Harry, Ron, and Hermione are sent back to Hogwarts early--the evening of December 21st.

Chapter Rating: General Audiences

Content Warning: None

Word Count: 2320

The return of the Golden Trio! Yay!

And all the characters are owned by JK Rowling, or Rick Riordan.

Credits at the end.

_ ___________________HERMIONE____________________

After convincing her parents to let her return to the Wizarding World early, a long and nauseating ride on the Knight Bus, and the usual slapping of sense she was so prone to giving Harry (and Ron) over and over, Hermione wanted nothing more than to eat Mrs. Weasley's dinner, curl up with a book by the fire, read, then nod off. She crossed off some items on that list--dinner and a bit of reading, at least--but the events of that evening put a halt to any further plans.

Professor Snape arrived at Number Twelve Grimmauld Place around nine o'clock, looking no more merry nor colorful despite Christmas being four days away. He said nothing to Hermione as he passed her on his way to the kitchen, where Sirius and Lupin sat in conversation. Hermione watched the three figures with curious eyes, but could hear nothing of their conversation; from the tenseness of their silhouettes, it looked like the usual bickering. Then, something happened which set that interaction apart from all the others. Sirius turned and walked to the steps, and Lupin out to the sitting room.

"Hermione." He addressed her without any of his usual warmth, as though her name was that of a stranger. "Come here, please."

Hermione furrowed her brow in confusion but closed her book all the same. "Is everything--"

"No questions. Just come into the kitchen, now."

Hesitantly, Hermione walked into the room, where Snape still stood. Sirius returned moments later with Harry and Ron, looking equally confused and anxious. They all exchanged glances but said nothing.

Is this about eavesdropping in St. Mungo's? Are we getting in trouble?

No, that made no sense. If they knew about that, they would've addressed it before Hermione arrived. If it wasn't about the break's events, it had to be about something different. It had to be about Nico di Angelo. Voldemort's son.

"You three are to return to Hogwarts," Snape announced in his usual drawl. "Immediately."

"What?!" Harry cried. "Do you know what Umbridge will--"

"Enough, Potter," Snape cut him off. "You are to return to the Headmaster's office within the next hour, with all your belongings. You are not to tell anyone outside the Order about this trip."

"But--"

"Harry," Sirius interrupted him. It sounded physically painful for him to side with Snape. "Do as he says. Dumbledore asked him to send the message."

"...Fine," Harry mumbled as he turned and thundered up the stairs. Hermione and Ron exchanged another bewildered glance, then followed him to pack.

Having arrived only a few hours prior, Hermione had little to repack. The boys, on the other hand, took a quarter of an hour just to gather their clothes into their bags. Around nine forty-five, all three were packed.

"You have any idea what's going on?" Ron asked as they waited for Mrs. Weasley to grab extra Floo Powder.

"None," Harry replied.

Hermione was the first to step into the emerald flames with her bags in hand. She gave her friends one last nervous look, then cried, "Headmaster's Office at Hogwarts!"

She emerged in the familiar surroundings of the circular room and scanned for Dumbledore. Instead of the silver-haired professor sitting, hands folded, at his desk like usual, a blonde-haired, grey-eyed seventh year took his place. Standing in front of her, leaning against its left side was another seventh year, with dark hair and sea-green eyes.

Annabeth Chase. Percy Jackson. The teenage Death Eaters.

Hermione drew her wand. Jackson made a move to push himself up from the desk, but Chase's hand on his arm kept him from closing the space. Hermione did nothing, waiting for them to make the first move. She knew from Harry's encounter with Jackson--and Tonks's with all three of them--how well they fought. Defense was one thing, but she wouldn't engage them, especially not alone.

Ron came forward next, noticed Hermione's guarded stance, and searched the room for its cause. When his eyes landed on the Death Eaters, he drew his wand and jumped beside her, angled slightly in front. Chase kept her expressionless eyes on the two of them; Jackson stared at the fireplace with such intent he seemed to want to destroy it with pure telepathy.

Harry. He's waiting for Harry.

And out Harry came, not a second after Hermione thought the words. As he emerged, a disarming charm hit both her and Ron, caught unawares. Before Harry noticed the Death Eaters, Jackson pounced; he grabbed Harry by the wrists and forced him to the ground like a muggle policeman. Hermione spun around to discover the identity of her attackers--di Angelo's Slytherin friends: Blaise Zabini and Hestia Carrow. Both had their wands pointed directly at her and Ron, keeping either of them from attempting to move. Chase stood from the desk and collected the wands from the ground, then motioned for Jackson to toss her Harry's. He did so, eyes still on the squirming, grunting mess of a wizard below him.

"Now that that's done," Chase began, as though she'd just finished the dishes, "Let's get down to business."

____________________RON____________________

Ron was disarmed, trapped in a room with Death Eaters, with a wand pointed at his head. He'd watched his best friend pinned to the ground by a Death Eater twice his size, not only unarmed but completely exposed to attack. And, to make everything worse, his... girl with whom he had an interesting relationship... stood beside him, equally as vulnerable and in danger.

In short, if Ron could sum up the definition of "living nightmare," this would be it.

"We're not going to hurt you," Chase told them.

"Say that to the man you pinned on the floor!" Ron refuted.

"He would've attacked us," she pointed out. "You and Hermione wouldn't instigate, which is why we left you alone."

"Wish we had," Ron muttered to himself, but loud enough that Chase still heard.

"Percy, let Harry go. He's not exactly a threat without a wand," she instructed. Jackson kept his hands on Harry's body, unwilling to release him. "Now, Percy," she ordered.

With as much dislike as Sirius had enforcing Snape's orders, Jackson stood. Harry scrambled up, and attempted to punch Jackson in the nose--but Jackson was too quick for that. In another second, Harry had a black eye and found himself slumped against the wall, awake and somewhat alert but too out of it to attack again.

"Harry!" Hermione called.

" 'M okay," Harry heaved. He didn't sound okay.

"Are you done?" Chase asked, amused. "If you don't attack us, we won't hurt you."

"Why should we believe anything you say?!" Ron challenged. "We know who you are! We're not as daft as you think we are!"

"Wanna bet?" Jackson remarked, with more than a touch of snark.

"Percy ..." Chase warned him. Then, she turned back to Ron and Hermione. "You're right, Ron. You shouldn't trust us, especially because of the knowledge you think you have. But you're wrong about us. And you can believe that because of the facts."

"We have all the facts we need," Ron growled. "We know about the horcruxes. We know about Nico's father. We know about the Lares and the dark magic."

"Yes," Chase conceded. "But you came to the wrong conclusion. You have the data, but you're missing essential information. Hermione, you should've realized by now you and your friends came to a logical fallacy. Not everything adds up, does it?"

Hermione just stood there, glaring at Chase with her rational talk and calm air. Ron waited for her to speak, to fight back. "You're right," she said after a full minute of deliberation.

"Hermione!" Ron cried.

"Ron, she is right!" Hermione argued. "Why would Dumbledore trust Death Eaters? Why would he let suspicious people into the school during a war? Why would they stay here for months without doing anything to infiltrate the Order or Hogwarts's secrets? Why would Snape, Lupin and Sirius send us here just to be captured by Death Eaters? I'm not saying they're trustworthy, but whatever's going on--this doesn't add up! If di Angelo really is the son of Voldemort--"

"Wait, what?" Jackson interrupted. "Son of... how did you even... no! Oh, gods, gross!"

"He's not?" Harry asked weakly, from his spot in the corner.

"That... yeah, that pretty much explains everything," Chase mused. "No, he's not. You were right in that we're not just exchange students, but... no, we're not agents of Riddle. We're fighting him."

"But..." A million thoughts swarmed in Ron's head, trying to grapple the new information. "Isn't Nico's father the Lord of the Dead?"

"Yes," Chase agreed. "But, the actual Lord of the Dead. Not some charismatic mortal with an arrogance complex and fear of the unknown."

"Wha..." Hermione could barely form a sentence, which drove home the impossibility of the situation. "But, isn't Lord Voldemort--"

"Please stop calling him that," Chase said. "His name is Riddle. Tom Riddle. 'Voldemort' is just a scary-sounding name that feeds into his flair for the dramatic. And, Lord? Lord of what? Slightly above average magical skills?"

Ron, nor Harry, nor Hermione said a word; all of them were rendered speechless by the pure lack of infamy Chase used in regards to You-Know-Who. It was almost as if...

"You're not a witch, are you?" Ron asked. "That's why you don't carry a wand, and didn't know how to get to Platform Nine and Three-Quarters."

Chase raised her eyebrows at him. "No, I'm not. None of us are. Percy, Nico, and I entered the Wizarding World for the first time the day we ran across your family at King's Cross."

"So, who's di Angelo's father, then?"

"Hades."

Hermione looked at Chase like she was insane; even Harry--slumped against the wall--seemed to think Chase had three heads. Ron had no idea why; he'd heard of people with weirder names--Bathilda Bagshot, Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore...

Maybe "Hades" is some muggle thing?

"You-- you're... you're crazy!" Hermione cried. "How could you-- he's not--"

"You might not want to finish that sentence," Jackson interrupted. "He's smited people for less."

"Smited?" Ron questioned. "Like... killed?"

"Obliterated," Jackson agreed. "Tried to get me, once. If Nico--" The end of the sentence seemed to get lost in Jackson's throat.

"And who are you?" Hermione asked with a bit and sarcastic voice, caught between disbelief and terror. "Hercules?"

"Perseus, actually," Jackson joked, hiding whatever was bothering him behind a snarky smile. "Well... if we're going with the metaphors, I think I'm more like... Theseus..."

"You are not Theseus," Chase scolded.

"Yeah, I kind of am--son of Poseidon, slayed the Minotaur--twice, actually--navigated the Labyrinth with a girl who had a crush on me at the time--"

When Chase whopped him on the back of the head, he shut up.

"You're mental," Harry spoke up, a little stronger than before.

"They're not," Hestia Carrow intervened, speaking for the first time. "Harry, Hermione, I know it's--crazy--but it's true. Blaise and I saw Nico do things that shouldn't be possible--wandless magic, disappearing into thin air, communicating through misty images... those skeletons back in September? That trip they wouldn't talk about a few weeks ago? How the ghosts seemed to know Nico--know his father? The swords?"

"I'll admit, something's off," Hermione conceded, "but that's far from taking any of this seriously!"

"Why are you so unsure, Hermione?" Ron asked.

"Oh, you don't know any of this, Ron." Hermione was definitely freaking out, but for once she wasn't blaming him for his ignorance. "These... names--Hades, Poseidon, Theseus, Minotaur? They're a bunch of legends--fictional myths--from the muggle world from two-thousand years ago. They were used to explain science before the concept was even an idea. They're nice stories--Harry and I learned them in grade school before we came to Hogwarts--but they're not real!"

Ron looked at her in amazement, until her crazed eyes calmed a bit and stared back. "Hermione... don't most muggle-borns say that about the Wizarding World when it's first described?"

"It's real," Blaise interjected. "I know it's mad, but it's all real."

"We came here on a mission for Hades, to bring Tom Riddle back to the Underworld where he'll be punished for cheating death twice." Chase walked towards Ron, who found himself stepping forward to meet her. "My name is Annabeth Chase, daughter of Athena, the goddess of wisdom and warfare. That's Percy Jackson, son of Poseidon, god of the sea. Nico di Angelo, son of Hades--Lord of the Dead--led us until two days ago, when he disappeared without a trace and got captured by Hecate, the goddess of magic and Riddle's ancestor. We need your help to find the last of Riddle's horcruxes--what's keeping him alive--so when friends of ours rescue Nico, he can kill Riddle. If we don't finish this before the year's end... Hades declares war on Hecate and everything ends."

"The end of the world?" Ron asked, sounding more confident than he felt.

"Will you help us?" Chase--Annabeth--asked.

Ron looked back at Harry, no longer kept down from dizziness, but something else. He looked pale and sickly--not injured, but like his entire world was collapsing. Like he'd been fighting a war for a century, and just realized he forgot why the first shots had been fired.

Ron shifted his gaze to Hermione, sheet white with terror, but a spark of determination in her eyes. That girl was brilliant and ruthless when it came to fighting for what she thought was right, even if she doubted herself.

And then there was him, Ron Weasley, thrust into a leading role for the first time in his life. He'd always wanted to shine brighter than his siblings, and he'd never get a better chance. With his two best friends behind him, two Slytherins who knew Nico di Angelo better than anything, and two powerful half-gods on his side... maybe it wasn't so crazy how little Annabeth feared Tom Riddle after all.

"Of course we will," Ron said.

You guys happy? Harry realizing he's a little shit? Ron getting a leadership role? The stupid "Voldemort's son" thing resolved? Hermione resolving it? No mentions of a certain goddess of spring's possible death...

This week's beta commentary:

STORY: Slightly above average magical skills?

SARA: I love this

LISSY: Annabeth is me. I have said that SO MANY TIMES while reading HP

GIULIA: BAHAHAHAHAHA

Credits:

Melody Rose - Author ()

Sara - Beta Reader (http://icomparemyselftoyou.tumblr.com)

Giulia - Beta Reader (https://www.fanfiction.net/u/6748882/)