Half-Blood Means Two Things || Marauders Era | Percy Jackson ||

|| 18 - I Have A Personal Vendetta Against Red Caps ||

Waking up was torture.

After running around the previous night, I hadn't gotten to the dorm until, like, 6 am, and I'd barely slept half an hour before Emilia was up, throwing open curtains and screaming at us to wake up.

"Good gods, Em," I moaned incoherently into my pillow, "let a girl sleep!"

"Charlie!" Emilia shouted -- way too loudly. "Where were you last night?"

I tensed as I remembered the last thing they'd seen was me in the Infirmary with Hagrid. I looked at her through the stands of my frizzy hair. "Nowhere, Mom," I teased, though there was a hint of guilt lacing my tone.

Emilia, offended and kind of petty, stomped over and yanked the covers off my bed. She flipped on every light in the room and stared at me pointedly, hands on her hips. Her lips were pursed so violently, I half expected them to pop right off.

"Charlize." She glared down at me. "If you get Gryffindor in trouble for sneaking off -- "

"Seriously, relax. I was with Hagrid."

By now, the rest of the girls were stirring, half entranced by our little standoff, half still asleep.

Emilia scowled at me like I'd kicked her puppy. I met her glare with one of my own, realizing that I was considerably crankier when I didn't get good sleep.

"Charlie?" Rowan yawned, running a hand over her face to wake herself up. "Are you okay?"

I sighed dramatically. "I'm fine!" Then I yanked the duvet back from Emilia, fixed her with a fierce glare, and pulled the cover back over my head, blissfully enjoying the darkness.

"Wow. Someone didn't get their beauty sleep last night," I heard Emilia mutter as the light tap of her feet faded away. She might've walked away, but it might've been that I fell asleep.

However, as soon as I passed out, I was thrust into haphazard, chaotic dreams that made absolutely no sense. First, I saw a boy with reddish-brown hair and mischievous brown eyes that twinkled with trouble. An impish smile was spread across his face as he ran around, tripping people. He was my age. Maybe a little younger.

Next, I saw someone I recognized. Professor Vega, sporting a violent shade of orange hair. He was surrounded by trees and had a shifty look in his eye that made me wonder what he was up to. He had on a long cloak that helped him disappear into the shadows of the rising sun. Before I could notice anything else distinguishable, my dream changed.

This time, I was staring at the one and only Dameon. He wasn't looking at me, but he was writing something down. It wasn't English, but I could read it. It took me a moment to realize he was writing in Ancient Greek. I only caught one word -- Styx.

Then the dream shifted one more time. I was sitting at a bar, staring at bottles upon bottles of alcohol, and there was an almost-empty cup in front of me. I raised it and chugged the rest of it. A weird, tingly feeling rushed through me and the edges of my vision became fuzzy. I was drunk. Or, at least, whoever's body I was in, was drunk. And very drunk.

I stayed in this part of the dream longer than any of the others. The bar looked like a Muggle one. The bartender looked even older than Dumbledore, but there was a spark in his eyes that amused me. He poured another drink for me.

"You might want to take it easy there, kiddo."

When I opened my mouth to speak, it wasn't my voice or my words. "Can't stop. T-too much -- " My words were slurred and almost incoherent. I lifted the glass and nodded to him sarcastically and chugged the whole thing.