Demigods go to Hogwarts | ✓

9 ~ Bets & Suspicion

Harry's POV

While we were getting to breakfast, Peeves swooped above our heads and dropped ping pong balls all over the floor. Two Hufflepuffs slipped and fell on their butts.

I narrowly escaped having the same fate.

"Peeves!" Hermione yelled, "I'll tell the Bloody Baron you're misbehaving!!"

Peeves stuck out his tongue, threw a ping pong ball at her, and looped around the air happily.

"Hey! Stupid ghost!" Thalia complained, as a ping pong ball hit the back of her head. She threw three back at him, but they passed right through. Thalia cursed and turned to Nico, "Get that ghost for me will you?"

"Like I would help you?" but right at that moment, about 10 ping pong balls rained down on Nico's head.

He looked up, "Hey!"

Peeves looped down the hallway, but Nico held up his hand and Peeves was vacuumed into it.

Nico took hold of the front of Peeves' robes and looked him in the eye, "Stop that, you can annoy Thalia as much as you want, but not me, got it?"

"Fine," Peeves muttered, and Nico hurled him through the wall.

"But...you can't do that to a ghost!" Hermione said.

"Hey! I asked you to help me! Not make it worse!" Thalia punched Nico's arm.

"I was just trying to be unhelpful!" Nico shot back, and he punched her arm.

They started yelling and punching each other until Percy and Annabeth managed to pry them apart.

"This is ridiculous," Annabeth muttered as she dragged her friend away, stepping around ping pong balls with ease.

Later in Charms, I saw Nico and Thalia shaking hands, like they were making a deal. They made bets all the time, so it wasn't weird.

In Transfiguration and History of Magic, Thalia and Nico didn't argue, not even once. It was so unusual, I thought I was dreaming, and I'm sure the teachers thought so too. "Thalia and Nico are acting very weird today," I said.

"No kidding," Ron said. "They didn't even come close to fighting!"

"Maybe they didn't feel like it," Hermione suggested.

"Huh," Ron said, clearly unimpressed by the suggestion.

We listened in on Thalia and Nico's conversation in front of us.

"You know Thalia," Nico said casually, "your tea leaves really did look like a corn plant."

Thalia's mouth twisted into a forced smile, "Yeah...I guess it did. It also looked a lot like a knife." It took a few seconds for my brain to comprehend what she had just said.

Leo looked at her as if she had just said, I volunteered to eat a disgusting smelly boot so that Malfoy wouldn't have to do it.

It looked like it took all of Nico's willpower to smile at Thalia, "Yeah." Under his breath he muttered, "Maybe."

They turned away and tried their best ignore each other.

Thalia tried to have a conversation with Annabeth, but she was too absorbed in Professor Binns' speech to really listen to her.

Nico's POV

When Leo, the Stolls, Thalia, Clarisse, and I had left the Great Hall to get to Herbology, Drew hurried to catch up to us.

"Just thought you should know," she looked at me, "Malfoy is totally convinced that you and Thalia are falling in love, because you're not even arguing. He was ranting about it at the Great Hall."