I've decided to post the last, final chapter of Puppy Dog Tales. I think it's the first one I ever wrote, and it will serve as a prologue to the sequel, Going, Going, Going, and Coming Back. However, this will only give you a very small and highly inaccurate glimpse of what is to come. You will notice that none of our characters recognise Nico or vice versa. This is not a trick of the mist, my friends, this story was written before PDT and therefore is not compatable with the plotline of either the original or the sequel. However, you have a vague setting and general line of what is to come.

here you go, one last time.

Page 185, 8th paragraph, the order of the phoenix

The other occupant of the carriage was a boy Harry had never seen before, though he looked to be about fifteen. His hair and clothes were black like a shadow at midnight, and when he glanced at the new additions to the compartment, Harry saw that his eyes were barely a shade lighter than his clothes. He looked up at them, and stood.

"Hello," he said, but he looked as though he was annoyed at having to act civil.

"Hi," Harry said, a little confused by his attitude, "I'm Harry Potter."

"Nico Di Angelo. So… you're the infamous Harry Potter." Nico scrutinized Harry, and was seemingly unimpressed. He frowned slightly before turning to Neville. Harry looked down at himself worriedly, and couldn't help but notice that Nico Di Angelo was much more muscular than he. And Harry didn't like the way Ginny was looking at him. He watched as Nico looked at Neville with an equal amount of boredom. However, as he shook Neville's hand his eyes brightened with interest and he smiled carefully.

"Sorry, I didn't get your name," he said, still looking at Neville incredulously.

"I'm Neville Longbottom," Neville said uncertainly, clearly disconcerted by the attention Nico was giving him.

"Frank's son?" Nico asked, seeming somewhat surprised. He glanced at Harry for some reason, as Neville mumbled an affirmative.

"It really is a pleasure to meet you. We have so much to discuss, though," Nico added in an undertone, "we should really wait until we are in more, ah, respectable company." He glanced toward Harry again. If either Ginny or Neville found this odd, they didn't comment and simply sat down across from Harry, next to Nico, who had taken the corner. Harry and Neville talked for a bit, then the food trolley arrived, pausing the conversation. The Nico boy was staring out the window and didn't eat anything, though they offered a few times. Eventually, Ron and Hermione showed up. Ron came in, complaining loudly, about the prefect meeting. He had gone halfway through a pumpkin pasty before he noticed Nico, sitting in his dark little corner. Jumping and cursing loudly, Ron asked, "Who the bloody hell is that?"

"Nico di Angelo," said the aforementioned boy, "and since when is Hell bloody?" Choosing to ignore the second part of Nico's response, Ron kept going.

"Well, what are you doing here?"

"The same as everyone else, obviously. I'm going to school." Nico seemed unfazed by Ron's sharp attitude; he answered coldly and calmly with a hint of sarcasm.

"What house are you in? I've never seen you before." Ron relentlessly attacked.

"I haven't been sorted; I'm a transfer student from America."

"I didn't know Hogwarts took Transfer students," Hermione said.

"They don't." replied Nico, "Hogwarts doesn't know that they're getting a transfer student. I'm just… showing up."

"Good luck getting past Dumbledore," said Ron, "He probably already knows you're here."

"Somehow," said Nico coldly, "I really doubt that." With those sentiments, he stood up and walked out of the compartment without another word.

"Odd," commented Ron, "he better not cross me now that I'm a prefect. Speaking of which," and Ron continued to describe the prefect's meeting until Nico returned and sat down in his seat.

"Where'd you go then?" Ron asked sharply. Nico looked at him, annoyed.

"The bathroom. Duh."

"oh," replied Ron, looking chastised. Just then, Malfoy, Crabbe, and Goyle came in.

"what?" asked Harry roughly. Nico leaned back into the shadows that gathered around him despite the bright sunlight from the window. This, he reasoned, would be interesting.

"Manners, Potter, or I'll have to give you detention," drawled the new addition to the room's already crowded décor. After exchanging some less-than-witty insults, in Nico's opinion, Malfoy finally noticed Nico in his corner. Nico, bored with the whole idiotic argument, decided to mess with the 'prefect.'

"Who's that?" asked Malfoy maliciously, "made another mudblood friend, Potter?"

In Nico's opinion, this was a very poor choice of words on Malfoy's part. Nico's bloodlines were as pure as you could get, which he decided to share with Malfoy. He stood up, gathering the shadows around his form and giving Malfoy a glare that nearly rivaled that of the devil. Of course, the devil had trained him, but that was mostly unimportant. This clearly unnerved the blonde, as he slyly repositioned himself behind Crabbe and Goyle. Intensifying his glare, Nico said, "What was that about my bloodlines?" in a raspy, powerful voice he had picked up from his father.

It was the voice Hades used whenever he wanted to terrify someone. It worked. Malfoy, fear evident on his face, began with a quaking voice.

"M-my Father…"

"I, unfortunately for you, do not care about your father. He is a poor, worthless specimen of humanity who I could crush in less than a second. Get your filthy, miserable ass out of here. And don't come back."

Malfoy was gone in a second, followed hastily by Crabbe and Goyle. Silence followed their departure from the compartment, with an increased respect for Nico. He sat back down in the corner and stared back out the window, the shadows slowly dissipating. Ron, however, was not willing to let the event pass as readily as Nico seemed to be able to. He burst out laughing.

"That was incredible! Did you see the look on Malfoy's face?" he asked, looking at Nico with admiration, "How did you do that thing with the shadows?"

Nico looked up with what appeared to be pure innocence.

"What thing?" he asked in a sarcastic tone. It was obvious to Harry that the conversation annoyed Nico, but the sarcasm flew right over Ron's head.

"That thing you did where it got all Dark and spooky with the raspy voice!"

Nico just looked at Ron, and the train rumbled to a stop at the Hogsmede station, and he was the first one to leave the compartment as people began to crowd the hallway. He took nothing with him, and Harry noticed that he hadn't stowed anything away. He had no trunk, no belongings, nothing. Following him out the door were Hermione and Ron, who was a bit put out, as they went to go take care of their prefect duties. Finally, Harry, Neville, Luna, and Ginny left, lugging their various pets and suitcases.

Nico exited the train amid a throng of bustling students in black robes. Night had fallen hard, and in the shadows of the tall pine trees Nico blended perfectly. He followed the general flow of students to the carriages. Nico groaned silently as he noticed the thestrals pulling the carriages. They were some child of Hermes' idea of a joke: an animal that brought the qualities of the big three together. Hysterical. It flies, it's a horse, and it relates to the dead. Really. It was just so funny. Either way, he instantly heard the thestrals' voices, each wanting the honor of pulling the carriage of a child of their lord. He moved to a carriage with a female thestral, they were less competitive. Persephone had a few in the stables behind the palace in the underworld. Nico felt a bit silly taking an entire carriage for himself when they were supposed to hold six people, so he settled into a dark corner and blended with the shadows to wait. As he waited, he thought of that boy, Neville Longbottom. Now there was someone worth knowing. He knew Frank Longbottom, the man who had been crucioed to insanity years ago. He had died, been brought back, and died again, before being brought into his current state. It was an interesting case; a small segment of his soul had remained in the underworld. Nico was familiar with it because whenever his dad ran out of things to complain about, he contemplated the murder of Bellatrix Lestrange for throwing that wrench into his perfectly devised system. It had given Hades a few headaches to figure that one out, but now the majority of Frank's spirit was in the mortal world, only a small fraction remained in the underworld.

Nico was shocked slightly by the discovery he had made when he had shook Neville's hand, it would greatly assist him if he played it right. Either way, he had sat in the carriage for almost fifteen minutes, now, and he was about ready to just go when loud voices found their way into the carriage. It was the same people he had ridden on the train with, the idiot redhead, Neville, and the cowardly fool Harry Potter. Nico listened to two of the boys arguing outside the carriage. It seemed Harry had never seen anyone die before this year, as he was obviously wondering what the horses were. Redhead, who Nico assumed was named Ron, couldn't see them. However, as Harry was getting into the carriage, Luna, the blonde girl from the train, let him know that they were real. Guruthel, as Nico learned the thestral's name was, began to pull the carriage. He leaned forward just as Harry sat down and said,

"Well of course they're real." Everybody jumped suddenly at the sound of his voice and turned to look at him except for Luna. Harry looked at him, curious.

"They are?"

"Obviously," Nico replied, unable to keep the sarcastic tone from his voice, "they're thestrals. Luna can see them because of, well, someone, and you can see them because you saw Cedric Diggory die. It really isn't all that complicated." He finished with a distinct air of 'I think you are stupid.'

"Why can you see them then?" asked Harry, seemingly suspicious.

"None of your damn business," Nico said, surprisingly calm for what he was saying. He then faded into the background as Ginny began a different conversation. Guruthel, sensing Nico's impatience, jingled the harness as she sped up. They reached the castle, Nico blending in despite his lack of robes. The all-black attire suited Nico, as he ghosted along behind his new acquaintances.

Unfortunately, an old, grisly man in tattered robes stopped him, yelled at him, and led him down a separate corridor to a gargoyle, which was obviously guarding a passageway. Nico could clearly see the cracks in the floor and the tiny keyhole just to the left of the stone creature, which stood on a worn step. The password was peppermint humbug, apparently, as the old man pushed Nico up the steps toward an Oval room.

Nico was tempted to kill the phoenix sitting on a perch on the desk. His Father had ranted enough times about the birds, how they defied death and therefore defied him, how it was another way for Zeus to mock him and so on. Nico knew how to kill them, but decided against it. He rubbed his sword-skull ring as he sat in the chair indicated to him. Nico was in England for a single, specific purpose, and no old, foolish wizard was going to keep him from achieving his goal. As a child of a god more powerful than Hecate, he was invulnerable to the spells of those gifted by she. Her children, of course, could perform much more advanced and powerful magic than those who attended this school, who had merely been gifted with the talent. However, the 'wizards' here were no match for Nico's abilities.

Nico took this in stride as he branched out his version of magic through the walls to the great hall, where it fed off of the multiple spirits there. Nico could sense each of the ghosts and muttered, 'cowardice' under his breath. They had all chosen to remain in the world of the living after death, rejecting the Underworld and Hades. There was rarely a greater insult, though Nico let it go for now. He could scare the wits out of them later. In the meantime, he sat in the chair and observed the multiple artifacts around the room. After quite a long time, an obscenely old person walked into the room and took a seat on the opposite side of the desk.

"So," he said, "I am Professor Dumbledore, headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Who might you be?"

"Nico," Said the boy, clearly keeping his shared information limited. The twinkle in the old headmaster's eyes was annoying Nico to no end, but he made a point of looking at Dumbledore when he spoke.

"Well, Nico, I'm afraid I don't know how you managed to get here," said Dumbledore, choosing to let Nico's lack of information go.

"I took the train. Like everybody else," He replied smoothly, smirking as he did so. If there was one thing Nico had picked up from his father, it was the enjoyment of messing with people's minds.

"Okay, Nico. I think it would be better if you told me a little more about yourself," Dumbledore said.

"Well, here's an idea. How's about you ask the bloody Baron," Nico said, choosing a ghost he knew to be hovering just past Dumbledore's door, "I'm sure he will be most helpful." Nico knew that all dead beings, even those who hadn't left the mortal world, had been to the Underworld and conversed with Hades. They had to ask permission to stay above, of course. Nico twisted his expression into an imitation of the one he knew his father used when dealing with ghosts while Dumbledore asked Filch to fetch the Bloody Baron. Nico felt the ghost's annoyance and confusion at being asked to step into the office, but he did so nonetheless.

"Baron, do you know this boy?" asked Dumbledore. Nico turned to face the ghost, a look of devious cunning on his face. The bloody Baron looked at him for a moment, his pearly white face morphing into an expression of the utmost horror, before he began to gasp his apologies.

"So, so sorry, milord, I didn't mean to- I mean I- My apologies, I didn't- will I- would you forgive me, milord?" he stuttered, nearly quaking with fear. Nico held a look of contempt for a moment longer before replying.

"Baron, you are as worthy a ghost as I have seen today. Begone, friend, and may you find the peace you were destined for in the afterlife." Nico said, adding on the blessing in ancient Greek. He didn't feel the need to add that the Baron was the only ghost he had seen today, and as the Baron drifted off, muttering thanks and apologies, Nico turned to face the headmaster again, his face resuming a blank expression. If Dumbledore was surprised by the ghost's reaction, he was doing a fairly decent job of not showing it.

"Listen," said Nico, annoyed with the time the conversation was taking, "I can promise you that I come here without the intent of injuring any of your students. All you need to know is that I'm an exchange student, I'm not gonna hurt anybody, and I'll be gone by the end of the year. Other than that, I go to class, I eat, I sleep, and I mind my own business."

"Nico, I won't pretend to know why you are here, but you need to be able to perform magic if you are to attend this school. Can you do that?" asked Dumbledore.

In answer, Nico unsheathed his sword, bending the mist around it to shorten it into a wand. He swished it one time and used a tiny part of his natural magic from the godly side of his family to levitate several objects at once, sending them whizzing around the room. It was a simple trick that required very little power, and Nico could have done it with his eyes closed. The objects returned to their original positions as Nico sat down again, his sword twisting back into the skull around his finger. Bending the mist had taken more effort than the actual spell, but neither had worn Nico out as much as shadow traveling did. Dumbledore examined him for a moment, before agreeing to Nico's proposition.

"But," He said, "You will need to be sorted into a house." He summoned the Sorting hat to them and told Nico to put it on. Nico eyed it with distaste. He knew this would be a bad decision, but the old man had told him to put on the hat. He did so, and instantly heard a tiny voice in his head.

Interesting. Very interesting. You're tricky, I'll grant you that. Sneaky, sly, but brave and smart as well. You would do well in any of the houses… so where to put you?

Nico grimaced as he recognized the probing touch in his mind, what was at first feather light was now pushing harder, delving into farther reaches of his mind. Well, there are some things people, or hats, shouldn't see. Things that happen in the fields of punishment, for example. It seemed as though the hat had never seen torture before, because it barely brushed into the memories before it withdrew sharply.

W-wh- what was that? The hat stuttered to itself. So much pain and loss, so much courage to face it. "Gryffindor," The hat said aloud, though Nico could tell it was severely shaken. Well, that was its problem. He pulled it off and handed it to Dumbledore, impassive. The houses system was stupid, in his opinion, though that was one opinion he decided not to share. Standing, he said,

"Well, if that's all, I'll go to the common room."

Dumbledore nodded, still looking concernedly at the hat. Nico exited the office, followed by the disgruntled mortal who brought him in. Maybe this guy got paid by how many punishments he dished out or something, because he looked pissed off. Nico Went upstairs two levels to the Gryffindor ghost, who was wandering around aimlessly on the seventh floor.

"Hello, Nick," Nico said, walking up behind him. The ghost jumped (or, rather, floated) and turned to face Nico. His eyes widened in the same manner as the Baron's had, and he floated closer to study Nico's face. His suspicions seemingly confirmed, he backed away hurriedly and bowed quickly before floating, looking at Nico, nearly quaking with fear.

"H-hello, milord," said the poor ghost, keeping his eyes pointed downward.

"Do you know the password for the Gryffindor common room and it's location?" Nico asked, ignoring the subservient manner and humble approach the ghost took that would have normally annoyed him to no end.

"Yes, milord. This way, Milord," said Nick, leading the Nico through multiple corridors before arriving in front of a portrait of a fat lady in a pink dress. Nick mumbled

"The password is mimbulus mimbletonia," before hurriedly moving back. Nico repeated the words to the portrait, which opened. He dismissed Nick and walked through the gaping hole into a small red room, with a cheerful fire and armchairs surrounding tables. It was late enough that everyone had gone to bed, so Nico climbed the stairs to the boys' dorm. There was a door for fifth years, which Nico opened. Four of the five four-poster beds were occupied, so he carefully drew the shadows together around the fifth bed and they materialized into his stuff. Changing quickly, Nico crawled into bed and fell asleep. It had been a long day.

Okay, this isn't a new chapter so much as it is a notice of ending. Like a notice of failure, but not nearly so depressing. This is the last note, or chapter, or update, for the story. I am officially posting the sequel as soon as I finish typing this. The only reason I bothered, really, was because I was in such a good mood yesterday I didn't want it to go unnoticed.

Now, this amazing reviewer just blew my socks off, so I want to address this part directly to them.

Dear MoonSurfer3343,

Oh My God, you are freaking amazing. I couldn't want for a better review. Now, I think I have some explaining to do. See, that chapter wasn't supposed to go up. Ever. It needed to be fixed, edited, like this one has been. I was just so damn pissed off at that reviewer; I had to let them know. I hate it, personally, when Authors make new chapters out of Author's Notes, so I pulled the first thing I could find out of my file and tacked it in front of the Note. So, of course, very little is clearly explained. I hope this is more to your liking, because in my haste with the last chapter of that story I cut it in half on accident. Of course your ideas are not Juvenile. There is a good reason for all of them being there that should be revealed in the next chapter. Moody's oocness? Ooh, tough subject there. I have tried to get Moody right, but his actions are hard to fit with the way I want the story to go. About Bianca, Yes, you are absolutely right. But Nico has grown. He is not an eleven-year-old boy anymore. Bianca's death is no longer fresh in his mind. If you have, and you should have, read the Son of Neptune, Then you know that Nico even at no older than thirteen discussed his sister's death with Hazel, who was a complete stranger at the time. Wow, I don't like the way I worded that. I have read both of the Kane Chronicles books, and found neither to be specifically worthy of note.

Sincerely,

The Georgian Devil

So, there you have it. I have a new story out, and this marks the completion of Puppy Dog Tales. To all of my faithful readers and reviewers:

"Now is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning." –Winston Churchill