know the spells; they only had to speak in Greek. Thalia had never been so grateful for Annabeth pushing them to actually learn the spells.

"Tell me again," Will said as he threw down his papers and looked at Frank and Hazel desperately in the back of the library. "Why are we studying? We won't grow up to be legal wizarding adults. We won't get jobs in this world. Hell, we just have to say the words in Greek and boom, it'll happen. Well, Latin for you," he added.

Hazel rubbed her eyes, which were red from the amount of anti-dyslexia charms she had cast on them. "What's the wand movement for the color changing charm again?" she asked distractedly, apparently not processing Will's words.

"Small circles counterclockwise," Frank replied, staring fervently at Randall's Charm Theory vol. 6.3.18.

Piper could hardly catch a wink of sleep the two weeks leading up to the O.W.L.s. Pansy spent her nights reciting as many potions recipes as she could. Millicent insisted on practicing her charms and transfigurations which seemed to compose entirely of brilliant bursts of light accompanied by several animal transformations. One particular spell hit Daphne Greengrass's History of Magic books and they sprouted stumpy legs and a waffle tail and teeth and began gnawing at every surface it could find, zipping around in a furious waddle that looked an awful lot like Umbridge. The sun had almost risen by the time they managed to detain it in a small iron trap Piper conjured.

"What do you mean you don't know the countercurse?" Daphne shrieked at Millicent. "I never paid attention during class! I need that book."

"We'll bring it to McGonagall," Millicent snapped, seizing the trap.

"You'll bring it," Pansy corrected as she went back to reciting the recipe for Amortentia. "I need to remember this."

No Slytherin was taking the chance of relying on Snape's favoritism to pass their O.W.L.s. If anything, it made them study harder, as if to prove to the other houses that they could pass potions on their own, and that Snape wasn't favoring at all, they were just good at it. Well, that was Piper's mindset, along with Pansy and Daphne's. Millicent was a lot more stressed about Charms than anything else; she didn't pride herself on her wandwork as much as her... well, she didn't pride herself on her wandwork or anything else.

"Nicolas diAngeliconia," Thalia scolded as Nico practiced lengthening the shadows by the lake several days later. "I swear to the gods if you do that again, you're getting much worse of a hex than just the jelly-legs curse."

"Nicolas diAngeliconia," Jason repeated. "That's got a nice ring to it."

"My name's not even Nicolas," Nico said exasperatedly. "It's just Nico."

"Well it's going to be soul number four hundred ninety-one million if you don't shut up!" Annabeth growled, muttering the wand movements for transfiguration under her breath. "Do you not care if you flunk fifth year?"

Nico shrugged. "Not particularly," he said easily. "Because I know I won't. The only class I don't pay attention in is History of Magic, and we all know I'm not failing that."

"For all your talk of animal cruelty and gender equality and justice in this world in the past few years," Thalia said as she threw down her copy of Flaxenwurde's Guide to the Foulest Fritters in the Forest. "You really give crap to the ghosts."

Nico shrugged again in response. "D'you think Firenze will notice if I Mist-up some smoky figures?" He asked.

"You're abusing your powers," Annabeth chided, letting her arm drop to her side from where it was drawing images from trails of purple silk using her wand. "Being a demigod doesn't mean we can just waltz through this life and give rules the finger."

"Or does it," Percy mused.

Annabeth elbowed him in the shoulder. "Percy," she warned.

"What?" Percy defended. "Even if we weren't demigods, just wizards sent back in time, we'd still be more advanced than the other wizards in our year. By now, we'd be long out of school. Well, except Nico," he added. "Nico would still be a fourth year."

"Mhm. And therefore we all can cheat except you, Skull Boy," Thalia said with a sisterly shove in the lake.

Sorry if the story is progressing slowly