Happy Friday! I hope you have all had a good start to the new year! =D See you at the bottom!

Chapter 6

As soon as they entered the dining room Sirius and James physically pounced on the first person to enter the room. Which, much to their growing horror, was not Remus. Remus certainly did not have long black hair, nor did he have breasts which Sirius had accidentally just groped. No, the werewolf in question was just staring wide eyed at the three of them on the floor.

At least the hardwood floor had cushioning charms on them. No doubt from years of dealing with Marauder madness, Euphemia and Monty had made the manor impervious to their antics for the most part. Or at least, made it so they wouldn't accidently injure themselves. Jasmine just kept her gaze locked on the ceiling and wished that this moment was over.

Sirius still hadn't moved his blasted hand. "Sirius, you better move your hand before I permanently sever it from your body," she hissed, it nearly coming out in paeseltongue, if she didn't know any better.

The Black heir gave her a feeble grin before removing his hand from her person. James was attempting to disentangle himself from the heap of limbs they had become, but was slow going, especially since his glasses flew somewhere across the room. Jasmine was not amused, and none too gently shoved them off her.

"Prats," she muttered she straightened her clothing, her face feeling rather heated, embarrassed about the whole situation.

"What are you two doing?" Euphemia's voice called from the second entry way into the dining room. Sirius quickly stood up bolt straight.

"Nothing, Mrs. Potter."

Not like that didn't sound suspicious.

"I dropped my glasses, mum," James answered back, patting around the area of his fall in a vain attempt to find his spectacles. Jasmine remembered when her eyesight had been that bad, nine lives full of it, but in her time, there were ways to get that corrected. So, for a little less than half of seven of those lives she had fixed her eyesight. She wasn't entirely sure of when it had become common practice in wizarding optometry.

Jasmine sighed, spotting them to the left of her, with her enhanced rune vision, near her feet and picked them up. She turned the over in her hand, the gold wire looked fine and the lenses, luckily, weren't scratched. That was rather good fortune for him.

"James, stop fumbling around, I found them," Jasmine replied, easily making her way over to her cousin and sliding them onto his face.

James' face puckered for a moment as his eyes readjusted to the glasses. It was jarring to have everything be blurry one moment and then clear the next. "Thanks," he muttered as he got himself off the floor.

"Are they broken again, James?" Euphemia asked, rather exasperatedly. Jasmine wondered how often they needed to be repaired.

He shook his head.

"Very well, since the house still seems to be standing we'll all be having dinner on time today as well as a lovely dessert, prepared by our house-elf Penny."

Dinner was a loud affair, it had been ever since Sirius had joined the family and now, with Remus, the volume seemed to have doubled from the boys' side of the table. Jasmine ate quietly, just watching the three Marauders laughing and teasing each other. Sirius even launched a bit of mashed potatoes at James, which earned the dog Animagus a harsh glare from Euphemia. Monty gave them a subtle thumbs up.

"Jasmine, how is your summer work coming along?" Euphemia asked, from her right, her voice clear even through all the laughing.

She gave a small smile to the Auror. "Alright. I just have charms left. I finished History of Magic this afternoon. After dinner I'll be getting back to work. I want to hand all of it in before the end of the first week of August."

Euphemia nodded and leaned over to ruffle Jasmine's hair a little bit. "I'm very proud of you. The amount of work that the Headmaster gave to you was unreasonable, but I'm glad that you rose to the challenge."

"I wasn't the best in my dueling circuit for nothing. An unfair workload is something that I'm very used to. My patrons enjoyed giving me spells that they knew I wouldn't be able to figure on time, so they could punish me. Eventually, I stopped getting punished because I read ahead and worked twice as long until I understood the spell, practical application, use and theory," she explained dipping into Jasmine's memories to make sure she had as much accuracy in her statements as possible. Jasmine had nine lifetimes worth of knowledge packed into her mind. So, she knew quite a lot more than any child her age should, but then again, her host body did as well. The original Jasmine would have made a lovely Master of Death, if she hadn't died before collecting all three Hallows of course…

Monty clicked his tongue. "You were the best duelist?"

Hadn't she mentioned that fact before? She shrugged and nodded, seeing no harm in sharing that. "Yes, I clawed my way to the top with sheer magical talent and force."

"Weren't your…patrons…worried that you would turn on them?"

Jasmine chuckled humorlessly, putting her utensils down, her appetite ruined. "No, by the time they let us roam the upper levels before a match, we were considered fairly loyal to them. If we misbehaved, the children downstairs would be killed or maimed. Insubordination was not worth attempting…"

"But you thought about it?" Sirius asked hesitantly, the boys conversation had stopped and all attention was on her.

As if that was even a question. "Of course, it was the only thing that kept many of us sane. We craved freedom more than anything, and we could have more than likely killed most of the patrons on our own, but we didn't want anyone getting hurt over it. For the most part, we were all orphans from around Europe, there was nowhere for us to go," her voice cracked and she shivered, "in the end none our imaginary plans mattered since anyone old enough to have imaged such freedom was killed when those Death Eaters entered."

"All you friends…" James trailed off, not daring to finish the sentence.

"Are dead? For the most part, some were found a few days after the battle in the basement, but nearly all my close friends were murdered by this rising Dark Lord and his minions."

Voldemort always seemed to have a driving need, no matter what life she lived, to kill everyone she loved or cared about. At least this time she was getting a chance to rebuild her life. She had never managed that before.

Euphemia clapped her hands rather loudly, tearing Jasmine away from her darker thoughts. "Now, why don't we talk about what we're going to be doing for your birthday, Jasmine?"

The girl blushed, pushing around some food on her plate. She was never a fan of celebrating her birthday, five lives starting at the Dursley's had ensured that. Somewhere deep in her soul she felt that her birth was more of curse, something that should never be celebrated, but forgotten. None of her friends and family throughout her lives ever thought that and always did something for her. It seemed that the Potters were no different and by the way Sirius and Remus were looking at her, they were going to come and celebrate as well. It was sweet of them and Jasmine truly did appreciate it.

She swallowed, suddenly nervous, "I suppose something small, would be fine. You've already gotten me Ro, so maybe a cake would be nice."

"What flavor?" Remus asked, ever the sweets connoisseur.

"I'd prefer chocolate. I haven't had a chocolate cake in years."

Remus gasped and grabbed his heart as if he were dying. The two other Marauders were staring at her strangely.

"What? I needed to eat healthy and sweets were forbidden. If I was caught eating any there would have been major consequences," she replied defensively. Out of everything the Chesters did, depriving her of sweets wasn't all that bad. Sure, kids loved sweets, but they certainly didn't need them. Jasmine's body, despite the bumps and bruises was extremely in shape and for the most part healthy. The girl had been trained to hold her breath for nearly two minutes, to run long sprints and fight with various weapons. She was powerful and could more than likely take out Sirius, Remus and James on her own with her bare hands.

With all the school work she was slightly lacking in her usual work outs that she and Ro did in the mornings. She needed to keep her body just as healthy as her mind and since her body was just about back to fully functioning capacity, she could start exercising again. Morning jogs would be a good addition to her day, maybe she could convince James to come with her, tell him it would help his Quidditch performance. Sirius would hate her for it because James would continue it into the school year, it would be perfect.

"Chocolate cake it is," Monty said, seeming just as excited about the dessert as Remus was. Jasmine wondered how good the House-elves cake was for this kind of reaction.

Regardless, dinner ended without any further inquiry into Jasmine's past and she went back up to her work without eating dessert.

This body wasn't a fan of too many sweets and probably never would be. She could enjoy a piece of dark chocolate every now and again, but sweet pudding that had been served made her stomach churn something awful.

Remus joined shortly thereafter with a shy knock on the library door, a charms book in hand.

Jasmine smiled in response. She hadn't thought that he was really going to come and help her. "James and Sirius aren't upset that you're spending time with me instead of them?" She asked as they were opening books to the correct pages, setting out ink pots and parchment for the essays.

Remus gave a small snort, "They don't realize that I spend a good part of the early afternoon with you. James wants us to get to know each other. He wants all of his best mates to get to know his new sister. And he told me, that since I liked books and you're stuck reading them for the rest of the summer, I should make myself useful."

That sounded like James. He had given some input on the transfiguration section of her work, but she knew quite a bit about it already. It was similar with charms, but there were a few spells that she had to write papers about that she hadn't even heard of this time around and wondered why Flitwick had taken them out of the curriculum in her time.

With Remus' help Jasmine was able to finish quite a bit more work than she expected. Between the two of them they had managed to a make a large dent in her charms work, which was the last of her work that needed to get done before the school year started. She could almost taste freedom.

"Thank you for helping me," she told him after she had finished writing her fifth essay of the evening.

He turned away from his advanced charms book to answer, amber eyes meeting her for the first time, "It's nothing. You're a quick study and not a royal pain in the arse like James and Sirius tend to be about learning."

Ah, James and Sirius, they must have been getting impatient. Remus seemed to be genuinely enjoying himself teaching her. Oh, how she wished that werewolves weren't hated in the wizarding world so much. Remus would make a such a great teacher. He had been the best defense teacher at Hogwarts in most of her lives. If he didn't have his fury little problem to deal with, he would have been so successful. He was too brilliant for his own good. Well, all the Marauders had been. Even Peter, in his own traitorous, rat bastard kind of way.

"I have a question about Hogwarts, Remus," she asked around nine in the evening. She had been getting bored writing about summoning charms, her hand was cramping and needed a break.

Remus was sitting on the chair up-side-down, his head dangling off the plush top as he read over one of her essays. He pushed the essay up, meeting her gaze.

"And what question might that be?"

"Are there any clubs besides Quidditch, because that's all James and Sirius talk about. And, while I do enjoy flying I want to do something else besides get permanent brain damage from a sport."

Remus grinned, "Yes, there are more clubs than just the Quidditch teams, don't tell James I told you. He mentioned that he wanted you to try out for the seeker position. It's the team's only weak point. I then had to remind him that you hadn't been sorted yet, but he thinks you're going to be in Gryffindor and I'm inclined to agree with him."

So, they all thought that she was a lion? They'd be right. For the most part, she had been sorted into Gryffindor and occasionally Slytherin, once in Ravenclaw, that had been an interesting seven years she'd never want to repeat. The girls in her year, besides Padma, had been awful.

"As for clubs, there's chess teams, gobstone team, the Slug-Club is one that a professor runs…" he then listed out quite a few clubs that Jasmine hadn't even known existed, well, they hadn't in her time. There hadn't been enough students to support so many clubs.

"Is there a dueling club?" She eventually asked. She knew that Flitwick had been a professional duelist and had a club for a while, but she wasn't sure if it was within this generation that he ran it.

Remus frowned thinking it over. "No, not this year. Professor Flitwick ran one two years ago, but for the most part he teaches dueling privately to those he thinks are worthy. You might want to ask him about once you get sorted."

Jasmine tapped her quill absently on her parchment for a few moments, wondering if it was even worth it to talk to Flitwick. Maybe she should just practice her dueling in the room of requirements on her own. Her thoughts then turned to Dumbledore. He really didn't like her, which felt a little odd, he had always liked her in the past, even when she didn't quite follow his rules to the letter. What would he do if he found out that she was dueling unsupervised…he'd more than likely have her expelled, claiming she was training to join Voldemort. There mere thought made her want to gag. "And Professor Flitwick teaches what subject?" She asked as she added a bit more detail about summoning charms into her essay.

"Oh, he teaches charms and is the head of house for Ravenclaw. He's a really nice professor, I think you'll like him," Remus answered, as he pointed out a small mistake on the third line of another essay. Jasmine sighed, and pushed her current work away to revise something else.

This work felt like it was never going to end.

Bloody hell.

We're finally almost at Hogwarts! I think it's another chapter or so until we all get there. This story isn't necessarily going to have an evil Dumbledore, but this is one that is very wary of foreign witches and wizards that aren't aligned with his viewpoints and moral compass. Any guesses on what's going to happen next? What is Jasmine going to do when she is faced with Peter for the first time? Ah, there are so many things that are in the works for this story. All I know is that I'm going to be writing it for a long time coming. XD My friend told me, "Write something small to get your creativity flowing," and then this comes out of it.

Anyway, thank you for all the favorites and follows this week! I've been blown away by the support! Please leave comments, questions or guesses on the future love interests in this story in the reviews! I love reading people's potential predictions for my works because sometimes they're so strange that they somehow get worked into my stories. It's happened before.

Have a lovely weekend,

Animerocker