The Red Letter
After dinner, it was naturally time to head back to their dormitories. Tyson was a little reluctant to separate from Harry and Percy, since he had to follow the badgers, led by Hufflepuff's prefect.
"Don't worry, Tyson. We'll meet up tomorrow," Percy told him so the young Cyclops wouldn't worry too much about being away from them. Ever since he'd moved into their house, he'd always been trailing behind Harry and Percy, except for the times Aunt Mor kidnapped him to be her assistant.
"Okay," Tyson said, unable to stop himself from looking a little sad.
But he quickly brightened up as the other Hufflepuff students chatted with him warmly while they walked through the corridors toward their House.
Harry, Percy, and the rest of the Gryffindor students, aside from the first-years, didn't need to be guided by the prefect, who in this case was the eldest Weasley.
So they simply walked toward Gryffindor Tower with their friends.
Meanwhile, Neville cheerfully asked the Potter-Jackson brothers how their summer holidays had gone.
...
The next morning arrived rather quickly.
Perhaps because everyone was truly exhausted from the yearly trip to school, despite there being far easier ways to travel.
The Great Hall had already been set with bowls of porridge, platters of smoked herring, toast with fried eggs, and bacon for the students sitting down to breakfast.
Percy and Harry arrived at the same time.
As always, Harry had been the one responsible for waking his brother, who currently wore the exhausted expression of someone who had once again been tormented by those annoying nightmares all night long.
Harry and Percy sat down at the Gryffindor table right beside Hermione, who had been awake long before they had. An open copy of the Masked Hero's autobiography rested beside her mug of warm milk and toast.
"Good morning," Hermione said with a smile when she saw them arrive.
But the moment she noticed the dark circles under Percy's eyes and his obvious bad mood, she picked up on it immediately.
"You don't look very well," she said.
"Oh, yeah. Thanks. Your hair looks lovely today too," Percy replied in the most sarcastic tone possible, earning himself an elbow from Harry.
"Don't mind him. He had a rough night," Harry quietly told Hermione before the young witch could get offended.
Hearing that, Hermione seemed to understand something, though she couldn't help clearing her throat and adjusting her hair a little.
"Did he have one of those... nightmares?" Hermione asked, lowering her voice so only Harry and Percy could hear.
"Yeah. I got another call from my dear grandfather last night," Percy said with obvious irony, making Hermione's eyes widen in surprise.
"Y-you mean Kronos?" she asked with obvious interest.
She already looked as though a hundred questions were about to come pouring out.
She knew Percy was a demigod.
And not just any demigod, but Poseidon's son.
And that Harry was Hecate's grandson.
The boys had made sure to tell her everything, including the entire story of what had happened during the previous summer in America and the theft of Zeus's Master Bolt.
It wasn't a problem for Hermione to know the truth about Harry's and Percy's heritage.
In fact, in certain ways she was incredibly helpful, researching things about their own bloodline that they themselves had never known.
Sometimes she even made Harry and Percy think that perhaps she and Annabeth would get along incredibly well...
Or terribly.
There was really no way to know, and neither of them actually wanted to find out.
Fortunately, before Hermione could begin bombarding them with questions first thing in the morning, Neville sat down beside them in high spirits, followed by Ron, neither of whom had the slightest idea that demigods or the mythological world even existed.
"What are you talking about?" Ron asked as he sat down.
"Nothing. Percy just woke up in a bad mood," Harry answered easily.
It was still far too early for his friend to learn there was a hidden world even beyond the magical one.
Although sometimes Harry wondered whether he should tell him.
After all, Hermione already knew.
But Ron was different.
Hermione could see through the Mist.
She was what they called Clear-sighted at camp.
According to Chiron, people like that had a greater ability to understand things that would normally shatter an ordinary person's mind.
Even so, many of them had still ended up losing their sanity.
Though wizards certainly adapted much better than ordinary people, for now it was probably wiser not to tempt fate and let things unfold naturally instead of ending up in St. Mungo's under the care of the Mind Healers.
"Mmm," Ron said, seeming to suspect something as he looked at the three of them.
Just then, Neville interrupted with obvious excitement.
"It should almost be time for the mail to arrive. I'm sure my grandmother will send the things I forgot at home. Like my wand," he said.
Making Harry, Percy, Hermione, and Ron all turn to look at him at those words.
As interesting as it was to hear about a wizarding student forgetting the one object that allowed him to use magic, that thought was interrupted by the arrival of hundreds of owls bursting into the Hall with a tremendous racket, soaring over everyone's heads and dropping packages onto the crowd, who raised their hands to catch them in midair.
Percy, who was just about to start eating his porridge, hoping the warm porridge would finally wake him up, suddenly saw something gray fall directly in front of him.
Right into his bowl of porridge.
Percy was still holding his spoon.
He watched as porridge and feathers splashed all over his face, leaving him completely frozen in place.
Percy recognized the bird that apparently had decided to become part of his breakfast.
"Ron, I think you've got mail," he said in a very dry tone while wiping porridge off his face.
Harry, who seemed to have somehow predicted something like this might happen, had instinctively raised the serving tray in front of him like a shield. He lowered it just enough to look at his brother for a few seconds, though not enough to reveal that he was desperately trying not to burst into laughter.
"Errol!" Ron shouted, making a face of disgust. He had also been splattered with Percy's porridge, though of course nowhere near as badly as Percy.
Neville stared wide-eyed at the disaster in front of Percy.
He even seemed to have completely forgotten that he was still waiting for his own wand.
But Ron's face suddenly filled with panic when he noticed a red envelope clutched in the owl's beak as it lay upside down in the bowl.
"No," he whispered as he turned pale.
"Don't worry. He's not dead," Percy said, poking the bird with his spoon and watching it twitch slightly with each poke.
But apparently that wasn't what Ron had meant.
Or rather, he didn't seem to care about the family's ridiculous owl at all.
His eyes were completely fixed on the red envelope, which both he and Neville, for some reason, stared at as though it were a ticking bomb ready to explode.
"I've been sent a Howler," Ron said, growing paler with every passing second. "Why? I didn't do anything wrong... did I?" he asked, desperately looking around for help while trying to think of anything he might have done to deserve one.
"A Howler?" Hermione asked.
But Ron didn't answer right away.
Instead, he got to his feet and looked toward where Fred and George were happily talking with Lee Jordan, Angelina Johnson, and Alicia Spinnet.
"Guys, I think Mum sent you something and Errol got confused," Ron said, settling on what seemed like the most obvious explanation.
Fred and George both turned to look at the owl lying in the porridge and the red envelope sticking out of its beak.
"Oh, no, no. That's definitely not ours," Fred said, quickly shaking his head. "Besides, that's not an ordinary Howler," he added, for some reason looking genuinely eager for Ron to open it.
George also looked at the Howler, and his grin widened to match his twin brother's.
"Come on, Ron, open it. We're sure it's yours. Besides, we haven't even gotten into trouble yet. It's only the first day. We usually wait until the third or fourth," he added, though it sounded far more like an excuse to encourage Ron for some mysterious reason.
Ron's gaze then shifted toward Percy Weasley, his voice growing more fearful by the second.
"Percy?"
The eldest Weasley was staring at the Howler with an unusually serious expression.
"Oh, bloody hell," he muttered before standing up and moving as far away from that spot as possible, as though fleeing for his life.
Hearing the fear in his older brother's voice, something that even seemed to frighten Percy himself, made Ron even more nervous.
"W-What? What?"
Now completely pale, Ron feared opening that Howler even more than before.
A chill ran down his spine.
What if it exploded?
What if it started chasing him all over the castle?
What if it was some new invention his mother had come up with just to punish him?
"Why is it so special?"
Desperate for answers, Ron turned toward the first-years, trying to find his little sister, hoping she might be more helpful than his older brothers.
But Ginny didn't even look his way.
She actually seemed to be avoiding his eyes altogether.
And judging by her behavior, she also recognized this particular special Howler that apparently all of her siblings knew about...
Except him.
"You'd better open it, Ron. If you wait too long, it'll only get worse," Neville said.
But perhaps those words came just a little too late.