He Who Walks Between Worlds

People get Distracted

Beginning Notes

Bold is in ancient greek.

All characters are owned by J. K. Rowling and Rick Riordan.

Nico

Summoning the dead now gave Nico a bit of a deja vu feeling. The setting was eerily similar to when he had first discovered the wizarding world. Ever since Hades had told him about Camp Jupiter, it was like he had learned to see through the Mist all over again. Everywhere he looked, he saw hints of other pantheons. He hadn't managed to find beings comparable to demigods everywhere, but he'd been busy. The Norse and the Egyptian he had been watching, as they seemed most likely to affect him. And so, when some of the spirits he summoned mentioned spells, he didn't assume those spells were Greek. He would admit that the fact that the spells were in Latin had thrown him off, but he soon had uncovered the whole society. 

He had been intrigued by it. In none of the other pantheons did he have other powers than would be given by his father. But he could cast magic just like any other witch or wizard.

The chittering, rasping sound of the spirits broke his reverie, and he focused his attention on the personage who had prompted that chain of thought.

Herpo the Foul was a wizened, hunched man. His head was balding, but his beard was long and knotted. He walked with a limp. Nico swallowed the bile that rose in his throat when he noticed his gnarled, dirty fingernails as he shovelled food into his mouth, spewing crumbs and saliva everywhere. His robes must have been beautiful once--the patterns were complicated and the fabrics rich--but it was musty and ragged now and, like Herpo himself, reduced from what must have been vibrant colours to merely shades of grey. 

Herpo was the one who had first alerted him to the wizarding world. He had lived in Ancient Greece and was in the Fields of Punishment for cheating death. (His punishment was getting bitten by a snake every day. The venom paralysed him and caused him excruciating pain. It wore off just in time for him to get bitten again.) Nico now understood what he had been talking about, and had some questions for him.

"How do you make a horcrux?" he asked.

Herpo spoke, not pausing or slowing his meal, "You get an object. A stone or such. You kill someone. Then you got to say the right spell. It splits your soul."

Nico sighed. He was being purposefully vague. "What's the spell?"

Herpo chanted for a long time. Nico scribbled it down as best he could. By the time he had finished, the food was gone. He wouldn't have much longer before the shade would be drawn back into the underworld. 

Nico asked "Why do you need to kill someone?"

"Couple reasons," Herpo said. "You gotta get in the right frame of mind. You need to believe that your life is the most important thing. You gotta be willing to do anything to live longer. This spell, too, is big, and you're doing it all at once. That takes a lotta energy. If you tried to do that all on your lone, you'd die. You'd use up your soul, and you'd die. You use the other person's death, their soul as fuel so you don't die."

Nico wanted to ask more questions--What did he mean about using souls for for fuel for spells? That seemed like an important thing to be aware of. Was he using his soul for fuel? He hadn't noticed anything, and he considered himself a bit of an expert on souls, at least among mortals.--but Herpo had already sunk into the ground.

Michael

"Michael? Michael!" 

Michael looked up from the carpet. Hermione was standing above him, looking worried.

"Michael, are you okay? What are you doing?"

"Thinking. The lack of impersonal, near-instantaneous communication among wizards is a difficulty which I am trying to think of methods to overcome in the short term."

Hermione regarded him for a moment, then lowered herself into a sitting position on the floor next to him. Michael was in one of his favourite places in Hogwarts. There was an aisle in the library, tucked halfway behind a study room and hidden behind the forbidden section. Michael liked to come back here to study, or read for fun, or just hide from the world in a warm, quiet, carpeted area that smelled like books. No one had ever come back here when he was here before. How had Hermione even found him?

"Harry said that you got hurt in the Forbidden Forest with Nico and Luna today. Are you okay?"

"I'm fine. Do you know any spells to have a change in the state of one object be mirrored in the state of the other?"

Michael had a plan, one that might solve one of his problems. Well, maybe more if he could tweak things a bit. Nico was able to use a sword! The lack of impersonal, near-instantaneous communication and resulting fragmentation of culture among wizards made it difficult to say for certain that there were not sword-wielding disciplines of magic in other locations, but Michael doubted it. That left several possibilities he had considered, and likely many more which he had not. Hopefully he could convince Nico to illuminate the situation further and allow him to test his device--if he could get it to work.

He worried that he was making premature conclusions about Nico's connection to the person he had saw swordfighting what he had learned was a dracaena. However, there were parallels present. 

But more importantly, he was so close! He had conducted some experiments, which supported his hypothesis. He would need to make some modifications to his device before it could move into small-scale testing, but he was so close!

"Michael? Were you listening?" Hermione asked.

Michael grinned sheepishly. "I got distracted."

Hermione sighed. "You should ask Professor Flitwick. I know a couple that are related, but none that you're looking for. But before you go, can you tell me what happened in the forest?"

Michael stood up and grabbed his books. "Luna and I went for a walk in the Forbidden Forest. A giant dog attacked us and bit me. Nico arrived and fought it with a sword. It vanished. We went back to the castle."

"A sword?" Hermione asked as she also got up. "Why did he have a sword? Why was he in the Forbidden Forest?"

Michael shrugged. "He didn't say."

Hermione frowned. Weren't she and Nico fighting? He wasn't sure exactly why. It had sounded like Hermione had been defending Harry, and Nico was mad. Michael just wanted to stay out of that mess. 

"Just let me know if you see him do anything else strange, okay?"

"He can do nonverbal, wandless magic," Michael said.

That took Hermione aback. "That's really advanced, are you sure?"

"I think so," Michael said. "This morning, when he left the Hog's Head, he withered some plants as he passed them."

Hermione seemed to be thinking this information over. "Thanks," she said.

Michael stood there with his books, unsure if the conversation was over. He wanted to talk to Professor Flitwick, but Hermione seemed to be thinking. "Let's go," she said. "I can help you carry those. I want to talk to Professor McGonigall."

End Notes

Dumbledore: Of course I would never go against the wishes of our esteemed and venerable High Inquisitor, but if one wishes to read books not assigned for homework, or express approval for those books, I would remind you that these educational decrees apply only while one is residing at Hogwarts.