Arrival of the Ghost King [PJO x HP]

XXIII: 28th Anniversary Reunion

Nico was angry, more specifically, the anger from being surprised by something you were sure wouldn't come. Sure, he had got attacked by a Hydra in the woods, but a drakon was crossing the line. What were all these overpowered monsters doing in the British countryside, instead of being in the States and hunting down delicious demigods that weren't Nico?

Nico was flat on his back, his eyes closed and his entire back throbbing, preparing to form one giant bruise. He heard the things around him. Nobody seemed to be interested in him, instead deciding to focus on wizards and witches trapped in the wooden wreckage of the buildings that the drakon had destroyed.

It was the end of the month, and Nico was trying to steal the wizard money from his boss's money box. He was attempting to figure out the magical wards around it by dropping a couple rats on top of it and seeing what would happen to them. Some got turned into rat-popsicles, others caught on fire, but most seemed to be just repelled by the money box, not able to be within a three-foot radius of it. Nico was thinking of finding a long pole that could function as a lockpick, but then he heard screams and the sound of a wood roof splintering, and his priorities had been rearranged.

The spells that were cast on the drakon by the wizards and witches didn't work- typical, the spells worked on the demigods but not on the monsters- and two students with leadership qualities had decided to advance their college applications by adding "kept calm and took action during a disaster situation" to their list. They reminded Nico of the student council kids at Westover Hall, but only of their worst qualities.

Nico didn't know where that sudden resentfulness towards the broom-fliers came from. Afterall, they were good people who tried to take the drakon to avert casualties. Perhaps he was still pissed by the attack.

Maybe the real root of the anger was that this random wizard, where everyone else failed, managed to drive away the drakon with a curse, telling an elderly witch, whose normally intelligent eyes were looking confusedly at the wizard and his wand, that he had made the dragon (he used that word instead of drakon) think that he had heard a mating call very far in the distance. Why had this wizard known what to do, but not the many other adult witches and wizards in the vicinity? And why did he have to take so long coming here?

Nico knew that he had to get up and move soon. It wasn't safe to just be lying on the ground with a bunch of unstable buildings in the vicinity. He didn't want to though, everything hurt and it would hurt even more to get up and it was so easy to close his eyes...

Nico's would-be slumber was ruined by a drawl.

"Well, well, you have managed to wreck quite some havoc, Mr.- well, I assume you have to be the son of di Angelo, or maybe you may be Mr. di Angelo himself, somehow, though I doubt. That is. The case."

Nico opened his eyes. He couldn't see the face of the man who had spoken to Nico from the ground, except for a long, protruding nose with flaring nostrils. If someone knew Nico's name, they were either friends... or enemies, but why could the guy think that Nico was his own son?

"You know who I am," Nico said matter-of-factly, "so you should know your best chance of survival is to leave and swear on the Styx that you'll never return." Nico got up onto his feet so the guy couldn't literally kick Nico while he was down, and then put his hands into his pockets to look like a teenage hooligan instead of a guy with a sword attached to his waist (Nico dearly hoped the wizard wouldn't see it).

Now that Nico was looking into the guy's face, he saw that he was the same wizard that had driven away the dragon and his two black beady eyes, with lips curved into an unamused smile.

"You shouldn't be alive," the wizard said simply. Nico found it hard to exactly describe the man's manner of speaking. Every word was pronounced slowly and carefully, and the "i" in alive was stretched out with an emphasis.

"You shouldn't know my name," Nico replied, trying to intimidate the wizard's manner of speaking.

"How. Did. You get. Heeere." The wizard spoke in spurts, bringing his pitch back to a baseline with every pause. The wizard seemed to be bottling up his rage, exhibited only in his hand twitching slightly.

Nico's gut was screaming to decapitate the wizard before his rage could get the better of him, but Nico resisted. He needed to know why the wizard knew his name, maybe who he was working for and why he was after Nico. Maybe the wizard was a friend; afterall, he had saved Nico from the drakon.

"How do you know my name? Why shouldn't I be alive-" Nico was cut off as the wizard flicked his wrist and something hit Nico. In the few milliseconds before the curse hit Nico, he promised to always listen to his gut.

The more Snape looked at di Angelo, the more he was convinced that he was Nico di Angelo and not his son. He had the same spunk, the same attitude, he looked exactly the same and was wearing the same clothes as when Snape met him when he was a student. Every inch was the same. Even though Potter Jr. looked much like Potter Sr., he still had his mother's eyes. Di Angelo was di Angelo, with no inkling of another parent.

Either way, whether he was di Angelo Sr. or di Angelo Jr., di Angelo shouldn't have been alive. That drakon was supposed to have killed di Angelo Sr., therefore killing off him and any future children.

Suddenly Snape realized why that drakon had attacked. It was the same one from those years ago. It had been looking for di Angelo, and had found him and then attacked him per Snape's imperius curse from when he was a teenager back at Camp Half-Blood. That brought up the question of how Nico di Angelo stayed off the radar of the drakon until now, and how he had retained his appearance. Snape would find that out after he interrogated him.

After he stunned di Angelo in Hogsmeade, he had snuck him into the castle by dumping him in a huge zip-up bag and explained to anyone that asked that it was for his next DADA class to train the sixth years. He brought the zip-up bag to his office in the dungeons (that he retained despite teaching outside of the dungeons), made sure to lock the door, and tied di Angelo to his plush office chair. He emptied di Angelo's pockets to look for clues, but only found a few drachmas and a glass prism, most likely for Iris-Messaging.

Snape stood up and went to his cabinet, looking for his Veritaserum. He had prepared some already, to force Potter to confess to having his old Potions book if needed, but Snape now decided that the Veritaserum would serve a different purpose. He opened the bottle and put in one hand in preparation and took his wand in his other hand.

"Rennervate," Snape said.

Di Angelo stirred as the spell took hold, and as the boy opened his mouth to question what was going on, Snape dripped three drops of Veritaserum into his mouth.

"Now tell me Mr. di Angelo, please, how you haven't aged a bit since I first met you when I was a boy."

you're lucky i decided not to publish this yesterday on sunday because otherwise u would have ended up with snape mugging nico for his drachmas so snape could fuel his ambrosia addiction by buying it from the faun in the forbidden forest