Chinese Whispers just got intense
Third-Person PoV:
They all took in the heavyweight of Jason's words, it was true, this 'quest' will prove to be a lot harder if pretty much 90% of the wixen in Britain refused to believe in the rise of their enemy, and when Voldemort actually decided to show his face they would most definitely ask them for help, help which they already rejected. But then again, it wasn't like the Order were an actual government group, but if they were to reject Britain's request to aid them in their war then all alliances would be cut, and Hecate would be pissed, and no demigod wanted to be at the receiving end of an angry Goddess.
"Let's talk more on that stuff later, who knows who might be listening." Annabeth bit into some of her roast potatoes, the others following. The demigods were spaced out between the Gryffindor and Hufflepuff, some of them at the red and gold table sitting near the Golden Trio, most likely to listen in on their conversations.
"I think the first thing we should do to help is help Harry control his temper," Connor mumbled underneath his breath, barely moving his lips but ensuring that it was loud enough for those who needed to hear him. Jason nodded along with Katie, Will tapped his fingers along the table as he bit into a sandwich.
"He gets defensive and riled up when someone questions whether he was truthful, Thalia said she had to storm up to their room last night cause she could hear him arguing with Seamus about what happened in the Third Task." Pollux sipped into his goblet of grape juice. "The only question is how we can do that without offending him. I know that when someone thinks you're lying it's the most frustrating feeling in the world." He grumbled, they all nodded at least having been in a situation like that once.
"How about some sort of therapy or doing some well-being?" Rachel suggested, doodling in the small notebook that she had placed on the table, ink starting to smudge on her fingers. Will seemed to brighten at the idea, a thoughtful look crossed his face.
"That might help a bit, it could help him get rid of stress and built-up frustration as well as reduce the likelihood of him exploding at others..." Will trailed off with a glint of intrigue in his eyes, a hand stroking his chin and his other hand tapped at the table.
"That's a good start, I think that's definitely at the top of priorities, there's something else but it would be best to discuss it later." Percy nodded his head and rested his head in his left hand, a glimmer of it caught Reyna's attention.
"Wearing your ring today?" She raised an eyebrow at him, Percy blushed and bashfully rubbed the back of his neck.
"Annabeth would kill me if I didn't wear it."
"You bet seaweed brain." A dangerous glimmer shone in her eyes. Clovis snorted awake, he quickly took in his surroundings blearily before rolling his shoulders back and sitting up.
"What did I miss?" He bit into a cake and began pouring some hot chocolate into a mug for himself.
"Nothing much, Harry got detention cause of his anger issues and Percy's an absolute simp." Travis nonchalantly.
"I'm not a simp." Percy hissed back at Travis. Travis cocked an eyebrow at the son of Poseidon he glanced down at his ring then back up at his face the gave him an 'are-you-for-real' facial expression. Percy mumbled some incoherent words at the other demigod and turned back to the pizza he had on his plate.
The other demigods chuckled at the two which only seemed to catch the attention of the other students on the Hufflepuff table, a loud gasp was suddenly heard which promptly hushed the influx of voices in the Great Hall, even catching the attention of the Professors. It was a young Hufflepuff student, possibly in her second or third year she was standing up and gazing in shock at Annabeth's hand which was still raised.
"Is that an engagement ring?!" Her loud voice was easily heard throughout the hall, the statement only seemed to silence the students further as they waited in anticipation for the blonde's response.
"Uhh yes, what about it?" She furrowed her eyes at them, unsure of how to interpret the interest of the girl.
"Oh, my Merlin! Imagine being engaged this young!"
"Do you think it's an arranged marriage because they're royalty?"
"I wish I could have a ring like that!"
Excited chatter spread throughout the Hall, mostly from the female students. "Who's your fiance?" The question seemed to once again grab the attention of the Hogwarts Student's as their curiosity took over. Annabeth let out a soft smile as she raised a hand to cup Percy's chin.
"It would be this dork sitting next to me." Some of the students sighed while others gave Percy and Annabeth envious looks.
"That's sweet, how did you propose? It had to have been romantic right?" Lavender called over from the Gryffindor table. The Demigods (plus Rachel) all shared a look, clearly trying to keep in their laughter, it was short-lived as Thalia and Clarisse were the first one to give in, Percy looked at them half annoyed, half amused. He crossed his arms, cheeks flushed pink.
"It's not even that funny."
"Jackson, it took you four years of pining to get together with Chase, even when you did it was Chase who kissed you. As if your oblivious self would be the one to propose." Clarisse snorted through her laughter.
"I am not oblivious!" He protested.
"Kelp head, Annie kissed you a year before you got together and you still seemed bent on believing that she didn't like you," Thalia smirked at him, he spluttering, his blush only darkening. Annabeth chuckled at Percy and turned back to the Hufflepuff student.
"I was the one that proposed actually, I threw an apple at him." Annabeth reached for Percy's left wrist and held it up so that the ring could be seen. The muttering rose a bit, mostly in confusion.
"How is throwing an apple romantic?" A Ravenclaw asked, he pushed his glasses back up his nose.
"In Ancient Greece, if a man was to throw an apple at a woman, though I suppose that the roles were reversed in their case, and if the apple was caught it was considered as a marriage proposal," Travis said.
"I still remember when Annabeth stalked towards Percy at lunch with that scary look on her face that's telling you to watch out. The atmosphere was so tense, I thought she was going to kill him there and then with that face, she was making. Then she threw the apple at him and he caught it but just stood there confused." Connor spoke.
"To be honest I was a bit stumped about why she did that too, she looked so frustrated with him but then she got on one knee took the apple from him and opened it to show him the ring, and asked 'Would you do the honour of marrying me?'," Travis said in an overdramatic girlish voice, flipping his imaginary long hair.
"And you wanna know what he did? He just started crying, never seen you cry so much in my life Perce!" Connor held a hand to his heart, Percy just scowled at him in embarrassment.
"It was totally worth taking a picture of the moment." Lou Ellen grinned as she held up a photograph, only those sitting near her on the Gryffindor table could see, the photo showed Percy sitting at a stone bench with a white tablecloth fringed with purple and the number three embroidered on the end of it was a green trident. He was facing slightly away from the camera at an angle, one of his hands were covering his mouth and his other hand was held out to Annabeth, who was still kneeling on the ground, as she slid the ring that he was currently wearing onto his ring finger. Tears were streaked down his face but it was clearly happy tears, in the background, there were many kids of a range of ages, some of them were the demigods that were currently with them in the Hall, some of them bore a resemblance to one another sharing common features, they were all captured mid cheer in the photo.
"That is a lot of tears Percy," Fred said with raised eyebrows.
"A lot of you look alike," Hermione commented, her eyebrows furrowed as if she was attempting to solve an impossible maths problem.
"What can we say, some of us have a lot of siblings, the family is about to get bigger with those two getting hitched." Leo shrugged, it would be quite difficult to explain to the wizards that they were all technically related despite the Gods not having DNA without giving away the fact that their parents were Gods and Goddesses and they were half-bloods. Just thinking about it was enough to hurt his head.
Later that day, the Demigods private Common Room...
Travis, Percy, and Rachel thrust open the doors and they rushed in and collapsed onto one of the couches, failing to keep in their laughter. "Oh, Gods! Her face! I thought she would have combusted there and then!" Travis spluttered out as he fell off the couch, only promoting them to laugh harder.
"What happened?" Connor asked, the rest of the demigods in the seventh year walked into their common room as well, Reyna and Annabeth looked quite satisfied with themselves while Clarisse and Butch were more amused.
"In short Reyna and Annabeth weren't taking any of Umbridge's bullshit," Butch replied, Hazel let out a yelp at his crude use of words. Nico covered her ears.
"Careful Butch there are children in the room." Thalia then covered his ears.
"Yeah, there are children in the room Butch." Nico glared at Thalia, she glared back, a tense silence settled between them. Jason stood up and settled between the two.
"Now that we're all alone, let's continue on the discussion from lunch." Thalia and Nico backed down, turning their backs on each other and Jason released a sigh of relief.
"At lunch, we were thinking of helping Harry first with his anger issues, if he continues like he is he will only just get everyone hurt." Will bounced one of his knees as he sat cross-legged on a cushion.
"That's a good idea, but how will we do that? A lot of people on the Gryffindor table were whispering about him, I swear that this school can cook up worse rumours than camp can, and Hermione and Ron were arguing again, and if the whole school wasn't distracted by Percy and Annabeth he would have let his anger out on them. He seems to get worked up over a lot of things and is easily offended." They all hummed as Piper spoke.
"Put him in a situation where his anger results in the worse possible outcome." They all stared at Clovis, partly shocked that he was fully awake, that didn't happen often.
"Like in mortal danger? Life or death situation?" Frank asked perplexed.
"Sort of, we can start with therapy sessions to help him with his anger, and then I could cast a nightmare on him when he's asleep to get him to fully acknowledge it." Clovis closed his eyes as he snuggled into his pillow.
"I think it would work, or at least steer him into the right mindset quicker, I think we should also work on his impulsiveness, something tells me that will lead to Sirius' death at the end of the year." Nico voiced his thoughts.
"Percy you said you had something earlier you wanted to talk about." Katie nodded towards him, Percy looked confused for a few seconds before he lit up with realization.
"Right, Annabeth thinks we should also look into how Moldyshorts survived, better be safe knowing that it doesn't have links to the Godly world."
"Good point, the Library has a forbidden section, I have some ideas on how to sneak past the defences that they've put up, Nico you can help me." Nico rolled his eyes at Lou Ellen who stuck her tongue out in response.
"There are a few ways that a mortal could do necromancy, most of it is from other cultures and religions, but from what I've heard that Voldemort was able to do it was definitely nothing like those ways, he'd either have to be a child of Hades or it's some type of Wizardry necromancy. I'll ask my dad and Thanatos if they have an idea but no promises."
"Do you guys think we should get the school to somewhat believe Harry?" Hazel asked.
"What do you mean by that Hazel?"
"Them not believing in Harry is only going to cause issues in the future but there's no way that they'll believe him unless Voldemort showed up and started attacking them. A lot of them think he's gone insane and is an attention-seeker, they also think that Dumbledore has lost his marbles. Some of the rumours they believe in like the Death Eaters being active, I heard that there was an attack from them just before they started school last year so at least they believe that. The Slytherins know that he's back because some of their parents are Death Eaters.
But no one is ever going to fully believe Harry, there's no concrete evidence that he's back, just because the Death-Eaters are active once again doesn't mean that he's back, the Order went about it the wrong way of informing the public of his return, it would've been smarter to say that the Death Eaters are active again and want to get revenge for their fallen Dark Lord, the Ministry probably would have taken more action on this. The Order thinks that the Ministry and everyone else are idiots, they're right that the Ministry is being stupid but they have an actual reason to not believe them, sometimes you can only rely on someone's word so much before it just sounds ridiculous, and to a community that has been told that he was dead and now is back it does sound like they are crazy and seeking attention." They all looked at Hazel with wide eyes as she finished her rant, the daughter of Hades squirmed under their looks, Frank rested a hand on her shoulder and smiled at her.
"Those are some really good points sis." Nico gave her a thumbs up the rest of them nodded. "I think the best we can do is convince the rest of the school that something is going to happen until we can get concrete evidence that Voldemort is indeed alive to them."
"Anyone have anything else they want to add?" Reyna glanced around at the demigods and Oracle, "Let's get started on our homework them, the sooner we finish it the more time we have to start taking action on our mission." Leo let out a cry of 'why?' and slammed his head onto the coffee table.
Meanwhile in the Gryffindor Common Room...
Hermione placed down her quill and held up her parchment that was filled with her elegant handwriting. She skimmed through it and grinned in satisfaction at the work she had just completed, she rolled it up and placed it into her bag that rested on the floor beside her and looked next to her to see how Ron and Harry were getting on with their work, which wasn't very well. Harry for once was behind Ron, his face screwed up in frustration with a tight grip on his quill.
"Hurry up Harry, you have detention with Umbridge soon." She frowned at him, his frustration was quickly turned to her, and his scowl deepened further.
"There's no need to remind me Hermione, and I know I just can't concentrate on it."
"Don't tell me you've already finished 'Mione," Ron complained.
"Of course I have Ron, honestly the work isn't that hard, just look at the question more carefully." She prodded a finger where Ron had sloppily written the title for the essay they were supposed to write for the end of the week.
"Not everyone is as smart as you Hermione, way to remind me that I'm dumb." Ron slunk in his seat, Hermione was about to retort but Harry stopped them before it could get worse.
"Could the both of you stop? All you've been doing is argue all day!" Hermione looked at him with tears in her fearful eyes and Ron stared at him stunned.
"How about we take a break from homework?" Hermione suggested with a quiet voice, Ron was quick to stuff his supplies back into his bag. "I never knew that they had that many siblings?" Harry gave her a baffled look.
"Who?" He fixed his glasses on the ridge of his nose.
"The Americans, I saw at least 10 people who shared a resemblance to Annabeth and 7 others with Travis and Connor in that photograph that Lou Ellen took out."
"Blimey, you actually looked?" Ron looked stunned.
"It was practically right in our faces Ron, of course, I was going too!" She exclaimed throwing her arms in the air.
"I suppose their parents love to get it on a lot." The trio jumped as Fred and George seemed to materialize out of nowhere.
"When did you two get here." Ron reddened heavily, the tips of his ears practically glowing red.
"Long enough to hear you talk about the Americans." Fred shrugged with a grin on his face.
"Here we were thinking that our family was big but their's must be massive if they have a whole camp run just for their family." George whistled as he settled on the floor.
"But don't you think they're a little too young to be getting married?" The twins looked at each other from Hermione's query.
"Nah, from that picture and the way that they are I can tell it's real love they have." Fred waved her off.
"Maybe in their culture, it's fine to get married that young." George shrugged.
"I've heard some rumours going around that she's actually pregnant," Fred whispered mischievously.
"Or that it was actually a peace treaty between their two families."
"Or that she's a vampire and has him under a spell."
"Those are ridiculous rumours, who would believe them?" Hermione wrinkled her nose.
"Apparently the whole school," The twins replied in unison, the witch shook her head in either exasperation or disbelief and looked back at the clock.
"I think you should head for your detention with Umbridge Harry, it's nearly time." Harry sighed and gathered his belongings.
"Don't worry mate, just make sure that to convince her to be there for Quidditch tryouts, don't want Angelina to have your head." Harry solemnly nodded before he headed out of the Common Roon and ventured into the bleak yet welcoming hallways of the castle.