Nico di angelo at Hogwarts

[13] Kiss !

Nico trudged through the corridors, a frown on his face. Beside him, Will was silent. Even his capacity for endless chatter had diminished.

That tends to happen when you've had your blood squeezed out on a piece of glass through a cut on our hand which you made with a silver knife to give a test on the quality of your magical core only to find out that the 'Test' isn't really reliable and it's all just a waste of time anyway.

It didn't really help that they'd been roaming the castle aimlessly for nearly an hour and a half now.

The only portraits they'd come across were either a bit cranky or slightly cuckoo, and completely useless.

They hadn't encountered a single ghost, not even that poltergeist that everyone claimed wreaked havoc on lost, unsuspecting students. Will had a sneaking suspicion that they were keeping well away because of Nico, but didn't dare mention it or suggest that he call one of them to guide them out of here.

Will may be cheerful and stubborn but he knew when to leave a person alone, especially his boyfriend.

Nico had been acting a bit off since the class. First, he walked into the wall. He'd paid attention to the magical bits, but the rest of the time he had seemed lost in his own thoughts, though no one but Will noticed.

Nico was good at hiding his real thoughts and feelings and putting up a different front. So good, that sometimes Will worried for him. Putting up false fronts and hiding the real you may be useful and sometimes necessary, but like all things, it was dangerous when it got too much.

But now wasn't the time to bring it up. Nico looked worried about something. Maybe he should ask him....?

Just as Will was about to gather up his courage and ask Nico, the sound of excited teenage squealing ( which sounded suspiciously like screaming to them, but they both knew better after the hundreds of time some or the other hero had rushed to the Aphrodite cabin to save them from what sounded to be a gruesome death only to find them huddled over pictures of Percabeth and Jiper and Frazel and, the latest hot topic, Solangelo, whatever that meant)
reached their ears and, sparing a quick glance at each other, they sped off in that direction. As they neared the crowd, Will began to categorize the various sounds the students were emitting. There was no hysterical screaming, so no deaths (that was always a good omen), though there did seem to be quite a few aggressive sounds, accompanied by incessant, high-pitched teenage-girl screaming/squealing (it was at the point where Will couldn't allow himself to strain his ears to catch the fine tunings in the various notes to properly identify whether they were dying or just really, really excited in case his eardrums were damaged for life) and (the most obvious and loud) a chant that seriously made Will wonder what exactly he had done to be thrown into a school that was seemingly overrun with Aphrodite campers ;

Kiss ! Kiss ! Kiss ! Kiss !

Will sincerely felt sorry for the poor, unfortunate souls trapped in the middle of the seven rings of hell - sorry, he meant the crowd of students.