Percy Jackson and the Department of Mysteries

88) I Pray To... Someone?

Ron suspected that Umbridge was going to be monitoring Binns' class, so I crossed my fingers the whole way there. Luckily, my finger-crossing worked, and she hadn't showed up. Unluckily, Hedwig did.

At first, when I saw her tapping on the window, I was uber excited. I liked Hedwig. She never bit me very hard, whereas the other owls did. I never bit her hard, either, but I never bit her, so I guess that wasn't much of a bonus. Me not biting her was a bonus, I guess.

A letter was tied to her leg, and she gazed through the thick window at us. I blinked, wondering why she hadn't delivered the letter at breakfast. She was normally very punctual.

"Oh, I've always loved that owl, she's so beautiful," Lavender sighed to Parvati, most of the class having noticed her. Though, Hedwig did seem a little different than usual. Darker, somehow.

Harry was looking nervously around, unsure of what to do, so I made the decision for him. I stood up, my chair scooting loudly against the floor (or maybe it was just very quiet in the room, other than the drone coming from Binns). The professor didn't notice, since he could only hear us when we said his name. Ghosts have very selective hearing (so do people, but we're not going to talk about that right now). I walked over to the window and opened it, and frowned, seeing why she had showed up late and seemed darker than usual.

Hedwig's feathers were ruffled, placing shadows in places shadows had never been before. Her eyes were wide and slightly scared. One of her wings were bent the wrong way.

"Oh, poor girl," I whispered, gently grabbing her and holding her in my arms. "I'll take you to Harry, if you'd like?" She hooted happily (but tiredly) at the sound of Harry's name, so I made my way over to him.

"She's hurt," I told him sorrowfully. I placed her gently in Harry's lap, and she buried her face in his stomach. "Her wing is bent funny..." Hedwig was quivering now, the adrenaline probably wearing off.

"What? What happened?" Harry looked terrified. He touched her back gently, and she flinched at once. She pulled away from his stomach, her feathers proofing out as she stared up at him.

"Dunno," I sat down. "You ought to take her to Grubbly-Plank — she'll take good care of her."

"Yeah," Harry nodded. "Yeah, yeah, I'll do that." He looked up and spoke loudly, the whole class turning to look at him. "Professor Binns. I'm not feeling well."

Binns looked up from his notes, looking shocked to see the room full of people, as he usually was, "Not feeling well?"

"Not at all well," Harry climbed to his feet, all the while concealing Hedwig behind his back. "So I think I'll need to go to the hospital wing."

"Yes," Binns said uncomfortably. "Yes... yes, hospital wing... well, off you go then, Perkins..."

Harry quickly shuffled out of the room, and Hermione leaned over to me, "What if her letter was intercepted? She was delivering to Snuffles..."

I stared at the window where Hedwig had been perched before, "Then I pray it wasn't revealing... not sure who to pray to, though. So many gods, I can't possibly remember who the god or goddess of intercepted messages is — never mind, it's definitely Hermes. I pray to him, I guess. He's not one of the bad ones, I think. I pray he's not. Shoot, who do I pray to for that? Who's the god or goddess of gods — that's big Z, isn't it? Well, I don't pray to him, unless there's a high likelihood of him blasting me out of the sky. I don't think I'm in any danger of getting blasted out of the sky, but maybe I'll get blasted. Who's the god or goddess of blasting? Honestly, given Seamus' track record, it's also probably Hermes. That'd make sense."

"Percy, none of what you just said made sense," Hermione said simply.

"No, it all made perfect sense, you're just too small brain to understand it."

Hermione looked outraged. Guess she'd never been called small brain before.

Thankfully, she didn't get the chance to curse me and my future offspring, because the bell rang. We left class and found Harry, who was staring at a scroll in his hand. It was the letter Hedwig had brought, the one from Sirius.

Even I, peering over Harry's shoulder, could make out the five words written on the page. Today, same time, same place.

My sister's puppy is teething. She's very cute, but very painful. I, fully aware of this fact, decided to mess with her. I would push her, pat her, all around annoy her. My punishment was pain. After I got out of the shower, I looked at my cut up arms and legs and thought, wow, I've got to have at least twenty cuts. My guess was pretty close, actually. I have 109 cuts (not including the very small ones). Heh. Heheheheheh. Ow. They're not bad, but are certainly bothersome. Like half of the cuts are on my right arm, and it doesn't feel nice. What particularly didn't feel nice is the one on my mole. She nearly took it off. I like my mole, you can't have it. Also, since it's getting hotter, I've worn shorts the past two days. Due to boredom in class, I've been looking everywhere but my homework. I believe the amount of moles on my legs have increased. I already had a lot, but it seems I have some new ones. How fun.

Anyway, I hope you guys have had a juicy Wednesday, and I'll see you on Friday CT. Love ya!

PS. It took me 26 minutes to write this chapter, so sorry if it's terrible. I don't know how it came so quickly, but I imagine it was by sacrificing some important detail. That's usually how this stuff goes.