All thoughts about Nico's last name leave my head as I focus on not letting my jaw hang open, a tough job considering the room we walk into. The Great Hall is, well, a great hall. There are five tables filled with either students or teachers and four of them appear to be colour coded. There's red, yellow, blue, and green, in that order. The air is filled with floating candles that have to be some kind of safely hazard, and to top it all off there's the ceiling. Zeus above, the ceiling is amazing. Forget about the Sistine chapel, this is where it's at. The night sky hangs above us in perfect clarity letting everyone watch as the clouds drift by or a shooting star appears. Sure it's no Olympus, but it's still really impressive for mortals, magic or not.
A witch with her hair in a tight bun and completely decked out in emerald green stands at the head of the fifth table. The hall comes to a hush when she makes a motion with her hand, having an old, brown, wizard hat be brought out and placed on a three legged stool by Mr. Flitwick. A line of smaller students, standing along the far wall, stare at the ratty head gear with anticipation.
The whole room is silent until a seam in the hat opens wide and it starts to scream. Or maybe it's singing, but I wouldn't start calling it Euterpe anytime soon. Once it's finished, everyone claps politely and then they go quite again.
"When I call your name, please come forward and be sorted. We shall start with the transfers." Maybe Nico's cover story actually had some truth to it. "Nico di Angelo," Mr. Flitwick calls.
Scattered whispers break out, mainly coming from the green table, as Nico walks to the front with a bored look. He sits on the stool and the hat is placed in his head, covering his eyes. He doesn't move except for the clenching of his jaw. Three minutes tick by before the hat screams "Slytherin!" and the hat is plucked off his head as the same green table starts clapping and cheering. Even from where I stand, I can tell that he's uncomfortable will all the attention. The applause dies down once he's taken a seat away from most of his house mates.
The same teacher announces my name. I take a seat and the hat is placed on my head.
"Now where to put you?"a voice hums in my head.
"Who are you?" I think back, trying to refrain from ripping the hat from my head, which I suspect has something to do with this blatant disrespect for my privacy.
"I'm the sorting hat, now shush, I'm trying to think." it does give me time to say, think? anything else before it continues. "Slytherin is out of the question, better be...Hufflepuff," It yells the last part out loud, setting off an explosion of noise from the yellow table. It's a little overwhelming.
It doesn't help that people start introducing themselves as soon as I sit down. I can't pay attention to the rest of the sorting because at the same time the first boy is sorted into Ravenclaw, a Hufflepuff girl is telling me that her name is Hannah Albott, she's an 8th year (which I don't understand because Hecate only mentioned seven grades) and that I can come to her if I have any problems. When she's done, a guy named Ernie something grabs my hand and starts shaking it vigorously. It's all a blur after that. Kids get sorted, names are thrown at me then promptly forgotten, and I end up with even more questions than I had when I sat down. By the time the last person it put in Gryffindor, my head is buzzing trying to keep up with everything,
I get a break when the green robed teacher stands up again, bringing peace to the hall and my growing head ache. I'm usually fine with people, but even all of this is a little much. I must let my confusion show because the guy next to me bumps my shoulder to get my attention. "That's Professor Mcgonagall, she's head mistress this year," he explains.
"This year?" Nico didn't say it was a revolving job, but that does explain why the head master isn't the eccentric one that he mentioned.
"Yeah," he whispers so that we don't interrupt the speech the head mistress is giving, "the two head masters before her died almost within a year of each other, though I don't know if you can really count the previous one, or any of last year since the school was over run by You Know Who's followers." he gets this far away look, remembering, for a moment before he snaps back to the present. "They even had to add an extra 8th year so that everyone could make it up without a war going on." Well that's one mystery solved.
I want to ask more about everything, but when I try another Hufflepuff shushes us and I realized I missed most of Mcgonagall's speech. Oops. "Here's to a quiet year at Hogwarts," she toasts.
Suddenly, food magically appears on the table. There's so much food. Salted pork, roasted potatoes, and mincemeat pies, they look delicious, but I can't help notice that Nico's ignoring it all. All this food and I watch as he touches none of it. I would slap some sense into him if I could, but his table's far away.
"Is it against the rules to sit at a different house's table?" I ask the same boy that helped me earlier.
"Uh," he thinks for a second, "I don't know. I don't think there's an exact rule against it, but there doesn't need to be, it's practically taboo," he explains, though it seems a little extreme.
Either way, all I needed to hear is that it might not be against the rules and I did. I grab my plate and march over to the Slytherin table. Taking a seat beside Nico, I try to ignore all the stares from the rest of the students and absolutely refuse to look at the staff table. "You aren't eating," I state, making Nico roll his eyes.
"And you're at the wrong table." Nico points to my tie that became yellow and black when I was sorted.
"The teachers don't care." I hope. I still haven't looked to see if the Head Mistress is mad. If she wants me to move then she'll have to come over and tell me. I just hope I don't get detention on my first day because of this. I start piling food on Nico's plate to distract me from that thought. "Now eat."
"Can't," he pushes his plate away.
"Why not?" I stab a potato and take a bite. It turns to ash on my tongue. I can't spit it into a napkin fast enough.
"Because we haven't sacrificed any food yet." He smirks while I gag on the taste of soot in my mouth.
He pulls out his wand and casts a spell that burns part of the vegetables on his plate. I quickly glance down the table to see if anyone noticed. No one did, I think. The only one close enough to see what we're doing is a boy with pale blonde hair that's gelled back half heartily and he's to busy playing with his food to notice when I catch a piece of meat on fire.
"There, you can eat now." I push Nico's plate back in front of him. He scowls at it, but takes a bite nevertheless. There, that's fixed. "You should eat too," I call down to the blond boy that is still pushing his food around his plate.
He lifts his head and tries to glare at me, but honestly, all death glares are pretty pathetic once you've seen Annabeth's, or Hades forbid, Nico's. "I don't see how that's any of your business," he bites out.
"I'm a healer, that means everybody's health is my business," I inform him.
Beside me, Nico sighs and shakes his head like he knows where this is going, but that can't be right; I'm not that predictable, right? Right? "Just do what he wants. It's easier than trying to argue with him." he supplies while staring at a piece of pork in distain before shoving it into his mouth.
The boy scoffs and turns away.
Looks like I'll have to take a more direct approach. Sliding down the bench so that I'm right across from him, I grab a large portion of the nearest dish and heap it on his plate. "We can do this two ways,"
"Let me guess, the easy way and the hard way?" he interrupts, rolling his eyes.
"Pretty much," I agree. "Either you eat something on your own or I'll spoon feed it to you like some kind of baby." Pause for dramatic affect. "Train and airplane noises included," I threaten.
He squints at me, sizing me up. "You wouldn't."
"He would." Nico's face flushes. He's probably remembering the last time I gave him the same choice and he picked wrong.
Blondie must realize that I mean business because he eats with little complaint. By that I mean I hear him grumble about a stupid American healer before he takes his first bite.
"It's Will actually," I tell him.
"Excuse me?"
"My name, It's Will, Will Solace, not stupid American healer or what ever else you were calling me under your breath." If I expected him to turn away in embarrassment for being called out, I would have been disappointed. "And you are?" I ask, trying to break the awkward silence.
Mal," he cuts himself off, "Draco," he corrects before going silent.
And now it's awkward again.
"Well, it's nice to meet you Draco. Right Nico?" I elbow Nico to get his attention away from the deserts that appeared. Really, his sweet tooth is going to get him in trouble.
"Sure," he agrees in a type of bored interest only he has perfected.
At least it seem to gain Draco's interest. "You're the di Angelo right?" There's that weird reaction to Nico's name again.
"Maybe," Nico grumbles.
"He is," I correct him while slapping his shoulder for being rude.
"Of the Italian di Angelos? Draco clarifies.
"No, I just learned how to fake the accent." Nico rolls his eyes.
"My father said that the di Angelos died out during one of those big muggle wars." Muggle wars? I know Nico's mom died during WWII, is that what he means?
Nico just shrugs. "Yeah, well, here I am."
"Sorry," I interject before Nico's lack of an answer can start an argument. "what's so important about the last name di Angelo?" Maybe this way I won't have to find time to pry the information out of Nico.
When Draco turns his gaze back on me, he looks at me like I've gone mad. "You're kidding right? How could you not know about the di Angelos when you're apparently friends with one of them?" I raise my hands in surrender, but he's on such a roll I don't think he even notices. "The di Angelos were one of the most powerful pure blood families anywhere. They were major anti-mudblood activists, at least they were before their only child, a girl, ran away and reproduced with a filthy muggle," he says the last part with a sneer which doesn't seem very nice. I mean, technically, based on how Nico described muggles, I'm closer to being one of them than being a wizard.
"What happened to the girl?" I have an idea, but I want to be sure.
This time Nico answers. "She died." his knuckles are white from gripping his fork. "Murdered, just like her parents."
Yes, well those were the rumors, though no one ever knew what happened to the children, their bodies were never found." Draco pauses to see if Nico's going to correct him. "Although I suppose at least one of the kids lived to have half-blood children." Well, he's not entirely wrong.
"Pure blood actually," Nico glares at Draco, daring the other Slytherin to contradict him. "You were wrong when you said she ran away with a muggle." Nico always gets this way when someone brings up his family, guarded and hostile. I can't see this ending well.
Thankfully, before the conversation can go any further, the green lady, Professor Mcgonagall, stands and dismisses everyone to bed. Maybe the Fates don't hate demi-gods after all.
"Mr. Solace," Mcgonagall strides towards me. "a word please." I stand corrected, the Fates do hate us.
I turn to Nico for support. "I'll make sure it's a nice funeral," is all he offers then he follow the rest of his house out of the hall.
Taking a deep breath to steel my nerves, I turn toward the Head Mistress. I might as see what she wants and hope it doesn't involve me getting expelled.
A/N: Happy Easter!!! I hope everyone had a great day full of whatever traditions you do for the holiday. Thank you for taking the time today to read, comment, and/or vote.
Disclaimer: I don't own anything but the plot.