Harry's POV

At dinner, the first thing I noticed was that Nico and Thalia weren't shouting at each other.

Instead, it seemed that Thalia and Percy had replaced them. Only they weren't yelling, just talking really loudly. From what I understood, they were quarrelling about the merits of water-related natural disasters with air-related ones. What I didn't understand were why they were so passionate about it.

Thalia stabbed a fork into the table. "Tornadoes can rip buildings apart then throw them in the air!"

Percy shook a bagel, "Hurricanes can cause floods ten feet high and rip up the strongest roads!"

Annabeth seemed to be the one in charge of deciding who won the fight. She sat there with her hands clasped, turning to whoever spoke.

Finally Clarisse said, "Shut up! War is better than air disasters and water disasters combined! Millions die from war! Buildings explode from bombs!! Ships sink! Airplanes fall! People get stabbed!"

Annabeth looked impressed, "I've never thought of that. Clarisse wins 10 drachmas! Thank you for bringing in a new perspective."

I felt like she'd only said that to end the ridiculous argument.

"I disagree with this verdict!" Thalia protested loudly. "Clarisse La Rue was never part of this debate in the first place! I demand that she rescind her statement!"

"Yeah!" Percy agreed eloquently.

"5 drachmas each, runts. Cough it up!" Clarisse thrust out her hand expectantly. And when Percy and Thalia shook their heads, she cracked her knuckles and glared with double the usual intensity. Annabeth joined in.

"Fine..." the two grumbled. They dropped ten gold coins into her waiting hand.

They sulked for a while, but Percy snapped out of it first. "So, how was detention?" he asked Nico.

Nico smiled with satisfaction. "It was really short. Pinecone Face and I kept arguing about who cleaned more trophies. Professor Lupin couldn't stand it so he Silenced us with his spell. When that didn't work, he put a Shield Charm between us. That didn't stop us so he let us go early."

Thalia smirked, "It was actually fun."

Percy laughed, "That's the greatest! I'll do that the next time I have detention with someone."

The Americans eventually went back to calmly eating their food. I sighed, grabbing a ladle to get myself some broth. My entertainment for the day had ended.

"Hey Thalia," Nico said suddenly.

Aha, I thought, setting the soup down and staring with interest.

Nico pointed at a little gold dish, "It tastes way better with that green sauce."

Thalia stared at him, then looked at the cookie she was eating, "Seriously?" she asked suspiciously.

I have never eaten it like that so I didn't know whether he was telling the truth or not.

"Trust me," he nodded convincingly.

Thalia slowly dipped the cookie into the sauce and took a small bite, then she spit it out again, "Pfff!! Gross!"

Nico nearly fell off his bench with laughter, "You fell for it!"

"DEATH BREATH!!" she dove under the table, Nico tried to get up, but she had already grabbed his legs.

"Gah!" Nico yelped, latching onto the bench with both hands. "I'm being taken! Help help!! Leo?!"

"I got you man!" Leo held onto Nico's wrists and pulled.

"Leo, let go!" Thalia ordered.

"You're stretching me to death!"

"Sorry," Leo's grip slackened and Thalia pulled him over, grabbed her cookie and went under the table.

We couldn't see what was happening, there were too many legs and other students' heads looking, but we could hear shrieks, Thalia screaming "Eat it!", choking, and coughing.

Nico managed to scramble under the bench and stumble away.

"Oh no, you don't!" Thalia climbed out, grabbed Nico's new aviator jacket and turned him around, "You're not done eating it!"

Nico doubled over, "Thals...I don't..." his cheeks puffed out.

"Oh no," Thalia backed away, eyes filled with horror, "Nico, don't you dare!"

Nico threw up all over Thalia's shirt. It was a disgusting sight.

She screamed and looked at her shirt in complete horror. He had hurled pretty close to Thalia, so it only went on her and the floor.

She whipped out her wand, but Nico said, "Accio wand!"

Thalia's wand flew from her hand, "NICO DI ANGELO GET BACK HERE RIGHT NOW!!!"

Nico sprinted away, cackling like a mad man.

"Should we go after them?" Jason asked worriedly.

"No, let them be idiots," Annabeth rolled her eyes. "I'm not in the mood to deal with them anyway."

When my friends and I got back to the common room, we found Nico lying on his side on the rug with his eyes closed. He was completely drenched. His hair was sticking up, and his clothes had burn holes in them.

Thalia was sitting on an armchair and reading a book like nothing was wrong.

Hermione gasped, moving towards Nico, "Is...is he dead?"

Thalia looked up, "Don't be ludicrous. He just got knocked out when he hit the floor."

"What happened to him?" Neville asked, eyes side.

Thalia shrugged, "I drenched him in water, then electrocuted him."

We all gasped. "But...he could have died!" Hermione cried.

"I made sure to not use too much electricity."

"A-Are you going to wake him up?" Ginny asked.

"Nope, he's too annoying," she went back to her book.

Hermione rushed over to him to make sure he was alive. He was.

"Americans are mental," Ron whispered to me. I nodded in agreement.

While we were doing homework, the Americans came in.

"Should we wake him up?" Percy asked.

"Yeah we should, he needs to change out of those clothes, Rennervate," Annabeth said.

Nico sat up, "Whoa! What's wrong with my clothes? Wait..." he glared at Thalia, "You blasted me with lightning!! And it's cold here!"

He'd been blasted by lightning? I know there must be a spell of that, but why lightning of all things?

"You threw up on me!"

"That was an accident! You shoved that cookie in my mouth and brought it down on yourself."

"Guys, stop it, Nico, go change," Piper said.

Nico went up to their dorm.

"How do you do that?" Ron demanded.

"Do what?" Piper asked, feigning innocence.

Ron looked unnerved, "They always listen to you and follow your commands. No offence, but it creeps me out. How do you do it?"

She shifted uncomfortably, "It's nothing."

"Yeah it's nothing," Ron said, we went back to the homework.

Then Hermione stopped suddenly, "Wait...why did we listen to her?"

I blinked, "What?"

"She said it's nothing! It's not."

Ron smacked his head, "She did?"

"I'm going to the library. You boys finish your homework!"

Hermione stalked off, then came back abruptly, "I'll need your cloak, Harry."

"I'll get it," Ron went up the boys' dormitories.

When Hermione came back only about 10 minutes later, she was kind of disappointed.

"I didn't find much, but when they swear, they say 'What the Hades', and Hades is a Greek god, and Thalia said that Nico said, 'They eat Thanatos?', Thanatos is the Greek god of Death. And they say 'gods' instead of 'God', so they have something to do with Greek Mythology. But I couldn't find anything about being very persuasive. There is a spell like that, it's kind of weak, but I don't think would Piper keep casting it on herself, and she would be better at persuading then if I used that spell. But I found that Aphrodite can do that. Not much help though. And Umbrakinesis, the control of shadows, is Dark Arts, but it's very, very advanced. You would need years of practice to master it. Especially to a degree when you aren't even trying, the shadows just come to you. I had to go in the Restricted section to find that."

"Wow," Ron said, "so that proves it! He's a Death Eater right?"

"It doesn't prove that, just that he's a Dark Wizard. But even Voldemort couldn't master that, so how could Nico do it? He'd have to begin when he was extremely young."

"So someone made him practice it early on," Ron suggested. "Which is pretty screwed up and unlikely."

"Then that would mean he got it from his dad!" I declared.

Hermione sighed, "That's a possibility. There's no information about Umbrakinesis being inherited since it's so rare. Either way, his father must be involved."

At Breakfast, the first thing I noticed was that Travis, Connor, Leo, Fred, and George were crowded together holding a piece of parchment and whispering.

"What are you doing?" I asked them. I tried to control my fear. Five troublemakers together was a recipe for disaster.

And I was just trying to graduate.

"I guess we can tell you," Fred said.

"We are going to take down the Slytherins," George said.

"One, by, one..." Leo rubbed his hands together evilly, "or maybe two by two, or ten by ten, whatever."

"Slytherins as in...Malfoy?" Ron asked hopefully. "Maybe maim him a bit?"

"No, we'll get sent to Azkaban," Fred said, "just dungball attacks, making people's hair pink, using our Weasleys Wizardry Wheezes, crashing their dates, that sort of thing. Small harmless things to create some tension for the grand finale."

"Oh," Ron looked a bit disappointed.

"What's the grand finale?" I asked nervously.

"And after that, we are going to set our common room on fire!!" Leo whisper-yelled.

"WHAT?!" I cried. "Okay, guys, I know this may be all fun and games to you, but there are students there. And about all that stuff with the Slytherins, some may be terrible, but —"

"Oh relax," Connor rolled his eyes, "no one will get hurt. We'll even make sure no belongings get burned. But the real kicker is this..." he trailed off, pausing dramatically.

"We're going to frame Malfoy for the crime!" Travis finished.

Ron whapped his hand in a violent high-five, "Wicked!" Then he hesitated, the high fading, "What...how are you going to do that?"

"Me and—" Leo stopped, "tell ya later."

We saw that Hermione was coming. We returned to our seats before she could tell us off.

"What were you talking about with them?" Hermione asked.

I shrugged, "They just wanted to tell me that they're going to prank some Slytherins. Nothing permanent."

"Oh," Hermione said, frowning with disapproval.

The owl post arrived, hundreds of owls circled the air, looking for their owners.

Hermione opened the Daily Prophet and skimmed through it, "Anything interesting?" I asked her.

"No," she folded up the paper and stuck it in her bag, "nothing."

Percy didn't get anymore treats, but he got a ton of cards. I suspected most of them were asking him out. Thankfully, I didn't get those anymore.

He opened one and tried to read it, so he was staring at it for a really long time. Finally he realized what it was and tore it in half.

Annabeth, Piper, Jason, and Will also got a lot. Katie, Thalia, Hazel and Nico got a few letters too.

Nico didn't even bother opening any, instead he dug through, like he was searching for something, when he didn't find what he was looking for, he Vanished the pile.

Thalia got so mad when she read one, she set all of them on fire.

"Oooh," Leo said, as if hypnotized, "Fiiiireeee." He stared at the burning parchment, then he snatched one that wasn't very burned from the pile.

I swear, the fire was right on his fingers, but Leo didn't seem to realize. The fire extinguished on its own.

"Hey! Give that back!" Thalia screeched.

Leo ripped it open and took out the letter, he pointed his wand at it and read, "Theodore Nott says that you are a hot chick—"

"HEY!" Thalia made a grab for the parchment, but Leo held it out of reach. He climbed onto the bench and hopped down so that Thalia couldn't go down and grab his ankles.

"and that he is totally available. You can do so much better than that mudblood di An—" he stopped and squinted at the words like he was making sure he was reading it right. He looked at Nico, then at Thalia, "Are you two—"

"NO!" they yelled at the same time.

"Alright alright, if you say so," then he continued reading, "aaand, there's a bunch of rants about Nico, blah blah blah, then: If you are interested you can meet me at the Astronomy Tower at 8 o'clock tonight. I'll be there...winky smiley face." His face lit up, he threw it back to Thalia and started whispering to Travis, then the Stolls and Leo started to have a super heated conversation, then the Weasley's joined in the conversation. They had super excited faces on their faces.

Thalia glared at the side of Leo's head, crumpled up the parchment into a tight ball, and threw it at Leo's face, who ignored it.

A bunch of owls landed on Annabeth, butted their heads against her, and hooted happily. Some even did that to Percy. A lot of them even managed to bow to her.

"I hope they don't poop on you," Nico said, "I hate those things," he muttered, he glared at the owls, "so ugly and white."

The owls turned to stare at him.

"Um...hi owls."

They hooted indignantly and flew at him, "AHHH OWL ATTACK SAVE ME!! LEO!! AHHH!" he bolted out of the Hall.

Annabeth shrieked, "Stop!"

The owls stopped, but there were still about three of them on the other side of the doors.

"Why do the owls like you so much?" Seamus asked.

"Ohh, I don't know," Annabeth muttered.

"You should have seen her!" Percy declared, "we went up to the owlery to send a letter, and she saw all the owls and gushed about how pretty they were for ten straight minutes."

 A Slytherin girl, I think her name was Drew, dropped an envelope into Leo's lap, "Here, jerk."

"Thanks," Leo said cheerfully and handed it to Connor.

Suddenly another owl seemed to appear out of nowhere and dropped a box into Travis' lap.

He tore it open and peeked inside, "Yes! Mom sent us treats!!"

Lou snatched it out of his hands, "Thanks for the treats, Stoll."

"Hey!" Connor gasped. Travis dived across the table to grab her, but she had already stumbled out of her seat, sprinting out the doors.

The Stolls dashed after her, and none of the other Americans went after them. Probably tired of each other's antics.

Travis' POV

We finally got to Snape's office. The owl and the package of treats had been a trick of the Mist as a cover for us not being in the Great Hall. Thanks, Lou.

"What took you so long?" Nico asked us, leaning against the wall.

"Sorry," I said.

"We got lost," Connor explained, and he placed his hand on the doorknob. There was a click, and it unlocked.

"You're not cursed or hexed?" Lou asked, sounding disappointed.

"That'll only happen if you use Alohomora," Connor explained.

We went in, and Nico stayed outside as the lookout.

Lou closed her eyes, then waved her hand over the cupboards, " 'kay, all the ingredients we need will glow a bit." Some cupboards flew open, "Grab some other random ingredients too. We don't want Snape figuring out we're making the Polyjuice Potion."

Our plan was for me and Connor to drink the Polyjuice Potion and look like two random Muggles that Drew had gotten one of her brothers to take hairs from. We'll get Malfoy to follow us to the Forbidden Forest, where no one can see us. Then we'll get him to cast a Fire-Making Spell. Leo will watch from the windows of Gryffindor Tower, and at the same time, he'll set the common room on fire.

No one will suspect the Gryffindors, because we'll make sure some random bags, parchment, quills, and textbooks do get burned. But none of the other students'.

Meanwhile, a bit before the fire, Lou, Leo, and Drew (Nico or Thalia would be too suspicious) will pretend right in front of any teacher that they saw Malfoy going to the Gryffindor dormitories.

Lou snapped her fingers, and a pillowcase appeared, hovering a foot above the ground. It flew around and went up to anyone who wants to put something in. In it were about thirty Ziplock bags.

"How can you do this much magic without getting tired?" Connor wondered.

She rolled her eyes, "I'm at Hogwarts. I'm surrounded by my mom's magic."

"Do we have them all?" Lou asked after a while. Travis checked the cabinets and nodded.

I tapped the door two times to ask Nico if the coast was clear. There was no response, so there was still someone there.

"What are you doing?" someone asked. I think it was Ron.

I inwardly groaned. It had to be the nosy Golden Trio.

"Do I have to be doing something?" Nico responded.

"What are you doing here?" Harry asked. "In front of Snape's office?"

"We can teleport out of here," I told Connor. "We'll go through the wall behind us."

Lou crossed her arms, "What about me?"

"Oh," we've never teleported another person before, and I doubted that it would work.

"That's Snape's office?" Nico asked casually. "Huh, he has good taste."

"What are you doing here?" Harry asked again.

"Waiting for my friends."

"All the Americans have already left the Great Hall," Ron responded.

"Oh, did they? Guess I'll go then."

I heard him walking down the hallway just before he appeared in front of me. Connor yelped, then covered his mouth.

"Harry, I heard something in Snape's office!" Ron exclaimed.

"It's probably nothing," Hermione said, "we're going to be late."

"Yeah I heard it too!" Harry said, ignoring her.

"Harry, Ron, it's probably nothing! You can't go in Snape's office! It's rude! Now come on!"

"Fine," Ron grumbled, "but I'm telling you —"

"The coast is clear," Nico grabbed the pillowcase and melted into the shadows.

We sneaked out and went to Herbology.

After finishing lunch, we went to help Lou and Leo finish the Polyjuice Potion. On the way, I spotted two Slytherin girls, one I remembered had called Lou a Mudblood.

"C'mon brother," I whispered.

We hid behind two columns. When they passed, we threw our own invention: stink-bombs that make them smell like a garbage truck for two hours.

We ducked into the bathroom, where our friends were working. Lou had her hands held still over some potted fluxweed, and Leo was pouring over a chart of the moon phases. "Two more minutes," he said slowly, face screwed with concentration, "and the plant should be as mature as it would be at the next full moon. Damn, we should've gotten Katie."

"Hey," I said, "you can cross Alyssa Mackermore and Ellie whatever her last name is off that list Leo."

Leo took a spiral notebook out of his satchel and tossed it at me before going back to the chart, probably double-checking his math. I crossed out two names. Drew had given us a list of all the snobby students to prank. Most were Slytherins since that was the House she was most familiar with, but there was a good number from other Houses.

It sure was nice to have a Slytherin spy.

For the next hour, Connor and I fished out the needed ingredients from the pillowcase for Lou and Leo.

"It's a copper cauldron, so it needs to brew for eighteen hours," Leo murmured. "Can you go at the same pace as before?"

"Yep," she said.

"1,080 minutes," he wrote, "so keep at it for a little less than fifteen and a half minutes." He pulled out his phone and started a timer. "I'll yank your hands away when it's time."

"This is complicated," I whispered to Connor.

15 and a half minutes passed, and Lou threw in some lacewings and stirred three times. "We're done," Leo said triumphantly. "And I have used up all my brain cells."

"Better spent than using them for class," I grinned. I handed Lou ten drachmas, and she skipped off. After some thought, I gave three to Leo. "You deserve it, man. Nice job."

He brightened, "Thanks. Now let's go."