The Golden Wand [Harry Potter/Percy Jackson]

Chapter 43: The Queen of The Amazons

Harry POV:

"No, come onnnn. This isn't the key? You're telling me I woke up in a cupboard, fell off a cliff-edge, got chased through SEVEN countries by a group of dementors, fought a blast-ended skrewt, saved a whole town in Utah from a literal plague of locusts, found a building that I didn't even know existed until six days ago... only for you to tell me that this is not the key?" 

I sighed and leaned back in my chair, out of breath from my rant. The girl laughed. 

"You did all of that and literally thought your task was to find an actual key? Have you never heard of a metaphor? 'Find the key' doesn't mean find an actual key. My goodness, men take things way too literal... Where did you even find that key?"

Feeling embarrassed, I hid the key from her mocking gaze. "I found it on the doorstep to the temple-"

"-Oh, what the fuck, give that here," she leaned forwards and grabbed the key from my hands. I barely had time to react, and even if I had I wouldn't have fought her - she was bigger and stronger than me by quite a bit. Frankly, she was terrifying. "This is the key for Hunter's office! She's been looking for that for weeks."

"Oh, right, um, sorry," I mumbled, pushing my glasses further up my nose. "So you don't happen to know what the key is?"

She shrugged, pulling out her wand and leaning back casually. With a flick of her wrist, the wand turned into a dagger. I flinched, but she only chuckled and used the tip of her knife to clean her nails. 

"Not a clue, that's for you to work out," she said after a while. 

"Okay, cool," I clapped my hands together, trying to sound casual. "So you won't mind if I just take a quick look inside and search for that key?"

"No man is allowed to enter the temple-"

"-But you said Percy and Frank were in there once!" I protested. She rolled her eyes and huffed. 

"Percy's just lucky I let him leave, and Frank's a darling so that doesn't really count. Besides, I wasn't Queen back then. Now I run this place, and trust me when I say I'm not letting a man inside my temple."

"B-But, uh, no that's so unfair. If I don't get inside that building I'm going to fail the competition! And you know I'm a good guy - trust me, I won't ruin anything in there. I'm friends with your sister! You can trust me!"

The Queen's eyes lit up when I said this. 

"How is Reyna, by the way? Is she good? Last time I heard from her she sent me a letter to say that she forgot when my birthday was... typical," Hylla chuckled to herself. "I've been meaning to reply, but work is so busy right no- hey, you!" She turned to face a man dressed in an orange pantsuit walking nearby. "Yeah, you! Fetch us some hot chocolate."

I watched as the man dropped the boxes he had been carrying and sprinted into the temple, not saying a word. My mouth dropped open. 

"He's a man... he's allowed inside!" I pointed out. 

"He's a servant," Hylla corrected. She laughed at my shocked look. "Oh, don't look like that. We treat them better than you guys treat your bloody House-Elves. Anyway, I'm only allowing you some hot chocolate because you were going to tell me all about Reyna! Go on, tell me everything!"

I looked around us again, frowning hard. The two of us sat around a small table in the middle of an frost-covered garden. Next to the garden - coated in a thin layer of snow - stood the Temple of the Amazons; home to a group of highly elite witches and Aurors (and apparently the headquarters to the actual shipping company, Amazon). Until recently, this Temple had been nothing more than a myth - and it wasn't until the world believed Percy and Annabeth's claims that we started to consider it a reality. The problem was, no one had ever found it before, apart from Hazel, Frank and Percy, who had visited here last year before Hylla had been made "Queen".