Ocean, lightning and shadow

Apparition was even more uncomfortable than shadow travel, which was saying something. It felt like all of sudden, pressure from all directions pushed against your body, like it was trying to compress you. Then one moment, all the pressure went in the same direction, pushing your body through a small space, like a tunnel.

All three of them took some time to recover from the feeling of apparition, Percy kept rubbing his forehead. “Gods, that’s even worse than my first shadow travel.”

“I feel like I am going to throw up.” Jason said, his face was quite pale. He shook his head, trying to get rid of the feeling.

Nico, on the other hand, looked fine.“It’s not that bad, then again, I’m used to shadow travel.” He took his eyes away to see the house they were in.

The house was quite plain, with some basic furniture, it’s obvious that Alex had been here before considering the stuffed bookshelves in the room. From the looks of it, they were in the living room.

“Welcome to number six, Privet Drive, your new home for the next few months. I hadn’t put too many things in the house, I thought you guys will want to decorate it yourself. Your bedroom is upstairs, I made sure to buy a bed that can fit all three of you.” He headed straight toward the kitchen. “Come on, it’s about time for lunch.”

The lunch was nice, Alex was a great cook and had prepared enough for three growing demigods, which was surprising since Percy’s stomach was basically bottomless.

After that Alex brought them dessert, chocolate cake that he had baked to welcome them. As they were eating, he sat down on the chair with a cup of juice for himself and explained to them. “Just like I said before, you have about five months before Hogwarts, and about three years worth of lessons to learn.” He took a small sip, and let out a small sign. “I already made up a schedule for you, which will cover all the basics you need to know. If your processes are great, then I will also cover more advanced topics in our lesson.”

Percy, with his mouth still stuffed with cake, spoke up. “You said something about stopping our dyslexia from acting up, how do you plan to do that?” Some crumbles fell out of his mouth when he spoke.

Nico hissed when the crumbs fell on his clothes. “Percy! That’s gross, stop it.” He flickered some of the crumbs back at Percy’s face.

“Sorry.” The son of Poseidon looked sheepish, he didn’t really mean to speak when he was still eating.

Alex cleared his throat, catching both of their attention. “We will get to that later, first I want to go through the schedule with you. I don’t plan to have classes like you do in school, I plan on covering one subject at a time. Once you fully understand the subject being taught, we will move on to the next one.” He took another sip. “I will teach you on weekdays, on Saturday afternoon I will either brought magical creatures back or take you to the wilds to see them for yourself, depending on their sizes, this will be the care of magical creatures lesson. Saturday night I will read you some books about the history of magic or wizard culture. You will have Sunday all to yourself. If you want to go somewhere using shadow travel, inform me about it beforehand. You are not allowed to go to America since the lord of the sky will react badly about your arrival. If you want to get anything from the states just tell me and I will get it for you.”

He stopped and pulled his want, with a wave the dirty dishes started to move on its own, floating toward the sink. “Since you just got here, I won’t teach you about the subjects today. We will go to the study upstairs so I can give you all the equipment you need, then we will go through some basics about magic.”

“Now, you guys keep eating, I will go to the study to put down some of the stuff we bought.” He then left them to finish their desserts.

Percy swallowed the last bit of his cake, then looked at his empty plate. “Jay, can I have some of yours?”

Jason only signed “No, perce, you can’t have mine, you already ate too much,”

Defeated, Percy turned to the son of Hades. “Nico, please.” He said, using his infamous puppy eyes he knew would work.

Nico tried, he really tried to resist it, but those sea green eyes were so bright and cute, so he caved in. “Fine, you can have some of mine.” He got some of his cake with his fork, and offered it to Percy. “But only one bite.”

Percy opened his mouth, happily accepted being hand-fed by his lover. Jason watched the scene with a pout.

“Seriously, you too? Fine, here.” Nico turned to the blond and offered him some cakes as well, the son of Jupiter gladly accepted.

“Gods, this is so cheesy.” Nico wasn’t complaining, though, he enjoyed moments like this, when he could just be with his boyfriends without worrying about anything.

“But you still love us anyway.” Both Percy and Jason said at the same time, then high five each other, Nico rolled his eyes at them.

When they finished their desserts, they went up the stairs to find the study Alex mentioned. The son of Hecate was rummaging through his bag and taking out stuff to put on the table when they entered.

The study was cozy, filled with bookshelves, with three big sofas in the middle of the room facing each other. In front of the sofas was a big wooden table. At the left hand side of the room, there was a smaller wooden table with four chairs, like what you will see in school for a group project.

“Good, you are here.” Alex flashed them a smile from where he was sitting on the sofa. “Come on, sit down on the sofa, there’s a few things I need to give you.”

As they sat down, Alex took out three small boxes and put them on the table, “Here, open these, these are enchanted glasses that can help you read English, it also has enchantment that will make you learn faster and make it easier for you to memorize information.”

They opened it, and sure enough, there were three glasses, a golden one, a blue one, and a black one. Nico touched the frame of the glasses and felt it.

“I will remove the fast learn and memorize enchantment once you are going to Hogwarts, can’t you cheat you know.”

“Are these, celestial bronze?” Nico closely inspected his glasses.

“Yes, those enchantments were difficult to perform, so I can’t let it break that easily.” He was lucky that his mother was willing to give her the supplies he needed, celestial bronze was difficult to get in the mythological world, not to mention the wizarding world.

Percy put on his glasses and opened one of the books Alex placed on the table, he gasped when he saw how clear and words on the page were. “Wow, this is great!” He actually didn’t hate books that much, he had grown the habit of listening to audio books during his free time. Now that he had a way to read without his dyslexia affecting him, he was certainly going to enjoy reading about magic.

Alex let out a sign. “Yeah, it’s great. It’s a shame these enchantments are so hard to do, or I would have thought my half siblings about them. ”

He took another three boxes out, this time the box was bigger. “These are bags made of Mokeskin, which means only the owner can open it, the inside was enchanted so you can basically whatever you want in there. I already put some stuff in it, money for both wizards and mortals, nectar and ambrosia, some notebooks and parchments, ink and quill.”

Sure enough, the bag was rather small, but one glance showed that it was filled with all sorts of items. Percy took out a feather from his bag. “Wait, wizards don’t use pens? I know they are old fashioned but come on.” He couldn’t imagine using a quill to write, it would be so difficult.

“Well, feathers come from magical creatures, which means they have some magical properties, this makes it easier to enchant them. It won’t be as effective if you use a piece of plastic.” Alex tapped his finger on the table, creating a random rhythm. “Besides, it will only be a little weird for the first few times, quills are not hard to get used to. I even picked up special quills for you three.”

Nico took a quill from his bag and took it out, it was completely black, the son of Hades gently touched the feather, and immediately recognized it. “Raven feather.”

“Exactly, and Percy, can you recognize what kind of feather your quill is?” Alex looked at Percy expectantly, he was sure the son of Poseidon could figure it out.

Percy looked at the quill he was holding, he raised his other hand to feel the feather. Something about it was familiar, it felt like… “Pegasi?”

Alex gave him a nod. “Correct, your father had allowed me to get some pegasi feathers since they don’t live in the wizarding world after ancient times.”

Jason took out his quill as well, and immediately knew what it was. “Eagle?” He asked.

“Yep”

“What about our wands?” Percy asked, he was eager to get his own magical wand, but they didn’t buy it back at Diagon Alley.

“Well, since you are demigods, normal wands won’t work for you, they will easily break because of how powerful you are. My mother had said that she would make wands that’s specifically for you, and she would send them to me as soon as she finished, so you will have to wait.” All three of them groaned, knowing that they would need to wait even more for their wand.

“Now.” Alex clapped his hands to bring their attention back. “I’m not going to start our lesson today, but I want to at least go through the basics.” Something in posture changed, he looked more serious, like a school teacher. “Did my mother explain how mortals gain magic?”

“Yes, she said it was because of the mist.” Jason answered, he sat up straighter, like a student in class.

“Correct, being exposed to powerful magic like the mist on a daily basis had changed something in their souls, giving them magic, which the wizards described as a magical core.” Percy made a face at that, expecting Alex to put out some sort of x-ray image of a wizard and show them what a core looks like, but he didn’t

“The core’s magic is from the mist, which is what wizards’ magic is, a fragment of the mist’s power, which gives them the power to bend certain parts or rules of reality, that’s basically what their magic is.”
He paused a little to let the information sink in. “Those who originally received my mother’s blessing were the same. This is different from what me and my half-siblings can do, because they can’t just use the mist, they have to use the magic inside them. This is also why their magic was usually considered weak compared to demigod power, although this doesn’t mean their magic can’t harm us, it is just less effective.”

All three of them listen closely, fully invested.

“Now comes the part about us demigods, which brought out a question I want to ask you. Do you know what makes a god different from any other life forms?”

Percy remembered hearing something like that from Chiron once. “A god is not a physical being, but their domain taking a shape.”

“Yes, correct answer.” Alex shifted his sitting position a little. “A god doesn’t have a physical form, at least they are not born with one. A god is essentially their domain taking a form they choose. When they do that, part of their godly power is compressed into liquid form, which is what we called ichor. This is also the reason why we can’t look at a god’s true form. Seeing a god’s true form is like trying to see and comprehend all of that god’s domain at once, it’s impossible for the human mind and brain to go through such a process.”

He leaned back to the sofa. “Now, why is this related to our power and wizards’ magic?”

Jason looked deep in his thoughts. “Because as demigods, we inherited our godly parent’s essence, which made us part of their domain.” He quickly made the connection. “You said that wizard magic bends reality, but our essence is a part of reality, plus the wizards only have a fragment of the mist’s power.”

Now that he mentioned it, Percy could understand it too. “So their magic is not effective against us, because we are not just human, we are also part of our parents’ domain. It’s harder for their magic to affect us because they need to try to change a god’s domain.”

Alex nodded at their answers. “Very well, you guys caught on quickly. Yes, that’s exactly why wizards’ magic can do much to a demigod. This is also why our magic will be more powerful, because we draw power from a certain part of the world, a god’s domain, instead of using a small part of the mist’s power.”

Percy shook head. “I never really thought about how our power works, it sounded so cool when you explained it like that.”

“I know, such is the fun of learning, in my opinion.” Alex shrugged. “Now, this is only the basics, the nature of a god is still pretty mysterious even for us demigods…”

The lecture went on, Alex changed the topic a few times, from magic and demigod power to introduce some common things in the wizarding world, he even covered some wizards' politics.

They all listened to the lecture closely, it was a little weird, none of them was that passionate about learning, but they were really invested in learning about the wizards. Not to mention the enchantment on the glasses works wonderfully, they all remembered all the details about the lesson so clearly.

At some point, probably when Alex was introducing the Ministry of Magic, Jason took out a notebook and started to take note. He did promise his friends he would get as much information about wizard society as possible,

After the lecture, Alex left to prepare for dinner, leaving them to do whatever they wanted, and they chose to huddle together on the sofa and read the books that they bought. Percy decided that he would read his book about merpeople culture out loud and share the correct information with his lovers.

They were in the middle of an explanation about merpeople’s food culture(Percy had no idea why wizards thought merpeople ate people) when Alex called them for dinner.

The dinner was nice, Alex showed them the wizard's newspaper and apparently, moving pictures was a thing in the wizarding world.
After dinner, they showered and went back to their room. Their room didn’t have much, but the bed was large and the blanket was comfy.

Nico got on bed almost immediately, within a few minutes he was already asleep. Jason was next to Nico, reading that book they bought today, occasionally letting out a hum when he saw something interesting. Percy was playing with the owl, whose cage was on a table near the window. The son of Posideon was still fascinated by the fact that an owl was friendly to him.

“I think it’s probably time to let the little guy out for flying.” Jason looked up from his book. “Owls are nocturnal after all.”

Percy gently petted the owl’s head. “I know, I will open the window and let the little guy out before going to bed.” The owl linked to him and titled his head slightly. “Speaking of which, we still haven’t given him a name yet.”

“Yeah, but I think we should wait until tomorrow for that, when Nico is awake. ” They both looked at the black hair boy who was curled up and already asleep.

“Yeah, we probably should.” The owl gently nibbled his finger while he was talking to the blond, startled him. “Ow, I would need to get used to that.”

They did their own thing in silence, until Jason closed his book, took off his glasses and laid down to sleep. Percy stayed awake for a little longer, until he decided it was enough and opened the cage and the window to let the owl out.

The owl carefully took a few steps forward, looking around the room. He then spread his wings and landed on Percy’s shoulder, where he affectionately nibbled the boy’s ear. Percy let out a giggle at the owl’s action, gods, he never really thought the day would come where he will befriend an owl.

The owl only stayed on his shoulder for a short while, before taking off and flew through the window, disappearing into the night. Percy went to the window, looking up at the night sky. Maybe it was because it was almost two decades in the past or because the his was not in the city, the night sky was filled with more stars than he was used to, yet no Huntress, He wasn’t quite sure what he should feel about this, but as he stared up at the starry night sky, he thought this could be a nice thing to have.

“Yeah, things are going to be fine. Who knows, maybe we would end up having a good time.”