Bit of a long chapter. I would apologize, but I don't think anyone will complain :)
Nico POV
"Exactly," I say to Will, "Now, time to meet the wizards." And hopefully, get home, I think to myself.
The door creaks open, and Lupin walks in.
"Would you follow me downstairs? We all have some questions for you," He says from the doorway.
I stand up, and pain pulses through my arm in aching waves. My head feels like it's about to split open and the room looks like it's behind a tank of water. I stumble, and someone grabs my waist. I tense, then realize that it's only Will. I close my eyes and steady myself. I take a deep breath and the dizziness subsides. I open my eyes, and my vision is clear again.
"Sorry," I mumble. Will smiles reassuringly.
"Can you make it downstairs?" Will asks me. I nod, and we follow Lupin out the door.
-baby time skip -
We finally reach the foot of the stairs, and I feel a bead of sweat drip down the side of my face. Walking while injured is not easy, much less going down three fricken flights of stairs. Will is by my side, his arm around my waist to steady me - I almost fell down the stairs multiple times.
Lupin leads us down a hallway and opens the door at the very end. A delicious aroma hits my senses, and I realize how hungry I am. I don't eat much after the jar incident, but at the moment I could probably eat a whole turkey by myself. Well, probably not that much. Maybe half a turkey? Or a couple of apples? My stomach grumbles and Will raises an eyebrow and smiles teasingly at me.
"Shut up," I grumble, both to my stomach and annoying boyfriend. He is about to reply - most likely to tease me even more - but a barrage of voices cuts him off.
"Did you bring them Lupin?"
"Where are they?"
"I don't see them, are they coming?"
The questions keep coming, and my head is starting to pound again, so I pull away from Will and walk over to the door. Will quickly catches up with me. Lupin looks over his shoulder and walks into the room, leaving Will and me to be the center of attention.
The room is silent, and I take advantage to look around. There are ten people sitting at a long table (and one really creepy guy with a fake eye standing in the corner). There are six people with bright orange hair - most likely all related - two of which are adults (most likely the others' parents), a woman with pink hair, Lupin, a gaunt-looking man in ratty clothing, and two kids.
They are all staring at me and Will, and I suppress the urge to glare at them. As much as I hate all the stares, I don't need to freak them out. They are - if I am correct with my timeline - in the middle of a war.
Will, with his ever-cheery manner, breaks the silence.
"Hey, I'm Will. This is Nico. Sorry for barging in on you guys." He says and gives a wave. I give him a look. Really? That's the best he could come up with? Sorry for barging in? We appeared out of nowhere, with me bleeding half to death.
"What he means to say," I intervene, "is that we're sorry if we freaked you out. And we cleaned up all the blood, so don't worry."
The red-headed woman screeched.
"Blood?! Lupin, you didn't say anything about blood! What on earth happened?" She looks me up and down and seemed to notice my bandaged shoulder and sling, and the dry blood on my neck and arm. She pales.
Now it was Will's turn to give me a look.
"Perhaps we should get these two some food and they can give us their explanation," Lupin says, and I silently thank him. I'm starving. Those stairs were gruesome.
"Oh, all right." The woman says, and she turns to us. "My name is Molly, dears, come sit." She waves her wand and two chairs appear at the table between the two twin redheads. Will's mouth hangs open for a couple of seconds, then promptly closes it and walks over to one of the chairs. I follow him and sit down in the chair next to his.
"Here you are, dears." She says and waves her wand. A bowl of soup appears in front of me. "Eat up."
I pick up a spoon and look at the bowl of steaming hot broth. A thought nags at the back of my mind. What if it's poisoned? Will would be left alone in the past with the wizards. Will seems to understand why I'm hesitating, and dips his spoon into my bowl and tries it. He is silent for half a second - yet my heart seems to beat fifteen times - then smiles.
"It's fine." I smile at him gratefully and start to eat. It's just normal chicken soup. I have a couple more spoonfuls before I look up from the bowl. Molly is looking at me with an expression that I can't quite read. She seems almost... appalled, or surprised? I can't tell. The other adults have the same expression and look at me cautiously.
Great way to take off any suspicion, Di Angelo, I chide myself.
"He has an allergy to peanuts." Thank the gods for Will. "He didn't know if there were any in the soup."
Molly's face softens, and she manages a smile.
"It's no problem, but don't be afraid to ask, all right dear?" I nod. The man in the corner is looking at me suspiciously with his creepy eyeball, but I ignore him. I put my spoon down.
"I guess we should explain everything now," I say, and the adults nod. Will stops eating as well, and Molly stands up.
"All right, kids, please go upstairs. And Ron and Harry, don't go into your room." The red-headed kids all started to complain at once, saying that they wanted an explanation, and how 'it isn't fair', but they get shooed away. The creaky wood door slams shut, and I'm sure that they are all going to look in 'Ron and Harry's room'.
"Well then, perhaps I should introduce everyone," Molly says tiredly, then starts to gesture at the different people. "Sirius is at the head of the table, then there's Remus Lupin - you met him already, of course - and Tonks. There's Alastor Moody in the corner - Oh, hush - and my husband Arthur Weasley."
At the last name, the room studied our faces carefully, but I just nodded. She didn't say Sirius's last name, as well as Tonks(although I doubted that was her first name) which was slightly suspicious, but then again Thalia didn't go by her last name either.
"It's nice to meet all of you," Will says with a bright smile.
"So, what happened to you both?" Lupin asks after a moment of silence. I look over at Will, then start to explain.
"We were in the woods at the summer camp we go to, gathering more firewood," I say, sticking to our cover story. "Someone came from behind a tree and we ended up in this house. We don't really know how or why though." I explain, keeping the story vague.
"How did you get the wound on your shoulder, then?" Lupin asks "It was still bleeding when I found you both, so it must be fresh." I wince at the memory of the blade piercing my skin.
"The person in the woods stabbed him before we were transported away," Will says, and Molly gasps and rushes around the table towards us.
"You were stabbed?! You need to be at a hospital, not sitting around!" She says and reaches for me. I flinch out of the way on reflex, and she pulls back with a startled look.
"I'm all right Mrs. Weasley, Will fixed me up."
"Will?" She asks incredulously and looks him up and down.
"I'm a trained medic, Mrs. Weasley. Don't worry."
"How in Merlin's name can you be a trained medic? How old are you?" Mr. Weasley asks.
"Oh, um, our summer camp has a program. And I'm 16. Nico's 15," Will answers with a wary smile. We get some incredulous looks.
"Lupin told us that you are from the year 2020?" Sirius asks, changing the subject. Will and I nod. Pandamonium breaks loose once again.
They start shouting at each other about timelines, time turners, dark magic, Voldy, and death eaters. Will chokes at the name, and I turn to him and raise an eyebrow.
"Death eaters? That seems wrong on so many levels." Will says quietly, and I can't help but burst out laughing, and Will joins me. I'm going to have to get that image wiped from my memories. The pain in my shoulder starts getting aggravated by all the laughing, and the wizards are all staring at us like we've gone crazy, so we both fall silent. However, I still feel unable to stop smiling. Smiling feels weird, I think to myself.
"Sorry. Inside joke." Sort of. The wizards take their seats once more (they seemed unable to sit while screaming at each other), and Moody-the-eyeball-dudey (It had to rhyme, okay?! Don't come for me!) clunks over to the table.
"I still have questions for you two," He says in a low, gruff voice. "I would love to use veritaserum, but my idea was voted against, lucky for you two. But if you lie to us..." He leaves the threat in the air, but I don't feel the least bit intimidated. I can kill him easily, even with my injured shoulder. Will nods politely, and we take turns answering his questions.
"Where do you live?"
"America."
"Be more specific." He grumbles.
"New york."
"Fine. Anyone going to notice you're gone?"
Oh, shist. Camp must have realized that we are gone. I look at Will worriedly.
"Uh, yes. Our summer camp." Will answers. Moody growls.
"And you two are wizards?"
"Yes. We are both Half-bloods." I answer. Lupin (The dead one from the future) had explained the blood statuses to me.
"Fine." Moody barks. Not like a dog though, more like a scowl-y shout. "Don't reveal anything about the future, understand? I would ask more questions but we can't risk the timeline."
I nodded. "Are you guys going to be able to help us get home?"
I only ask the question to keep our story intact. The wizards won't be able to help us, no matter what they think. Their power doesn't work on us, and we are dealing with old, titan magic. We are going to need godly assistance, which will be difficult to get. The gods do not like to mix with us demigods, despite the relation.
The wizards look worried, but Mr. Weasley finally gives an answer.
"We will certainly try our very best." He says with a kind smile. "Why not you two get some sleep. I'm afraid you'll have to sleep on the couches until we can figure something else out for you two."
"No problem. Thank you for helping us." Will says with a smile.
~Line Break in Memorium of Bob~
The adults slowly trickle out of the room, and Molly leads me and Will to a living room just off the kitchen where there are two very dusty couches. I've slept in worse though, so I immediately flop onto one and close my eyes while Will apologizes for the mess in the bedroom that I bled all over.
I start to drift off to sleep but I manage to hear Molly yelling at the kids for going into the bedroom that they weren't supposed to go near. I smile internally. I can almost imagine that I am back at camp. The Hermes cabin is putting vaseline on the lava wall and Annabeth is threatening to chop their hands off. That makes me miss camp even more.
I finally drift off to sleep, dreaming of camp.