Harry Potter & Percy Jackson: Dark Waters.

The baked dock roots tasted even worse, and if he hadn't known for sure they were edible, he never would have eaten them. But he was so hungry, and used to eating whatever was available, so Harry didn't complain and just ate.

With his stomach full of dock roots, he sat back to enjoy the fire and his surroundings. Now that he was warm, and not hungry, he had time to enjoy the beauty of the forest. Suddenly, his stomach cramped.

He raced to the latrine pit. The diarrhea attack was not fun, and it left him feeling weak and dizzy. He wobbled his way back to camp.

Zoë eyed him, yet said nothing.

"To much dock root, I suppose," Harry told her. She remained quiet, but he was aware that her gaze was locked tightly on him. It wasn't reassuring.

Ten minutes later, the attack came again.

When he got back, he managed to make some pine needle tea, and sip from it. He felt incredibly ill now, and part of him wished he could call this off.

He looked at Zoë. She looked compassionate. He wanted to give up. He wanted to go back to the temple. He wanted his bed. He wanted Hestia.

He sighed, feeling his intestines crawl into a knot. He raced back to the latrine pit.

When he got back, Harry grumped to himself. There was no way he was going to give up. No stupid dock root would keep him down.

He crawled into his tent and slept. It was feverish, filled with nightmarish dreams, and when he got up, his stomach was burbling angrily. No more dock roots. Ever. He pitched out the couple he had left; eating them would be worse than not eating them.

He had to find food. Real food.

As he foraged for food, he found something that made his blood ran cold. Bear scat. Fresh bear scat.

Wherever he was… there were bears. He looked at Zoë, as if to confirm what he had found out. She remained impassive, but something in her eyes told him that yes, he had identified the droppings correctly. He couldn't be picky; that lesson had been drilled into him from an early age. And grasshoppers were definitely edible. Half an hour later, he had caught maybe a dozen and a half of them, and skewered them on a long twig he had found.

He roasted them over the fire, and ate them with gusto. They tasted delicious. And with their hard shells, they crunched like potato chips. He made himself a cup of nettle tea to go with his meal, sat back, and relaxed. He'd finally had something to eat, and had some time to relax. He felt better, the dock root had finally run its course, apparently.

The next morning, he go up feeling as if he had been reborn. Drawing a deep breath to fill his lung with clean air from the mountainous forest, Harry smiled. So far, survival had

He was still feeling ill from the stupid dock roots, but he had to stay sharp. He drew a breath, and tried to banish the feeling of illness. It didn't work, of course, but it was better than nothing.

Suddenly, he spotted a deer across a clearing. He sighed. Hunting was out; Artie kept the bow she gave him when they trained, and there was no way he'd be able to build his own and get good enough with it todo anything useful.

That meant trapping.

He scouted around, and found a trail; there didn't appear to be any other humans around, so the trail was definitely made by large animals. Finding a spot where the trail seemed to narrow, Harry looked around for useful items.

Using some string from his pack, he constructed a large-animal spring trap, connected to a pressure plate that was hidden by twigs and leaves. An animal would step on the plate, and a nearby sapling spruce would spring up, yanking the animal's leg and trapping it.

He studied his trap for a few moments, trying to make sure it was well hidden, before the gurgle of his stomach reminded him of his hunger. He had to eat now, he couldn't wait for the trap to trigger and catch something.

He retreated back to one of the clearings he had found. The sun was out, and the warmth felt good on him. For a moment, he stopped, drew himself to his full, not-very-impressive height, and basked in the warmth.

Then his current mission reminded him. He shot the sun a smile, and went looking for something to eat.

"Stupid grasshoppers," he muttered when he saw one jump from one plant to the next. He blinked. "Grasshoppers?" CH 37

"Thou seems cleaner," Zoë noted as she sat down on the other side of the fire, watching him whittle his spear.

He grinned at her. "When I'm done here, I'm going to check the trap; Just in case you wanted to have a wash."

The Hunter looked amused. "We Hunters have our secrets," she said mysteriously.

been a whole lot tougher, and whole lot harder, than he had imagined. But now, now he finally started to feel like he had a chance, like he was starting to get a grip on things.

He grinned; time to take a bath. After five days, he definitely needed it.

Walking down to the creek, he turned to look at Zoë. "I'm going to have a bath and wash up."

The Hunter blinked, dipped her head, and ghosted into the forest. For a few moments, Harry stared in the direction she had vanished, suspicious that she was watching from a location he hadn't could see.

Finally, he shrugged. There wasn't anything he could do about it if she did. He undressed, jumped into the cold water, and washed the grime of five days of living in the woods off of his skin. Dragging his clothes through the water, he did his best to get the grime off them as well.

He hung them out to dry before splashing back in the stream. For just a little time, he was going to forget he was on a survival test, and he was going to enjoy himself. Zoë had explained how it was important to keep your spirits up when in a survival situation – so that was what he was going to do.

Half an hour later, shivering and wrinkled, Harry shimmied back into his still-damp clothing. At least they weren't completely wet anymore. He walked back to camp, and sat close to the fire to dry out. While he was doing that, he had taken a large branch, chopped a chunk off of it, and was now whittling a point to one end in an effort to make a spear. He didn't know why – the feeling in his gut was that he would need it.

Since that feeling had also brought him to Hestia on Mount Olympus, he had stopped doubting it.

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