Happy Friday!

Chapter 78

After she parted ways with Severus, Jasmine made her way back towards Myrle's bathroom. It was time to retrieve the basilisk fangs. She had told the Marauders that she would be back in the common room in about twenty minutes, so she didn't have too much time to get her task done.

Death claimed that they were waiting for her at the bottom of the staircase, but the bottom of the stairs led to a fairly wide-open area, so she would need a few minutes to look around. This little adventure shouldn't drain her of too much magic. She needed to open the chamber and walk down a flight of stairs using parseltongue. The most difficult part was picking up the fangs. If the fang breaks her skin she'd be dead in minutes. It would be extremely embarrassing if she died from cutting herself on a highly poisonous fang, after the damn thing had been dead for weeks.

She wouldn't be able to look Death in the face for quite some time if that happened.

So, Jasmine waited till the restroom was empty, which only took a minute since no one used this bathroom to begin with and opened the chamber once more with an effortless hiss. She descended the stairs slowly, keeping a hand on the wall next to her, just in case she lost her balance. A familiar cold crept up around her like an old friend as her footsteps echoed off the stone around her. Naturally, Death wasn't visible, but Jasmine felt the deity's presence all the same.

"You know, you're the reason this has been taking as long as it has. We probably could have figured another way to kill the basilisk without your dramatics."

A cold hand gripped the back of her neck in warning. Someone was in a mood this evening.

She scoffed as the cold hand refused to budge. Death couldn't show themselves without draining her magic, so the deity wouldn't be able to speak to her, just make their displeasure known through light brushes of its own magic. "Don't you even think about threatening me. The next time you want to be dramatic, remember it almost killed me. As much as you enjoy taking my soul and inserting it back into my body, we're getting closer to saving the magical world then we ever have before. I would appreciate it if you didn't ruin that for us."

The cold air fluttered around her like a horde of ice-covered bees. Someone was grumpy when Jasmine was upset with them.

Jasmine continued down the corridor until she felt her feet connect with the floor of the underground pipes beneath the school. Death said it would be near the entrance, so she used the rune in her eye to see if she could sense the teeth anywhere around her without needing to use her wand. She certainly didn't need Pomfrey on her case about her magic usage.

She also didn't want to faint down here again. Jasmine doubted that Lady Magic would grant her another boon…though she was still trying to figure out how anything that happened that night in the chamber could have been considered a boon in the first place.

After a few moments of delicately slow searching, she noticed two fangs on the ground, both in perfect condition. Jasmine was tempted to head deeper into the chamber to see the rest of the basilisk carcass, but she didn't have the time. Maybe later she could manage to sneak away long enough to get some potion ingredients and skin for some battle-ready robes.

With a wistful sigh, Jasmine pulled a jar out of an extended pocket in her robes and scooped the fangs up as gently as she could, never touching them with her hands. When she was finally cleared for more complex spellcasting Jasmine would be warding them and infusing the venom into one of her daggers, but right now she could only place them in well warded, unbreakable, jars.

She screwed the caps on tight and felt the runes seal them shut. Jasmine slid the jars back into her pocket and made the long trek back up to the bathroom.

By her calculation, she had about ten minutes before the boys would attempt to hunt her down. As long as she was in the hallway and on her way to the tower, she doubted that they would worry. She knew they watched her on the map, since Jasmine tended to get into trouble on her own…though she still felt that trouble found her, not the other way around.

She closed the doors to the chamber with a barely audible hiss and made her way out of the bathroom just a little bit lightheaded from the parseltongue. She leaned against wall, tipped her head back and let out a long sigh. The stone behind her was cool to the touch, grounding as the uneven ridges dug into her head a little bit. That was one large problem out of her way. She could harvest a hell of a lot of venom from two fangs.

Now she was going to need to destroy the horcrux before leaving in a little less than three months, more than enough time. It would need to happen sooner rather than later. Exams were coming up and Merlin knew Jasmine was going to be busy tutoring her friends. James would be leaving the castle for his birthday in a few days, that would be an excellent time to go destroy a horcrux. Monty had made sure that James knew he needed to get his homework done in advance. He was going to be exhausted from the ritual that was going to be performed, much like Sirius had been after his inheritance though the Black Heir had managed to have his postponed. The Potter ritual, Jasmine knew from first had experience, happens the moment the heir turned seventeen.

There was no grand secret to the Potter family, well there were some secrets, but it wasn't anything that could ruin an entire family in the course of an evening. They didn't serve a deity, unless Jasmine died, then maybe, Death would rebound over to James, but she doubted she could ever be so lucky.

She was so lost in thought she almost jumped out of her skin when someone called out to her from down the hallway.

"You know, you almost died here once, you'd think you wouldn't want to come back here again without some kind of backup," Sirius teased from father up the hallway. Had he followed her down here?

Jasmine tilted her head to the side and gaze towards the dog animagus who was quickly approaching her.

Sirius had his hands in the pockets of his trousers, a picture of ease as he sauntered over to her. His quick pace was a dead giveaway to the fact he wasn't as composed as he wanted to appear. Not to mention that his hair was ruffled and his uniform tie missing.

What had the Marauder's been up this evening?

"I thought Gryffindors conquered their fears. What doesn't kill you only makes you stronger, right?" Jasmine replied with a tired smile. It was sweet that he was worried about her health.

He put a hand on her shoulder, his thumb moving in small circles over the fabric. "The fact that you are quoting house rhetoric to me shows you're clearly delusional. What are you doing down here? What if you collapsed again?" He carded his left hand through her hair with a gentle attention he rarely showed in public.

Jasmine let out a tired huff, bringing her own hands to rest on his shoulders. "I'm fine. There was something I needed to take care of. There was little to no magic involved and I'm finally ready to go back to the tower. I'm all in one piece."

Sirius dropped his hands to his side once more and took a look around to make sure no one else was watching them. His posture had become a bit stiff. Jasmine caught a wisp of Myrtle lamented in the bathroom behind them.

They could never be too careful with how they acted in public. "I wish that you trusted me, us- the Marauders more, Jazz. We could be helping you do whatever it is that you think you need to do alone," he reminded her, grey eyes alight, magic burning behind his irises.

Walking with Death tended to leave Jasmine fairly lonely. She didn't want to bring the Marauders into that world. Death was a possessive bastard most days and the deity had taken an interest in Sirius or was at least watching him. It was extremely unsettling. Jasmine had seen them watch the Black Heir more than once since they arrived in this timeline.

She couldn't just allow Sirius access to her family secrets…not to mention her extensive past. It was all too much for her to handle. She couldn't imagine any of them coming to terms with the fact that she had lived nine other lives, where she had been brutally murdered in all of them. Not to mention that she was James' daughter in that timeline and Sirius and Remus were absent parental figures due to their own issues.

Jasmine sounded like a mental patient in her own head. She sure as hell didn't want to say that out loud.

"You know family magic doesn't work that way, Sirius," she reminded him as she threaded her fingers through his and tugged him in the direction of the Gryffindor Common room.

He didn't budge causing her arm to jerk back a bit. Sirius was biting his lip and glancing around nervously, as if he was waiting for something to jump out at him. Did he think someone was watching them?

She pushed her rune vision out and found no one.

"Jazz…I have an inkling I know what kind of task you've been given and I know you can't do this by yourself. Just know that I'm here for you. You can tell me anything."

She squeezed his hand. "I know I can't do this on my own. When the time is right I will explain everything to you and if you still want to help me after that, then be my guest."

"I doubt there is anything that you're going to tell me that would make me want to leave you."

Jasmine resisted the urge to roll her eyes at the corny statement and settled for giving him a quick peck on the cheek. It was a sweet sentiment at least.

He had no idea the history she was hiding from him and for now that was enough.

It took another couple of weeks before she was able to slip away from the boys again. She managed it when James went home for his birthday and Sirius was too busy wallowing in the boy's dorm with Remus to notice her absence from the common room. Honestly, if she didn't know that James and Sirius were only interested in women, she would have thought that they were dating each other. Jasmine told Lily that she would be in the library for the evening and didn't want to be bothered while she worked on something for her internship.

A believable lie.

Instead, Jasmine took her much needed foray into Room of Requirement that evening for the diadem. She didn't have that long till the end of the year and sometimes it was better just to get something over with than to prolong it. With her luck something would happen forcing her to leave the damn thing in Hogwarts for an unspecified amount of time and that meant getting the cursed object sooner rather than later.

The Room of Requirement was easy enough to get into and with a grin on her face, she walked through the doors and disappeared into the cluttered mess that Voldemort left the priceless Hogwarts artifact in. Jasmine let out a sigh as she wound her way through a mess of discarded garbage and old books. She swore she stepped over dress robes that wouldn't have been out of place over a hundred years ago…why someone would toss it haphazardly into a random room they'd need to pace in front of five times was beyond her.

It wasn't long before she was moving between bookshelves, fingers skimming the spines as she went. A wash of cold dread filled her as she turned a corner. Jasmine knew the feeling of a horcrux by now, after nine lives hunting for them. The abominations created a dark void where magic should have been. It screamed in silent agony as the piece of soul trapped inside the black magic writhed. She could feel Death behind her, its fingers gripping her shoulder as she approached.

The diadem was lovely, pure silver, delicate, with a large sapphire in the center, and very deceptive in hiding the black magic lurking just under the surface. As Harriet she had never been the unfortunate person to actually touch and wear that horcrux, but she knew from the smoking remains, if one could call the crispy piece of bone and ash remains, of Pansy Parkinson in her third life that it was a dangerous piece of magic.

Jasmine pulled out a dropper filled with basilisk venom as she approached it, her eyes focused solely on the item in front of her. The end was charmed to her magical signature, so no one would be able to use it, but her. It would stop someone from touching the deadly poison or use it on someone else.

She took another step before a cloud of smoke formed in front of her, morphing into the visage of an older Tom Riddle, all cocky smirks and condescension curled up into one average sized psychopath. It was the man that was denied the position of Defense Against the Dark Arts by Dumbledore. The only healthy coping mechanism that Tom could come up with for that rejection was cold blooded murder and the further mutilation of his soul.

"I would rather you keep that away from me, dear. You could hurt someone with something so deadly."

His voice would always have an odd charm to it in its horcrux form. It was meant to coerce its victims into giving their souls over to it, the insatiable monster. Horcruxes were the closest things to living magical objects that Harriet had ever found. Magic had a certain sentience to it, but horcruxes had pieces of living being imbued into them…they only had base desires, dark ones, that only wanted to drain and possess their victims, much like this one.

Jasmine had far too much experience in dealing with horcruxes at this point. She had destroyed more than her fair share as Harriet. "I don't really think you are going to have much of a choice than to watch as this poison erodes your vessel," Jasmine responded as she pulled out her wand to counter curse the area with ease as Tom's visage vibrated with rage.

Some of books rattled, but nothing moved off the shelves. The Horcrux didn't nearly have the same amount of power as the other ones. It was Tom's fifth one, visibly weaker with less of a soul inside of it. The diary would have been able to throw things, the ring and locket could compel as if it used an imperio. The diadem was pretty and perfectly hidden. It was never meant to be found. This and the Cup had the least magical power.

"You will cease this madness at once!"

Jasmine scoffed and moved closer, only a few steps away now. She dispelled a rather nasty spine breaking curse on the wood floor next to her foot and continued forward. "I don't think you are in any position to order me around, Thomas Riddle."

"How dare you use that filthy muggle name! I am Lord Voldemort! The Dark Lord of the British Isles, and one day, the world!" His face had morphed from handsome and self-assured to a dark fury. It was a look that Harriet had been all too familiar with over the years when dealing with Tom, though, it had been far more reptilian then.

Anger was one of the few emotions that Tom understood and felt on a regular basis…though he had no idea how to handle his anger in a positive and constructive way.

She couldn't help but roll her eyes, "Bigger and better wizards than you have tried and failed as Dark Lords, Tom."

Now, all she had to do with dispel the final ward around the diadem without triggering any of the defensive dark magic runes and she would be able to poison the bloody thing and go to bed.

There was a tight little warded circle around the diadem. Naturally, there were seven rings, each ring was filled with Norse and Gaelic runes

"How are you doing this so quickly? How could you know?" The specter floated around her, his translucent form darting around her as she methodically ripped through the wards. Honestly, the original Jasmine could have done this as well. Tom Riddle was a genius, but he wasn't a ward master by any means and any prodigy at the art would be able to walk right through this with little or no prep work. There was some complex layering, but it was predictable in its dark nature.

Warding runes and dark magic tending not to mingle too much, their inherent natures weren't compatible. There were only so many combinations that Tom could make with this ward. It was stronger now than it had been in Harriet's time, so Jasmine took extra care to make sure to aggressively check to make sure that every counter rune was perfectly craved into the wood as she broke down layer by layer.

The wood hissed and smoked every time a layer was destroyed. Tom was becoming more and more agitated as she worked and continued to ignore him.

"You do realize that you are an incorporeal being right now. You can't do much to me besides buzz in my ear like an annoying bee. A sliver of an already shattered soul can't do much," she responded as the fourth layer broke down.

Tom had stopped raving next to her. Had she finally gotten him to stop talking?

"You know what I am?"

Jasmine let herself smirk as the fifth layer sizzled away. "Of course, I do, little horcrux. I know you are one of many. It is my mission to stop you."

His brow furrowed and his eyes were blown wide with shock. "What are you?" For the first time his voice wavered.

"I am the last Peverell, and if you know anything about pureblood history in the British Isles you probably heard of them."

"They were run off the Island during the Great War. I don't understand what that has to do with anything. The Peverell Family wasn't strong enough to stand their ground against Grindelwald. Why would I waste my time learning about them?"

Jasmine had to resist the urge to scoff. "If you did, then you would have learned why they were hunted down. Grindelwald feared my family. We are lord slayers. There are only a few magical families on the planet with that title. Do you know why?"

She would answer if he didn't say anything. It wasn't often that Jasmine got to teach people about her family. Most of them already knew it, but Tom Riddle, while a genius was cocky. He deemed the Peverell's worthless after fleeing for their lives, which was honestly a fairly Slytherin thing to do. Then again, it was to preserve the family and Tom knew nothing about that.

The Slytherin in question was as far away from Jasmine as he could get while being tethered to the diadem. "No why?" He ground out as the sixth layer burned away.

"We are tied to the one thing you fear more than anything else in the world."

Jasmine flashed him an eerie grin as her left eye burned an unnatural grey. Tom gaped like a fish.

"You're just starting to get it, aren't you? You've upset the balance of magic. Grindelwald started it, but you are throwing it so far off center that the greater magical beings of power are getting involved. My family is getting involved on their behalf."

Tom rolled his eyes. "There is no such thing as Greater Magical Beings of Power. That's all hogwash and made up stories told to magical children."

"No, they're very real and very angry. Death in particular has quite the bone to pick with you. Horcruxes are a big no-no. Death really doesn't like to be cheated…and you have attempted to cheat Death multiple times. It's just shameful not only to Lady Magic, who you insult every time you preform black magic, but also to Death, who you owe your soul to at the end of your life."

"And what? You're supposed to be Death's vessel or some bloody nonsense like that?"

Jasmine had to crack a smile, that would be an absolute nightmare to be a vessel of Death. A deity that had no idea how to live at all would cause all sort of disasters in a human vessel. "No, but I dole out the punishments…and yours has just begun," she replied before releasing a single drop of venom to the surface of the diadem. Tom lunged for her, but it was far too late. He had been so enraptured her story, he hadn't noticed her dispel the seventh ring.

And we have a horcrux! It only took 78 chapters, but we finally got one! The end of sixth year is just around the corner for Jasmine, which means this will be her last few chapters as a Hogwarts student. Next chapter, end of the school year, exams, and revelations.

We're reaching the last third of this story, crazy to think that I still have another third to go. Things are really going to start heating up soon. I'm so excited to write it for all you guys. I've been planning this last section for over a year! There are so many things that are about to happen.

Thank you for all of the favorites, follows and reviews! You guys are the best!

Stay safe out there!

See you soon,
~Animerocker