Daughter of Poseidon, the Girl Who Lived

9 I receive the worst post ever

After Harriet and Annabeth had shown me the rest of Camp Half Blood we headed to the dining pavilion. All cabins were to sit at their own tables, though the rules was a bit loose nowadays, apparently. At least according to Annabeth. That's probably why Harriet went to sit a the same table as Nico di Angelo when Annabeth led me to the Athena table, even though they obviously didn't belong to the same cabin. And Chiron the centaur seemed to pretend not to notice that while Mr. D seemed to not care enough to notice.

Annabeth introduced me to all of our siblings before lunch was served. Malcolm was one of those who took me to the infirmary for Will Solace to treat yesterday. He seemed to be a nice person.

Most of my new-found siblings seemed to be very bright, for the first time in my life I felt inferior in terms of knowledge. Even to those who was around my age.

Before we started to eat all the campers stood up and took their plates to the fire place. They seemed to be sorting out the very best part of everything on the plate and then scraped it into the fire. I followed the others at my table and discreetly sneaked up to Annabeth to ask what was going on.

"It's tribute to the gods. Pick only the best parts of your food and throw it in the fire. Here, I'll show you."

She cut off a bit of her steak and threw it on the fire.

"Athena."

Instead of burned meat, the smoke actually smelled quite pleasant. I copied her.

"Athena." If you really are my mother, please contact me in some way... I have so many questions I want to be answered.

I didn't know whether or not the gods could hear prayers not spoken out loud, but I thought it might be worth a try. I also didn't want the others to hear me sounding this pathetic.

We sat down again. I saw Harriet get up with Nico and Severus and offered their tributes to their respective fathers. I might have imagined, but Harriet seemed to stay in her spot a little longer after throwing more than half of her food as tribute. She stared longingly into the fire, as if she waited for her daddy to answer her prayer but had almost stopped hoping at this point. I turned to Annabeth to ask her about Harriet and her dad.

"Um. I don't think she would want me to tell people that. If she comes to trust you enough she might tell herself if you ask. But I advise you to drop it for now." Annabeth gave me a stern eye.

The food here was overall great. That even though all the best parts had burned in the pavilion fire. I would not complain if I would have to eat this for the rest of my life. Might even do it willingly without anyone asking me actually.

Suddenly one of the other Athena children spotted something in the sky. Looking up I realised it was an owl with a letter. The other campers looked confused so I drew the conclusion that demigods does not use owls as a way of communication like we wizards do. I wondered why any wizard would send a letter here, but I was about to find out why. Then I would wish I never found out.

The owl landed right in front of me and stretched out their leg to hand me the angry red envelope. Seeing the senders address I felt like throwing up. All eyes were on me now. And if not, they would soon be.

Well, if not opened soon enough it will just explode and make it even worse. There was really no point in waiting, I was already dead.

I opened the howler and my father's voice boomed out all over camp.

"DRACO LUCIUS MALFOY, WHY DO I HEAR FROM YOUR HEAD OF HOUSE THAT YOU'VE SNEAKED AWAY FROM HOGWARTS BEFORE THE YEAR WAS FINISHED?!?!?!?!?! IT ISN'T BAD ENOUGH THAT MY WIFE HAS ALREADY HUMILIATED ME BY SIGNING FOR DIVORCE IS IT?!?!?!?! MY REPUTATION WILL TAKE YEARS TO RESTORE AFTER THIS FIASCO NOT TO MENTION NARCISSA WANTS TO HAVE FULL CUSTODY AND YOUR STUNTS DO NOT SPEAK IN MY FAVOUR YOUNG MAN!!!!!!!!! AND ON TOP OF IT ALL SEVERUS TOLD ME YOU ARE CURRENTLY IN AMERICA, WHAT WERE YOU THINKING, JUST LEAVING THE COUNTRY LIKE THAT?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?! YOU BETTER STAY WHERE HE CAN KEEP HIS EYES ON YOU UNTIL HE RETURNS TO THE GREAT BRITAIN AGAIN! WHEN I GET MY HANDS ON YOU YOU WILL FACE THE REAL CONSEQUENCES, YOU WILL WATCH YOUR ACTIONS VERY CAREFULLY UNTIL THEN IF YOU KNOW WHAT'S BEST FOR YOU!"

The envelope burned up leaving only a pile of aches on the table. Now everyone was staring. Probably wondering what they had just witnessed. I shrunk under their gazes. I wanted to get away, I wanted to cry. I wished the ground would just swallow me and spare me from this mess.

When the whispers started I dared to look around me. Everyone would throw me a glance and say something I couldn't hear to their friends. They tried to make sense of the letter and what it said by discussion and theorising.

They also tried to make sense of me, most likely. A boy who fell down from the sky out of nowhere and got post that screamed at him during lunch. I looked over at Harriet. She stared at her food. Was she trying to ignore me? I don't know. But it hurt way more than it should. I stood up and ran.

I ended up in the forest at a pile of rocks. Some distant sounds of movement could be heard. This forest reminded me of that time last year when I had tried to inform a teacher about Harriet and her golden trio planning on smuggling a dragon out of Hogwarts and ended up in detention with her, Granger and Longbottom and were to help the groundskeeper Hagrid with finding killed unicorns in the Forbidden Forest at night.

It turned out I hadn't wanted to know what was killing them, and technically I still didn't know, because whatever that creature me and Harriet had ran into and caught in action was, I had never seen or heard about it before. That phantom or whatever looked like something taken directly from a horrible nightmare.

I probably didn't want to know exactly what was hiding in between the bushes in this forest either but I didn't care. I sat down leaned against the rocks and cried.