Young and Old, Back and Bold

Chapter 11

Nico didn't go to the flying lessons, didn't step foot outside that castle. He needed a break from his so-called friends and needed a break from the schoolwork that had been piling up. He needed a break from everything he could think of.

His room finally emptied out, the other Hufflepuffs on their way to learn to fly a broom. They were excited, they couldn't seem to imagine that it could be true. Nico could only wish to be so ignorant.

His bed was soft, softer than anything he had felt at the Weasley house. It reminded him more of that cabin he had dropped into, those bunk beds that seemed to swallow you in a sense of home. Was Hogwarts his home? It felt more so than the Weasley's.

But even Hogwarts had a sense of wrong. He felt that he shouldn't be there, that he didn't belong. His dormitory felt like just a place to pass through, felt as if he shouldn't stay too long. But that feeling of home kept him there, kept him in that bed as he wondered what the intentions were of those he had started to call friends.

Allyson concerned him the most, with hair as red as the blood stains beneath her fingernails. Had she thought he hadn't realized? Though he wasn't a Ravenclaw like her, he still felt as if he had more street smarts.

He didn't trust her. Those notes she wrote in that notebook, he could read them. Why could he read them over anything else?

Then Dominic...why had any of them wanted to help so bad? They hadn't known each other before, hadn't ever met. They weren't friends.

But in the end, he felt as if they helped make Hogwarts home.

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"Why are we in England again?" Percy asked, making Annabeth groan at the familiar question. "I wasn't paying attention."

"You're never paying attention." she flicked his forehead as they stepped into the cafe where they were planning on meeting the others. "Did you not hear one word Chiron said?"

Percy shook his head. "I was distracted. You know that. The whole thing with Nico..." He trailed off. "It's bothering me."

Annabeth cast him a pitiful look as she stepped in line. "Percy...you can't dwell on him forever. He's gone."

"He's disappeared before." Percy weakly argued. "He has. And Hades never came out and said he was dead. And Hazel-"

"Percy." Annabeth grabbed his shoulders as she cut him off. When he looked in her eyes, he was surprised to see tears forming. "He's not coming back. He would have already. We're not going to see him again. So we...we have to let him go, okay?"

Percy leaned his forehead against hers. "Why are you crying? Are you okay?"

"He was my friend, too, Percy." she jabbed him in the chest. "So stop bringing him up if it's not something new. He doesn't have anything to do with the quest we're on."

The daughter of Athena didn't know how wrong she could truly be.

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Nico fell asleep waiting for the other Hufflepuffs to be back. His dreams, dark and morbid, reminded him of a time he was forced to forget.

He saw dark shadows moving about, saw himself in a place he could only describe as Hell. It was the first real memory to break through whatever was keeping them back.

He saw a lake of fire as he moved over the landscape, saw that he wasn't on a landscape at all but a body. Inside it. He saw the tumors dotted around, saw the way the blood vessels watered the land.

The monsters...

He fought with a sword, fought with knives when the sword was tossed aside. He fought with anything he could. He could feel the ways he starved, could feel how much pain he took on.

He could hear some voices, but they weren't anything like the same female he had been hearing. He could feel his sanity fracture as the shadows kept moving, as they refused to listen, as he saw things that had probably never been there.

He saw himself being captured. It was then that he finally woke up, but this time, the memory didn't fade away. It stuck around and haunted him as he sat there, as he stared at the wall in hopes he had remembered wrong, it hopes it had just been a dream.

But he knew it wasn't.