Chapter Five
Di Angelo was definitely up to something. First he's hanging around Malfoy, now he's having 'detention' with Snape. Harry had been able to avoid his detention so why couldn't di Angelo?
As he told Hermione and Ron about that weird interaction and him following the exchange student in his invisibility cloak, Hermione brought up a point that made Harry think harder. Nico di Aneglo was a Griffyndor, not a Slytherin. Did he bribe the hat or something to get into his house? Was he close to getting to Sytherin like Harry was and threatened the hat to put him in Gryffindor?
Hermione and Ron didn't share Harry's doubts but he knew there was something off about the boy. And one day, he'd prove it.
***
As the days went on and fall turned into winter, students had begun talking about visiting a place called Hogsmeade which almost made Nico laugh out loud the first time he heard it. Wizards were truly obsessed with pigs. Apparently, it was a town, a little walk away, that students were allowed to visit on certain weekends. There was a joke shop, a pub, a sweets shop, a cafe, and more. It sounded pretty cool.
His friends talked about it on and on until one day, there was a notice on the board that they would be able to go that weekend. Nico hadn't really wanted to go, but he remembered his promise to Leo about bringing him back a souvenir so he decided to go anyway. Who knew? Maybe it'd be fun.
Dean, Seamus, half the Gryffindor team (Katie Bell, Ginny Weasley, Jimmy Peaks, and Ritchie Coote), and Nico walked to Hogsmeade together. They were all excited to show Nico the shops and the wizarding things they had for sale. Their excitement made Nico want to bring them to camp and show them their own little shops and the big house. Travis and Connor would love tricking them and selling them things for double a reasonable price.
They walked into the snowy town and the group immediately started tugging Nico in different directions and arguing about what they'd show him first. Nico scanned the white grounds, hoping to see Draco and talk with him, but he was nowhere to be found. He was probably up at the castle working on whatever was keeping him up at night and making his eyebags deeper.
The group of friends went into many shops and Nico got all of his shopping done within twenty minutes. He grabbed a few samples of stuff from a section of Zonko's joke shop called 'Weasley's Wizard-Wheezes' for Leo. For Percy, a bag of blue candy from Honeydukes and Annabeth, a book called 'Hogwarts: a History'. Jason got a mini Quidditch pitch where you can actually make the players fly and Piper would get a box of Canary Creams. He got a few arrows for Frank that turned into ducks when shot and for Hazel, a mood necklace that actually worked. And last but not least, he bought a hat for Reyna that when she put it on, it would make only her hair go invisible.
Nico smiled at the thought of his friends opening his gifts as he stashed them in his bag. He couldn't wait to see them in person again.
The group soon got cold and Dean, Seamus, and him decided to head back up to the castle. They ate sweets as they passed the caretaker Filch, and walked back towards the common room, laughing and joking all the way.
As they passed the second floor, Nico spotted a curled figure in the darkness of the stairs. Draco.
"Hey, I'll meet you there," Nico told his friends, shooing them upstairs. They nodded, unbothered, and Nico walked over to where his friend was sitting.
Draco was folded in on himself, slightly rocking back and forth, and Nico made sure to approach him quietly.
"Draco?" He said hesitantly, not daring to touch him before he made his presence known.
Draco snapped his head up to look at him. He had tears in his wide eyes and they seemed filled with fear and despair.
"N-Nico," he said shakily. "I-I did something bad."
The blonde boy looked so scared. Nico glanced around the distorted corridor. No one was around at the moment but anyone could come at any time. They needed some place more private.
He looked around and spotted a bathroom on the other side of the floor with an 'out of order' sign attached to the front.
"Here," Nico grabbed Draco's hand and pulled him up and into the bathroom.
He pushed Draco's shaking body inside and shut the door quickly behind him, before putting the soundproofing charm Hermione taught him on the door. He locked it and took a breath.
Suddenly, Nico felt a presence in the room. A ghostly presence.
He turned to see a young ghost girl floating a few feet away. She had dark hair and glasses. Nico looked at her eyes and got a flash of a serpent in that very bathroom, and the sound of a crying girl.
The flashes often appeared when Nico looked into the eyes of a ghost, since their soul was surrounded by their death, so he tried not to have eye contact with any.
"Visitors!" the ghost girl giggled. "I don't get many of those."
A memory popped into Nico's head of a conversation with the trio. "Are you Myrtle?"
"It is me," she answered.
"Okay, I need a favor," Nico told her. "Don't tell anyone about what me and Draco are about to talk about. Oh, and that we were here at all."
"Well, alright," she agreed easily.
"Thank you," Nico breathed and then turned back to his friend. Draco was now curled up with his back to the wall, breathing still shallow.
"Hey," Nico said, crouching right in front of him. "Tell me what happened."
"I-I can't," he said shakily.
"Okay," Nico thought fast. "Put your hand on the ground."
"W-what?"
"Put your hand on the ground."
Draco dropped one hand from where it had been placed on his knee and put it shakily on the ground.
"Good. What does the floor feel like?"
"I-" Draco gulped. "It's hard and . . . and cold."
"Good. What else?"
"Um . . . it's tiled."
"Okay, now reach out to your left and touch the stall."
Draco followed Nico's directions and reached out with his other hand to touch the bathroom stall.
"Now what does that feel like?"
"Well . . . there's paint and it's a little bumpy because someone did an awful job of painting it."
Nico smiled. "Great."
He grabbed Draco's hand and placed it on his own.
"What does my hand feel like?"
"Um, it's soft and . . . really frickin' cold."
Nico laughed and Draco looked up to meet his eyes. He wasn't shaking anymore and his breathing was more even, but his eyes still held that same fear and hauntedness.
Nico let his hand drop and Draco brought his arms back around his legs.
"How do you feel?" Nico asked gently.
"Better," Draco admitted.
"Good. Now, what happened?"
Draco looked at his lap, breaking eye contact. "It's . . . not one thing. I've done so many things, Nico. Bad things. If I don't do what he says he'll. . . he'll. . ."
"Hey, it's okay," Nico told him and put a hand on Draco's knee that had creeped up to the bonde's chest, trying to show comfort but the gesture seemed to instead make the situation worse.
"No! Shit!" Draco started to fold in on himself again, his breaths speeding up and eyes becoming unfocused. "I shouldn't have told you that!"
He started fumbling around in his pockets and grabbed his wand, pointing it at him. Nico didn't need to be a wizard to know what he was going to do.
"Woah!" Nico held out a hand. "Draco, it's okay. I won't tell, I swear on the Styx."
Outside came a rumble of thunder and Nico cringed, afraid of the mount of the promise, but he knew he would say it again.
"How can I trust you?" Draco's voice was so broken. As broken as a demigod's. No mortal should ever be that broken.
Nico thought for a moment. What could he say to make Draco believe that he wouldn't tell anyone?
"I'm not a wizard," Nico said suddenly.
Draco looked confused and slightly horrified. "You're a muggle?"
"No, I'm. . . I'm something else. I have friends back in America who are like me too. They are schooling in New York and my sister is in California with her boyfriend, but we're all. . . magical. But we aren't wizards."
Draco gave him a long look, wand still out. "Why did you tell me that?"
"Because now you know something about me," Nico explained. "You can call it . . . intentional blackmail."
They sat there for a few seconds, just staring at each other, before Draco dropped his wand hand limply to the ground.
"I'm sorry," he whispered, looking away.
"It's not your fault," Nico told him softly.
"How do you know?"
Nico thought for a second. "Because you're sorry."
A silence. Not uncomfortable and with no weight, just understanding.
"We should probably head back," Nico said finally, moving to stand.
"Yeah," Draco agreed quietly.
Nico stood and held out a hand to him. Draco took it and the two of them walked out of the bathroom.
"Nico di Angelo?"
Nico turned and as soon as he saw the lean frame and green cloak of Professor McGonagall commanded the shadows and had them gently grab Draco into the wall, making him disappear and hopefully put him in his empty common room.
Great job hiding your identity, Nico
"What were you doing in Myrtle's bathroom, di Angelo?" McGonagall asked as she came closer.
"Prank," Nico shrugged.
McGonagall nodded, unfazed after years of dealing with Peeves and a pair of twins that Dean kept bringing up. Apparently Ron's older brothers, Fred and George, were big trouble makers and even owned the shop Weasley's Wizard Wheezes. Since he first heard about them he was reminded of similar siblings back at camp.
"Well," McGonagall continued, "I wanted to talk to you about your classes."
Nico felt himself tense a bit. He'd thought he was doing pretty good keeping up with homework. Was he failing?
"What about them?" he asked.
McGonagall took in Nico's tense stance and smiled a bit. "It's nothing bad, di Aneglo. Quite the contrary actually."
"Oh," he could feel himself relax a bit at the news. Why did he care so much about his grades? He was going to be gone by the end of the year anyway, so there wasn't any point in keeping up.
"You have been getting top marks in all of your classes," McGonagall said, almost proudly. "We've only seen this from one other student, your friend, Hermione Granger."
Despite telling himself he didn't care about the grades, he felt his heart flutter at actually being good at something normal.
"Due to this," McGonagall continued, "I have to ask, did you actually know magic before this?"
Nico thought for a minute. Could he trust McGonagall? Tell her that he actually went to a camp for magical people? No, that was too far. But, maybe there was something she could know . . . ?
"I didn't," he told her. "But I think my grandmother might be Maria di Aneglo . . ."
He trailed off his explanation because McGonagall's eyes were wide with shock.
"D-did you know her?" he asks.
McGonagall studied him in a way that made Nico feel like he was being x-rayed. "I thought . . . coincidence . . ."
"Umm, Professor?"
McGonagall looked up at his face, as if noticing his facial features for the first time. "Come with me di Angelo."
Without another word, McGonagall walked off down the corridor at a brisk speed. Not wanting to disobey, and knowing he had nothing else to do, Nico followed her, practically jogging to keep up with her speed.
They walked up stairwells and passed many corridors until they arrived at a gargoyle.
"Acid Pops," McGonagall said and the gargoyle moved.
If Nico were a normal wizard, maybe he would have been surprised. But after seeing giants in clown outfits, a troglodyte herding sheep, and becoming a dandelion and corn plant, you start to not be shocked anymore. He also remembered Ron and Harry saying something about Acid Pops and entrances or something back in his early days.
McGonagall led him up a spiral staircase that had appeared, and walked into a room Nico remembered instantly. Dumbledor's office.
The old headmaster was sitting on his usual chair, looking deeply at something before looking up to see Nico and McGonagall's entrance.
"Ah, good day Professor McGonagall and . . . oh, Nico. What a pleasant surprise." the Headmaster gave them one of his twinkling smiles, making Nico feel a little unsettled.
"Di Angelo has told me some . . ." McGonagall paused for a moment, trying to find the words. "Interesting news."
Dumbledor's face turned to slight confusion, an expression Nico believed he didn't wear often.
"What is it, Minerva?"
McGonagall looked at Nico and then back to the Headmaster. "He's Maria di Aneglo's grandson."
Dumbledor sat back in his chair like he could have guessed that was what this was about. His eyes darkened with thought and his still cursed hand reached up towards his bread to stroke it.
"Mr. di Aneglo," he said finally, addressing Nico with a hand. "I want you to look at something."
The man got up from his chair and Nico followed him to what seemed to be a fancy, closed closet. Dumbledor opened the door and Nico was slightly shocked to see a bird feeder like pool inside and tiny bottles above it filled with . . . memories.
"This is a Pensieve," Dumbledor explained, although Nico had already figured it out. Sometimes, his dad would collect memories from the dead with his magic and be able to look into those memories and watch them in the third person to decide their fate. Hades had told Nico that because he did not hold that power yet, he could use a Pensieve to help judge the newly dead.
"I want you to look at this memory," Dumbledor explained, grabbing a memory that seemed to be pulling at Nico's own soul. "It belonged to your grandmother."
Nico took the bottle from the old man and looked at it through the glass. He'd been told about his mother from Hades, but now he had the chance to actually go into her past in her memories.
He looked to Dumbledor, asking him a silent question. The Headmaster nodded and he walked over to where McGonagall was looking half scared and half intrigued.
Nico took a deep breath, uncorked the bottle, and watched the memory fall into the water. The pool swirled with color and with one last breath, Nico plunged his head inside.
Nico was in a grassy field. There was green grass and flowers stretching out in every direction. He looked around in a circle and noticed a cozy, little house on a little hill only a hundred feet away.
At the sound of laughter, Nico turned his head and saw two kids running towards him. There was a boy, probably eleven, and a girl who seemed about eight. They were both pale and had black hair, but Nico noticed as they came closer, that the boy had black eyes and the girl had familiar dark brown eyes.
"Momma?"
The two kids ran right past him and to the house where a woman called out in an Italian accent.
"Severus and Maria Snape! Get inside!"
Nico watched as the two siblings giggled and ran through the opened door. He felt himself being pulled and suddenly he was inside the nice house. It was a little cluttered and it was a relatively small space.
The two kids ran to the table where two bowls of Risotto sat. The mother walked over to where her supposed husband was washing a dish. He pecked her cheek and Nico looked back to the two kids.
"Can we go to town soon?" the girl, his mom, asked.
"We could live in town if you two weren't so expensive," the mom of the house told her.
Nico's hands clenched at the sentence. He'd seen and heard many forms of abuse in his life and he could sense mental abuse when he saw it.
"Let's go back to our room," the boy, Severus, suggested as he finished his food.
Nico's mom smiled and finished the last of her bowl before running off with Severus to their room.
The memory shifts to where his mother went, but even though he's now in the same room, the voices are distorted. A soft buzzing fills his ears in the silence and he watches the scene play out in front of him.
Severus and Maria talking. Severus holds up his finger and turns to a treasure box. He opens it and hands Maria a necklace with an hourglass inside. She holds it in her hands and Nico just hears one sentence, "You can keep it."
The memory changes and Maria is in the living room with her mom. Her mom is angry and there is still no sound except for when the mother strikes Maria across the face.
The memory shifts again and Nico's ears are full of noise. Shouting and breaking glasses. Maria is in her room, crying, and holding the necklace Severus had given her. Her brother was gone, the room being completely stripped of his things. He was probably at Hogwarts.
Maria looked at the necklace and put it around her neck before turning the hourglass. There was a strange sensation that filled the room and Nico was reminded of the Lotus Casino. Somehow, he could tell that time was moving, but he couldn't see it.
Before Nico could find out where they went back to, the memory shifted again. Her room, which before had been covered in some posters and drawings, now lay bare. Maria herself was hunched over a desk off to the right, sniffling quietly. Nico walked over to her as saw she was writing a note.
Dear Severus,
For my birthday I wished to not have mom and dad treat me like this anymore. Now, I'm going to make it happen. I'm going to use that spell you taught me to erase their minds and then I'll go back in time and live there with different parents. I've made a permanent memory in my mind to change my last name to my middle name, di Angelo. I wish you could come with me but I can't wait until you come back for the holidays to do this. After you read this please remove your memories of me. We probably won't see each other again and I don't want you to be sad.
Love, Maria
Nico watched his mother, ten-years-old now, grab a wand from under her mattress and walk out of the room. Nico followed her and she walked into the living room where her dad was sitting on the couch.
There was an indistinct cantation and her father's face went black like he was in a daze.
"What are you doing?"
Maria and Nico both whirled around and saw her mother coming at her, holding a pan in her hand. Maria pointed her wand at her mother and it hit her head and her mother's face went blank.
Tears staining her face, Maria ran out of the house, out into the fields where Nico had first seen her and Severus play. She fell to her knees and pointed the wand at herself.
"I'm sorry, Sev," she whispered. Then she murmured the same spell and her eyes went blank.
Nico watched as her face smoothed out and her eyes seemed to hold more light. She looked like a normal ten-year-old.
When her face turned less blissful and more alive, she immediately looked around like she was confused as to where she was. She had erased her memories.
Maria must have felt the necklace on her skin, because she took it out and held it in her hand. Curious, as any child would be, she started turning the hourglass. A lot.
The time necklace turned and turned until both Nico and Maria were being thrown through time.
Nico closed his eyes as he felt the liquid of time move through and around him. He could almost feel himself getting closer to his time, the time he was born. It almost felt like he was going home.
He and his mother landed together on the same hill they were on, but there was no cottage at the top of the hill. Nico could see with his demigod vision that there was a sign on the house but he couldn't read what it said from hsi distance.
Maria started walking, clumsily, up to the house and Nico followed, trying to read the sign as they got closer.
Orange? Organ? Orphinigan? Orphanage?
The two people reached the front door and Nico was pretty positive that the sign sis in fact read 'Orphanage'. Maria knocked on the door, and a lady in a big, old-timey dress opened the door.
"Oh, hello," she said to Maria.
"Hello," Maria greeted. "I think I don't have parents. Or at least, they don't want me."
The woman seemed taken aback by Maria's cool demeanor.
"Well, come inside," she invited, holding the door open for her.
Maria nodded and stepped inside. The place was rickety and old looking and with all the children running about, Nico knew he'd guessed correctly.
The woman turned to Maria and crouched so they were at eye level.
"How did you get here?" she asked.
"This," Maria replied simply. She took out the necklace. The time necklace.
"May I look at that?" the woman asked.
"Sure," Maria shrugged. She took off the necklace and handed it over to the woman. "Can I go play now?"
"Just one more question," the woman said. "What is your name?"
Maria paused for a moment. "Maria. Maria di Aneglo."
The woman nodded and she ran off.
The rest of the memory was played at glimpses and pictures. Maria, walking out of the building with a man and woman. A boat ride and a ticket that said 'Venice Italy'. Maria, an adult now, runs into a kind and dark looking man Nico immediately recognizes as Hades. A family, Maria, Hades, Bianca, and baby Nico.
Nico took a deep breath in as he pulled his head out of the Pensive. He couldn't watch it anymore. Couldn't keep watching until that family fell apart.
He wiped a hand over his face, noticing that it was dry despite the water, and turned back to Dumbledor and Professor McGonagall.
"Where did you get this?" he asked.
"Severus gave it to me," Dumbledor explained. "It was part of the memory vein that stores all the memories. He told me that if a woman by the name of Maria di Aneglo came by, I should show her the memory."
Nico looked back to the water, still swirling. He grabbed the glass that held the memory and concentrated with all his might on the swirling memory. Slowly, the memory extracted from the water, flowing into the bottle.
"What did you see?" the old man asked.
Nico closed the bottle and discreetly put it in his pocket. He couldn't let anyone else see these memories. If they saw that Maria had had Nico in the 1930s then there would be questions on how he got to the present times.
"Professor Snape just knew my mother," he said simply. "They were friends as children, but she had to move away."
A silence filled the room and Nico decided to turn and face the Professors. He held them with a strong gaze, not threatening, but truthful and innocent.
"Well then," McGonagall sighed. "Off to your common room di Angelo?"
Nico nodded and exited the room. He almost ran down the staircase and jogged down the hallways. He didn't want to think about his mom. Didn't want to think about how hopeful she was for a nice new life. Couldn't think about Snape, how he obviously hadn't forgotten his mother. Had he thought about Maria when he saw his name? Probably, but like McGonagall said, it was a relatively common name if you were old school and lived in Italy.
That night, in the safety of his room, Nico pushed away the memories of memories and instead focused on the other big thing of the day. Draco had done something. He was working for someone (probably Voldemort) and was sent to do something bad. Tomorrow, he would push away the thoughts of his mother and focus on Malfoy's problem instead.