Happy Friday!

Chapter 73

A quick shower and a change of clothing made Jasmine feel more human and significantly less like a murder machine. She made her way back to the sitting room she and Mikhail had be led to before their showers. Jasmine was barefoot, her steps quiet on the rug covered floor. The house was pleasantly warm for the time of year, which meant the heating charms were in working order for the season. The house was near silent, if not for the whispering portraits and occasional raised voice from the floor below, Jasmine would have thought that the house was empty.

Mikhail was curled up on a plush armchair, a green fleece blanket was thrown over his legs, a long sweater covered his torso. He was staring into the fire next to him as he mechanically sipped a cup of black tea. There was a second cup next to a steaming pot on the end table.

"How are you holding up?" Jasmine asked in Russian as she made her way over the table, tea sounded like the perfect end to the already long day.

Mikhail blinked, turning his gaze away from the flames. He eyes were bloodshot a red rimmed. He swiped at his face with a sleeve covered hand for a moment before answering.

"Alright, it feels like calming down after a long match. I'm going to be sore in the morning and people are going to ask questions, but it could have been much worse. I suppose those Death Eaters will think twice before coming after the Black brothers after this if we're with them," he said with a wobbling grin as she poured herself a cup.

Jasmine didn't share his enthusiasm, no matter how fake it truly was. She felt that it was only going to encourage Tom to send more trained Death Eaters after them in the future. Which was no doubt going to lead to more insane plots to try and kidnap the brothers. Orion was going to have to train them in defense or have a permanent guard around them when they went outside...or both. Both would probably be the safest option.

Mikhail and Jasmine won't always be there to protect them.

"Is Regulus alright?"

Mikhail nodded, taking a sip of his tea. His hand shaking ever so slightly as the day catches up with him. "He came in briefly a few minutes ago. He's a bit shaken and doesn't remember the fight at all, which I feel is for the better. He doesn't need to remember the aftermath. Blood and death isn't something he needs to experience at his age."

Jasmine wholeheartedly agreed with that. "I'm glad he wasn't coherent enough for it to stick. Sirius is going to need more time with his mind healer after this. He had a hard enough time with the dementors. Speaking of, where are the two brothers?"

"Sirius was called to speak with his father and our parents. Regulus was taken back to his room to rest. Apparently, we aren't important enough to be a part of conversations about ourselves." Which always seemed to be the case when it came to their shared past in the ring. No one wanted them to hear discussions about their past. They were too worried about triggering a violent flashback then actually get their opinions on a matter they were well versed in.

"Hewo? Who are you?" a quiet voice whispered from the entrance of the room. The two turned to see a head of bright pink hair, purple eyes, and a large smile staring back at them.

There was no one else it could be, but Tonks, and she was adorable.

The girl was only two and a half and she had managed to toddle her way into the sitting room. This had to mean that Andromeda was here, which meant there were going to be legal troubles. Jasmine wouldn't be surprised if the Death Eater families are demanding that Mikhail and Jasmine be held responsible for their deaths. Even though they killed each other. If the aurors on the case were pureblood sympathizers they would try to pin the details Mikhail and Jasmine. They were both foreign born, easy enough to try and use them for a cover up…the aurors probably weren't even Death Eaters, just regular run of the mill assholes.

Jasmine waved as the young girl brought her thumb to her mouth and cuddled an overly large blanket covered in snitches close to her.

"Hello, I'm Jasmine and this is Mikhail," she replied with an easy smile. Mikhail gave a lazy wiggle of his fingers in her direction. Tonks giggled into her blanket.

"You sound funny. My name is Nymphadora," she said putting extra emphasis on the way her name was pronounced as if she was having trouble herself.

Ah, to be young and not know what a foreign accent was. Mikhail looked almost affronted by her words. "Child, we were speaking Russian, a truly superior language to any other on earth."

The girl toddled in as quick as her little legs could take her towards the sofa they were sitting on. Jasmine made some room for her as she climbed onto the sofa. Her hair had already begun to change to match Jasmine's dark curly locks.

Jasmine snorted with an exaggerated eyeroll as she playfully nudged her friend. "Clearly German is the better language of the two…we were only speaking Russian so your small brain could handle the intensity."

"No! English is best! That's the one I know!" Tonks interjected as she bounced on her knees next to them.

Mikhail chuckled, patting Tonks' head as she babbled on about how much she knows about the English language, which wasn't all that much considering she was two years old, but she at least tried to make it sound impressive.

They were eventually interrupted by Andromeda poking her head into the room, her grey eyes frantic until they settled on Tonks. "Nymphadora! I told you to stay in the room with your cousin Regulus!"

Tonks pouted and crossed her arms, her bottom lip out in full force for added effect. "He fell asleep on me, mummy. I got bored."

Andromeda was having none of it. "You weren't supposed to leave that room without permission, young lady. Regulus was worried sick when he woke up and you weren't there. How do you think you made him feel by leaving him all alone like that?"

Jasmine figured the real reason Andromeda was so worried was all the trouble that Tonks could get to in a house as old as this one, not to mention all the dark artifacts that tended to be left lying around. This house wasn't childproof. It was a miracle that Sirius and Regulus didn't managed to kill themselves here. Though, using Regulus as the guilt trip was a nice touch on Andromeda's side.

Tonks looked properly ashamed and ready to cry, her big eyes watering at her mother's reprimand. Her turned to a dull brown. "Sorry, mummy."

"It isn't me you should be apologizing to. Regulus is waiting in his room for you," she said as Tonks hopped off the sofa with a sniff and toddled off back towards where Jasmine assumed was Regulus' room.

"I didn't know that she was supposed to be with Regulus. I would have-" Jasmine began, but Andromeda held a hand up to stop her.

"Nymphadora does what she wants. She's a rather independent child and tends to get into a lot of trouble when left unsupervised. She knew she was supposed to be in that room and willfully disobeyed. I'm just glad that she found you instead of something more sinister."

Jasmine nodded in agreement before frowning. "Is there a reason that you were called here today? Mikhail and I have been waiting in here for quite some time and have heard nothing from our guardians."

Andromeda pinched the bridge of her nose and let out a long sigh. "Your parents are here. Both of them are having words with Orion on how to handle the situation. As of now you are being regarded as heroes since you stopped nearly half a dozen Death Eaters on your own, but the families of those same Death Eaters want you two to appear in court for assault and murder charges."

Mikhail frowned, "They tried to kill us, or at the very least permanently maim us. I think a couple stab wounds between us is the least we could have done. They kill each other. We didn't have our wands on us."

Andromeda held up her hands with a shrug. "And I agree with you. I don't think their case is even going to leave the floor with the way that public is treating you. Your parents are trying to figure out how they knew you were going to be in Diagon Alley in the first place. From what I understand it was a rather last-minute trip and only a handful of people even knew Sirius and Regulus would be out today."

"You think that there's a spy in one of our families…no wonder there is so much yelling coming from downstairs."

Mikhail bit his lip. "It wasn't a last-minute trip. Regulus and I have been planning this for weeks. It was a last-minute adjustment for Sirius and Jasmine to come along with us. If Regulus told any of his schoolmates about it they could have been the ones to tell their parents about it. I doubt that it was anyone working in my house. We screen our help very carefully. The last time we didn't I ended up getting sold into child slavery."

Andromeda winced towards the end of his statement as she played with the end of her long, pin straight hair. "That could very well be how the information was leaked…Sirius made it sound like this was all planned within the last day or so."

"It has only been a day or so since he mentioned it to me. I promised him that I would go with him to supervise Mikhail and Regulus. I had no idea that he just invited himself along on a trip that had been months in the making, though it doesn't surprise me," Jasmine admits as she leaned back into the sofa. There was no point in getting overly worked up about this. It happened, and they aren't dead.

Finding the mole was the next step…actually, the next step was going to Regulus and talking to him about his friends. Sometimes it was easier to ask someone their own age a question that present to people many years their senior.

"So, you think that someone Regulus trusted could have turned him over to the Death Eaters?"

Jasmine and Mikhail shared a look before nodding. "Absolutely," Jasmine responded with a small wave of her hand, "there are plenty of Death Eater sympathizers within Hogwarts. I wouldn't be surprised if parents are pressuring their children to spy on rival families. Regulus isn't an idiot, so it must be someone he trusted implicitly."

"I hope they burn," Mikhail grumbled under his breath as the shouting voices that had been downstairs started to make their way to the guest room.

It wasn't long before a tall blonde woman pushed her way past Andromeda and wrapped Mikhail into a tight embrace. She was whispering to him quietly in Russian and Mikhail was blushing to the roots of his hair. Even though he was embarrassed he still returned the hug his mother gave him.

"Jasmine? How are you feeling?" Euphemia asked from the doorway, her hair was falling out of a loose knot at the top of her head. She was supposed to be resting this weekend. She had taken some time off from work and here Jasmine was ruining that.

"I'm alright. I wasn't injured."

"That wasn't what I asked, Jasmine."

Ah, Euphemia was checking on her mental state. "Decompressing. I haven't had to fight like that in some time. It will take a few days to find out how far back this could set me with my mind healer."

It probably wouldn't be as large of a backtrack as it could be…considering she had a couple lives worth of experience in dealing with death, but there would no doubt be nightmares for the next couple weeks.

"Don't sugar coat it, Jasmine. It was just like being in the ring again…or close as it could be when outside of death matches. I know the Chesters didn't have you compete in those, but it was similar."

Jasmine shrugged. The Chesters never wanted her life overly endangered. She was their prized duelist after all. It would have taken some serious time and money to replace her, which wasn't something her Patrons had been known for. The death matches were a high risk, high reward type of fight. The Chesters just had her compete in a lot of different matches regularly and she made just as much as it would have been for a single death match.

Orion was behind Euphemia with Sirius at his right, he had a hand on his son's shoulder. "You and Mikhail saved my heirs from being taken by the rising Dark Lord. It couldn't have been easy for either of you, given the circumstances, but I wanted to thank you and let you know that House Black will do whatever it takes to keep the press off of you," Orion explained his hand tightening on Sirius' shoulder.

"Those men knew we were going to be in the alley this afternoon. They were following us for most of the morning, waiting for us to get far enough away from the public. Is there anyone that would have had direct contact with Regulus who could have let our location slip to the Death Eaters?"

Orion raised an eyebrow, "You think that Regulus is the reason for the attack?"

"I've only known about this trip for a couple days, Sirius only just decided to tag along, Mikhail doesn't have any connections to Death Eaters living out of the country, which leave Reggie, who has been planning this trip for quite some time. Hell, he could have been talking to a friend when someone overheard him. It isn't impossible, but one of his friends might be a mole, I figured it would be best for you to know our suspicions," Jasmine answered, biting her bottom lip and worrying it between her teeth nearly hard enough to draw blood.

Sirius ran a hand through his hair and pinched the bridge of his nose, "that would make more sense than the theories we were throwing around downstairs. There are eyes and ears everywhere at Hogwarts. We'll just have to start vetting people we don't have an accurate read of their alliances. I'll talk to Reggie when he's feeling up to visitors and we'll start the process of going through his memories. Hopefully, between the two of us, we can figure out which one of his friends ratted us out."

Jasmine wondered what kind of theories they had been shouting about…it more than likely had to do with something who had let their location slip. Jasmine's name was probably the one that was being thrown around the most. Her eyes drifted towards Mikhail or maybe it was her friend, but either way, neither of them would betray the Black brothers to the Dark Lord.

"Don't overwhelm him. There is still a chance that someone overheard him. You don't want your brother to turn against all his friends."

Jasmine didn't hear or see Sirius until they got back on the train to Hogwarts for her last term. Well, at least she was supposed to meet him in their usual compartment with James, but he hadn't shown up yet. She hadn't suffered from extreme nightmares, but she felt significantly jumpier than normal. James had been hovering the past couple days, which wasn't something unusual for him, but he was by her side constantly. Jasmine figured he was waiting for her to collapse with a seizure…honestly, she was waiting for that particular shoe to drop as well, though it would be unrelated to the event that just occurred.

The story of the two teens fending off half a dozen Death Eaters had managed to make its way into the Daily Profit, but their names had been left out due to severe threats from the Black Family. It was a nice change to read about herself without worrying about the Hogwarts public opinions changing their mind about her.

"Are you sure you're going to be alright, Jazz?" James asked as they moved their luggage into the train, her hand resting on the trucks she was dragging behind her.

Her grip tightened, "yes, I'm fine. I know that both you and your mother are worried that I will relapse, but being right next to me all the time is going to end up with one of us in the ground and it isn't going to be me."

Her cousin took a step back, but didn't really try to give her as much space as she would have preferred. Jasmine hadn't even gotten hurt in that fight and James still wouldn't give her a moment's peace.

James rubbed the back of his neck and sighed, "I'm sorry. The attack was so sudden and then the new term started right away. The healers cleared you, but the warned us that you could have a relapse at any time from the trauma."

Jasmine dutifully held back a groan. Unless Death needed a heart to heart on her combat skills from the week prior, she wasn't going to have a seizure. It wasn't like she could tell that to James, but sometimes she wished she could tell her family about her past without ending up in a psychiatric ward.

"James, following me around and expecting me to fall apart isn't going to solve anything. My magic isn't fluctuating at an irregular rate and I don't feel a headache coming on that would signal something like that starting. I will let you if something changes. Now, if you don't stop hovering in the next few minutes I will not be held responsible for my actions."

Remus joined them a few moments later, efficiently distracting her cousin from fretting over her for the time being. Jasmine explained to Remus what had happened over the break, about the party, the attack and Petunia hitting Nott, which had him in stitches.

"I'm glad that you're all right, but it seems that violence runs in the Evans family!"

"I'm glad that we can agree on something Moony. Spitfires, those Evans girls. My family is still talking about that," Sirius commented as he slid into the compartment with a practiced ease. "Sorry it took so long to get here, I was avoiding Marlene. She is being rather persistent today."

The train lurched forward as he took his seat next to Jasmine and across from James and Remus.

"Marlene is bothering you, again? I thought that your family sent hers a rejection notice?" Remus asked, leaning back into the compartment's cushion. There was an open book on his lap that lay temporarily forgotten.

Sirius groaned, throwing an arm over his eyes as dramatically as possible. "She thinks that it was solely my father that decided to eliminate her as a possible bride, but it was a family decision that hers wouldn't be suited for the Black bloodline."

Jasmine made a strangled sound in the back of her throat. "No means no. Talk to someone if she keeps bothering you. It isn't right."

He waved a hand, "It's fine. Unless she tries something truly desperate I'm not going to bother. It's harmless."

Famous last words…

I hope you enjoyed the chapter. We're heading back to Hogwarts. Who is the traitor among Reggie's friends? =3 A true mystery at this point. Marlene is back in the picture, what trouble is she going to be causing in the coming chapters?

I've been having a lot of fun writing the next couple chapters, so I think you're going to like them.

So, doggo update: so far the cancer hasn't come back aggressively and the treatments are going well. She had a really rough all day treatment today and only just got home. It's a bad day when I get home from work before she gets back from the vet.

Anyway, thank you for all reviews, favorites and follows. You're all great!

See you all soon,
~Animerocker