Royalty (demigods at Hogwarts)

Uncontrollable Sparks

It all started with an explosion.

An explosion on the worst possible day, in the worst possible time, in the worst possible lesson.

An explosion in Potions class.

Hazel honestly couldn't see what she'd done wrong. All the first-years were doing was brewing a simple potion with extremely little wandwork required, so it didn't make sense for her to get it all so horribly wrong. She'd measured the right ingredients, meticulously copied the instructions from the blackboard- nothing to warrant an explosion.

The strange thing was that even before the explosion, things had been acting off. Hazel couldn't get some of her spells right. Multicoloured sparks erupted from her wand and the most random times, her things floated around her, and for a second she had a vision of a three-headed dog in the castle.

Sparks when you didn't mean to create them were not good. Things that floated when you didn't want them to were bad. And three-headed dogs snarling viciously, drool seeping from their mouths, were a sign that things were very, very strange- and not in a good way.

She just couldn't understand it. It was already three weeks in the term- she'd had her flying lessons and taken all her subjects at least three times with no difficulties (and encountered Leo Valentine several times, but that was beside the point). It just didn't make sense for things to go so haywire so suddenly.

So she'd done one of the only rational things she could think of- ask someone else.

Piper was gone to her giggling group of friends who took every opportunity to belittle Hazel. Annabeth had never really been there for her in the first place- besides, she wasn't in the mood for cynical comments. She'd barely spoken to Leo, and she didn't dare to Sally-Anne or Hannah for fear that it would turn out to be some sort of weird adapting system muggles went through and her carefully crafted background would be revealed as fake.

And so that left Percy.

Sweet, oblivious Percy Jackson.

'Are you having trouble with your magic, too?' probed Hazel slightly desperately, her hands fiddling together in her lap. She was so anxious about what Percy had to say that she actually had to refrain herself from leaning forwards in anticipation.

'I've kind of always had trouble with it,' laughed Percy, half-jokingly, but she could hear undertones of bitterness beneath the carefree veneer. He shrugged nonchalantly, however, to keep up the image that no, he wasn't really hurt by it. He'd expected not to be good at it, but that didn't mean it hadn't come as less of a blow. This was his chance to escape his abusive stepfather and it turned out that he wasn't even good at the damn magic thing. What use was that? 'Hard to tell whether I'm struggling especially at this point or...'

'Oh,' said Hazel in a small voice. She seemed to shrink back upon herself, shrivel due to the sudden lack of excitement that maybe, just maybe, Percy could sympathise with her.

However, it seemed that this time, that wouldn't be the case. Sighing, she pulled one of her curls. She didn't want to admit it, but she was agitated. What if it turned out that it was just a brief spell (excuse the pun) of magic that she'd had? What if she wasn't good enough, strong enough, magic enough?

'What are you thinking about?' asked Percy gently, putting a friendly arm around Hazel's shoulders. He looked into her eyes and smiled kindly, patting her back to make her feel comforted. He didn't want anyone to go through a period of sadness alone, no matter how short it was, because both he and his mom knew how it felt.

'I don't know,' blurted Hazel. 'I don't know about any of this or any of that and I don't know what I'm supposed to do or how I'm supposed to act or, gosh, how I'm supposed to talk! There should be a rulebook for this! Does this society want to completely isolate muggle-borns or something?'