Chapter Text
August 15th 1996, New York, USA
It was raining again.
Percy didn’t take notice of this as one normally would- that is in a factual manner, like knowing that it was Sunday, that the earth was round or that water and electric devices don’t mix (and he would know). In fact, he didn’t know how he knew it at all considering that he was currently in a narrow, dingy room whose only light source was a small, occasionally flickering light bulb covered in spiderwebs.
He knew it in the way people often described being in love to feel like- a deep-rooted conviction in his bones, which told him that at this very moment there was a light drizzle that could very well turn into a fully-fledged storm if need be.
This wasn’t normal, Percy was aware. He had always had a certain affinity for storms and water in general, but never anywhere near to this degree. For instance, it had always been possible for him to tell whether it was raining or not, simply because he had been able to feel the presence of the water. But he hadn’t been able to tell whether it was light or heavy, frozen or warm and he especially didn’t have the ability to tell what it was going to develop into.
It used to be like reading- not that he knew a lot about that. He knew that if he put effort into it he’d be able to tell whether it was raining or not and furthermore could judge depending on the current climate whether it was more likely to be snow or graupel or just regular rain. Now it was more like being read to. Something he had to put effort into tuning out, a constant presence in the back of his mind, a constant sense of knowing.
He felt a small kick against his leg. Percy swallowed down another gulp of the nasty watered-down coffee and banished all thoughts of rain from his head. Next to him Annabeth was apologizing profusely to Mrs. what-was-her-name-again about Percy’s inattentiveness. “It’s particularly hard on him, you see? The ADHD I mean, not to mention the war. But we think that going to this university is going to help putting our minds off the last few years. A sense of normalcy if you will. Isn’t that right, Percy?”
Percy sprung to action. “Of course! And I’m terribly sorry, I didn’t mean to zone out, it’s just-" he blinked a few times, really trying to sell it "- it was all so terrible, really. I just hope to start new, have another chance at a normal life, you know?”
The woman seemed appeased at this display. “It was no matter. We often encounter students with attention deficit disorder and we're more than qualified in dealing with them. So, what were you wishing to study?”
“Oh, well actually we were hoping to”-
Sometimes that was what their relationship was like. They were like a well-oiled machine- in perfect synch and perfectly aware of each other’s flaws and desires. Other times it was more like a broken record player, just repeating the same motions day in and day out, unable to do anything else with themselves but continue.
Lately there have been more days of the second kind.
On better days he thought it was just because of what they had gone through during the wars, that they just needed some time and then everything would work out. On the bad days, the ones where Percy would make one hasty move and Annebeth would flinch , he knew that she was afraid. Not for him, but of him. Of what he was able to do. Of what he would do if something were to happen to her. On those days he thought to himself that perhaps the only reason she stayed with him was that she felt obligated to do so. Maybe she thought she had to control him, keep his dark parts away and tether him to morality. On the bad days he resented her for it. On the really bad days he wanted to thank her.
Today has been a good day thus far.
Early this morning they headed out to go to a sort of interview for the NRU. Percy wasn’t sure whether that was common practice or whether it was a half blood-only-thing, but it wasn’t as if he’d ever expected to make it this far.
The meeting itself had been exceptionally boring. Enough so that his mind started to yearn for the hours of sleep it had missed out on last night. He started offhandedly tracing patterns onto Annabeth’s hand which he had been holding, tapping his foot and then out of sheer boredom started to make tiny waterdrops out of the mist in the air and drop them on the woman droning on and on about campus security without her noticing it.
And then, of course, the rain.
It had stopped now for some reason, but he felt that it might start up again soon if nothing else of interest were to happen. Curious weather.
...
Personal growth, Percy was convinced, was the ability to look back on your younger self and think to yourself what an idiot.
Take him sending Medusa’s head to Olympus. Hilarious to put it mildly, but also what the hell had he been thinking?
This wasn’t the actual issue though. It had, after all, worked out in the end. Sure, he was severely traumatized now, but that was all in a day’s life of a half blood. No, his issue was that he used to crave being taken seriously. Whether that craving stemmed from his absent father, or his abusive stepfather or some entirely different childhood complex, he wasn’t sure. All he knew was that he was, that he wanted to be looked up to as someone deserving of respect and by proxy attention.
He didn’t want that anymore.
People often used to forget that he was a child of the big three, perhaps because Percy didn’t seem all that intimidating, especially when he was attempting to do archery. Little by little, that has changed. Now new campers are told the stories of his triumphs during the wars, tales of his powers that weren’t entirely accurate, but which managed to make the younger campers wary if not downright suspicious of him. It wasn’t anybody’s intention, Percy was aware, and even the suspicion never seemed to last long. But there was always an undercurrent of respect in every interaction he had with them nowadays.
The thing was, Percy didn’t want to be reduced to his powers and capabilities as a half blood. Above all, he was craving normalcy. A quiet life with Annabeth and perhaps a few children of their own, her as a successful architect and him as a stay-at-home dad. Best case scenario, Percy would never have to go on another quest again. But that he didn’t even believe in himself. In truth, the realistic best-case scenario was that he gets killed by a monster or some god he managed to have pissed of sometimes in his twenties. Percy wasn’t hoping for a long life; he was hoping for a life filled with friends and family that didn’t want to kill him and Annabeth. And then Elysium where he would be reunited with all his loved ones.
He rather thinks he is owed that.
It was late into the afternoon now, and the rain still hadn’t stopped. Of course, he couldn’t actually know that, since he was at camp, but he knew it like he knew his own name. True to his words, it had temporarily turned into a storm and after raging on for about an hour returned to an almost melodramatic drizzle. What made a drizzle melodramatic, he wasn’t sure, he just knew that it was. It seemed to affect the people surrounding him as well. Everybody was looking a little worse for wear, like they were trying to carry way too much baggage but had long since given up complaining about it. Earlier he had even seen a small girl break into tears for seemingly no reason. A woman, assumedly her mother, had halfheartedly tried to reassure her but looked tempted to join in as well.
Perhaps he should ask his father what was up with that, because depression-rain seemed rather concerning to him.
Camp always felt deserted nowadays. Every absence was a stab of guilt, a feeling of you did this, this is your fault, you didn’t save them, this was your war and yet they paid the price.
It was a silly notion. It hadn’t been his war more that it had been the war of any other half blood, that is it was not his at all, just the war he had been forced to fight in. A prophecy didn’t change shit, no matter what anybody else thought.
He knew that. Of course he did, but he wasn’t feeling particularly rational as of late.
Idly, he played with the sea in front of him, every now and then separating large chunks of water from it and letting them levitate a couple of seconds in front of him before letting them drop again. One particularly adventurous fish swam right into one of those chunks and excitedly took in the sight of the surface world.
Percy nodded at it approvingly, the corners of his mouth minutely being tugged up into a small smile. He let the bubble levitate a couple of seconds longer than he normally would have and took the utmost care in letting it descend back into the water.
Annabeth was in Athena’s cabin, catching up with her siblings and telling them anecdotes about their quests, Percy presumed. She liked doing that, talking about their quests. Once she told him it gave her hope, seeing what they had survived already. For Percy it was the opposite. To him it seemed like he was testing fate merely by still being here. He didn’t tell her that, of course, just nodded and smiled.
Something moved, causing the earth to vibrate scarcely. Percy removed his hands from where he had been gripping into the dirt without realizing it, and stared at it for a second, uncomprehending. Then the scent of grapes reached his nostrils, and he understood.
“What do you want, Mr. D?”
The god in question huffed but looked otherwise unperturbed. It seemed to be more of a habit than an actual indication of his mood “Was just wondering if you’re planning on stopping that temper tantrum anytime soon.”
“What the Tartarus are you on about?” Percy turned around.
He noted that the god looked different. Instead of a middle-aged balding man, with a red chubby face and bulging stomach he looked attractive for the lack of a better word. His hair was thick, lush, curly, and so dark that it looked purple, his complexion was evenly tanned and his body athletic. He carried a faint odor of grapes with him, and Percy knew that if he looked him in the eyes right now, they’d be faintly shining with divinity. This, he realized, was the Dionysus of the ancient age, without the mortal guise he wore around the other campers, madness incarnate and eternally youthful.
He felt sick to his stomach.
“Figures”, the god snorted condescendingly and then sat down next to Percy and dangled his bare feet in the water. Percy suddenly had the strong urge to punch him.
“Well, if you don’t want to tell me what you’re on about, you can just leave me alone. I’d even throw in an offering.”
He thought that was a pretty good deal. There was a plethora of half-bloods for Dionysus to mess with after all, it didn’t have to be him.
Unfortunately, Dionysus seemed to be more amused than intrigued by the notion. Again, he began to snort derisively, but suddenly it seemed as if the sound had gotten caught in his throat and it turned into a hearty chuckle instead. Despite himself, some small part of Percy was marveling at the sound of it. “The great Perseus Jackson granting me an offering! What an honor!”
Heat tinged his cheeks and in his gut a burning made itself known. Hatred. “So, you do know my name then”, he countered, hoping to keep the bitterness out of his voice
“I make a point out of not knowing the names of half-blood brats.”
“How come you know mine then?”
Dionysus snorted again but didn’t deign him with a response. He didn’t get up either though, even though Percy desperately wanted him to. Percy knew that if he stood up himself, he’d let Dionysus win. So instead, he resolved to glare into nothingness and let another water bubble drop with a bigger than necessary splash.
The rain intensified again.
The god seemed to be in an exceptionally good mood, despite most of his shirt and pants being wet now, a fact that could only spell out trouble for Percy. None of them said a word, but nonetheless Dionysus seemed oddly satisfied, as if Percy had met some sort of standard, he wasn’t aware he was being held to. He hated it. Sometimes he hated everything, even the things he loved.
The coin felt heavy in his pocket.
…
August 3rd, 1996, Great Britain, Grimmauld place
Harry was angry.
At what he wasn’t sure. Or rather there wasn’t any definite response to the question. At the world, he supposed. At Voldemort, naturally. At Dumbledore too. Definitely at Dumbledore. And at his friends still, because they got to sit here, while he was stuck for a month at the Dursleys’, and they didn’t even have the decency to write to give him some sort of heads-up. Above all he was angry about the injustice of it all.
His age had never stopped him from being targeted, even as a baby. So why did it stop him from being informed about what was going on? It was his life on the line after all, he had been the one to witness Voldemort’s return, which subsequently had started all of this in the first place. So why did they only send people to shadow him without his consent instead of somebody that would sit him down for a nice cup of tea and tell him “So Harry, I know this whole situation doesn’t look all that good, but fear not, we have a plan that we will tell you all about, because that is human decency!”
But instead, he had been left alone all summer with only Hedwig for company and now he was accused of using magic out of school! Which admittedly he did do, but if it hadn’t been for that bloody Dementor, he wouldn’t have had to in the first place.
Harry had the strong urge to take ahold of something weighty and fragile and chuck it across the room, if only to see in how many splinters it was able to break. He didn’t end up doing it, but not because he thought it was immature or that Sirius would be upset about him willingly destroying Black family heirlooms- he rather assumed that Sirius would be thrilled, actually-, but because of the wind of a conversation he heard.
From the sounds of it, it was coming from an empty broom closet, which in and itself was suspicious, since there were other perfectly plausible places- read the kitchen- in this house where people regularly held conversation- read order meetings- that they didn’t want certain people- read Harry- to be a part of.
Yes, he was bitter, sod off.
The second suspicious thing was that one of the voices, a distinctive oily sneer that was eternally dripping with contempt whenever it was directed at Harry, belonged to Snape while the other, a calm, gently authoritative one, that he could even now only associate with halfmoon-shaped spectacles and chocolate frog cards, belonged to Dumbledore. Neither of them were people Harry would expect to find in broom closets, especially not together.
He tiptoed to the door and pressed his ear against the cool, dark wood, careful not to make a noise, but even then, he was only able to make out a couple of snippets of the conversation. “…letter… Lucius and I… have never seen him like this before… the dark lord… was murdered…”
Harry did not get the gist of it, but he did understand that Dumbledore seemed to be momentarily stunned into silence, something he hadn’t previously thought to be possible.
For a minute the only sounds were bated breaths and Harry’s own unnaturally loudly beating heart. Then, like a knife, Dumbledore’s voice cut through the silence. “Are you sure, Severus?”
“I-" Snapes voice halted for a moment. Then he continued at a normal volume. "I believe this a conversation best to be held in privacy, if we don’t want anybody to accidentally overhear us.” There it was, the contempt. Snape knew he was listening in, or at least he assumed it which was arguably worse, because he was right, and Harry hated proving Snape right.
In the end it didn’t matter, Harry supposed, because the conversation was pretty much finished either way and while he didn’t hear all of it, he had at least more to go off than before. And maybe Snape just always randomly stated in conversations that he thought somebody was eavesdropping and just happened to be right on this instance. Snape, to Harry, seemed like a deeply mistrustful and paranoid person.
Not the point.
The point was that somehow Snape had found out about something so worrisome that it had even managed to stun Dumbledore. Call him pessimistic, but Harry didn’t think that was a particularly good sign. Judging by what Snape had said, somehow both he and Malfoy’s father were involved. Maybe they had found out about something, maybe it was about the weapon. Then there was a letter... That was what Snape and Malfoy must have found. Harry tried to recall the other snippets he had caught …have never seen him like this…. Never seen whom like this? the dark Lord. Him perhaps. Was this connected to what happened last night? Harry thought of the feeling of confliction that had dominated his being for hours on end and that he still felt like the remnants of a particularly awful nightmare, a vicious thing, confused and angry and wounded. Harry was hard pressed to think of anything that might stir these sorts of almost humane feelings in the murderer of his parents.
… was murdered…. In any other conversation involving Voldemort and a dead body he would have come to the same obvious conclusion. But something about this was different. For one, Harry cannot imagine any sort of scenario where Voldemort would murder somebody and feel conflicted about it afterwards. So, either he did murder somebody, and it just wasn’t the key piece to the story, and therefore not what he was conflicted about, or he didn’t murder the person in question at all. But whose death would he feel conflicted over?
Usually at this point he would consult Ron and Hermione, but he didn’t feel like sharing this kind of information with them right now. No, Harry decided, this he would keep to himself.