A/N: You're getting a double whammy within a few days.
Disclaimer: I OWN NOTHING, property of respective owners etc.
Chapter 8
Absently, Jasmine played with the silver medal she had received a few days prior. Aside from the school replacing Tom Riddle's award for special services to the school with one in her own name, the Minister had seen fit to bestow upon her an Order of Merlin, Second Class. Most likely trying to get in her good books. Amelia Bones had appeared slightly suspicious with her story, but had relented after hearing Ginny's testimony.
The publicity was a pain, however, and much too early on. She wanted clout to come once she was of an age at which she could claim her political power, and start having more of a hand controlling the light sect. She already had plenty of ins with those of a darker persuasion on the Wizengamot, and a fair few neutrals if she needed them.
'Still,' she thought as the light reflected off the silver metal, 'I suppose one can't start too early, I can still play off this later.'
Deciding to get on with the day, she looked over to the mirror of the room and turned her wand to her own face. The glamour she applied was one she used when needing discrepancy, and resulted in a non-descript fair skinned, mossy green eyed blonde. Hardly stunningly pretty, but not noticeably ugly either.
With a slight nod upon securing her appearance, she walked out of her room in the Leaky Cauldron – to be honest; she was looking forward to the completion of the construction of a few properties she was financing. They would give her a place to properly meet with her various lieutenants, as well as numerous safe houses and warehouses.
Movingly swiftly, she paused only once to nod politely at Tom the innkeeper – who knew her as Eleanor Jarvis – before stepping out into the Alley. Today she was after some advanced reading for the OWL electives she was taking that year; Arithmancy and Ancient Runes, widely regarded as the hardest ones to take, and perhaps a few things for Divination as well. With a smile, she recalled the day before the end of the previous term, upon which they had been required to choose their electives.
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"You want to take all five? Are you insane?" Jasmine asked of the bushy-haired brunette, wondering if she should be sent back into the Hospital Wing.
"That's what I told her," Nadia commented.
"They do offer five, you know," Hermione defended herself, and the ravenette merely rolled her eyes at the non-answer.
"Hermione, only the workaholics take four, and those with no life and a death wish take five. Did you see how stressed Percy Weasley was when taking them?" she questioned the girl, "you can only attend classes for three at most, after that you have to self-study in your own free time – on top of all your other work – and try and chase professors to try to cover the syllabus. It's nearly impossible."
"Nearly, but still possible," the Gryffindor replied stubbornly.
"Alright, let's look at this logically, shall we?" Jasmine entreated, "you are a muggleborn; you already know all there is to be known about the muggle world."
"I want to learn about it from a wizarding perspective."
"Hermione," Nadia interjected, "you remember that little conversation about Moon landings and ignorant purebloods? Charity Burbage is one of those. She's a nice enough person, if a bit ditzy, but she got her job based entirely on her blood status. That course is total pig-swill, as you two have exasperatedly taught me."
"Right," Jasmine affirmed, "and then, Divination, really? You hate Divination."
"You're taking it," Hermione replied, crossing her arms.
"I don't loathe the course and the teacher," Jasmine countered, "I'm taking it because I'm good at lying and making things up, I find the actual idea interesting, and I'm not taking it with Trelawney. I spoke with Professor McGonagall, and I'm studying it in my own time – surprisingly, she was very amenable to the idea." The brunette visibly tried to come up with an argument, but failed. "That leaves you three; Arithmancy, which is just your thing, Runes, which again you'd probably like, and Care, which is a shot in the dark."
"I'm not dropping Care," Hermione stated resolutely.
"I'm not saying you should," Jasmine backed up, "three is fine, but don't try to kill yourself by doing five. We don't want to see you have a stress attack during revision over your ridiculous workload." With a sigh, the Gryffindor deflated.
"You really think it'll be that bad?" she inquired.
"Yes," they both replied at once.
"It's not about how clever you are, Hermione," Nadia said quietly, "there's no question about that. It's about how much work it is."
"I guess maybe it is a bad idea…" the girl finally relented.
"It is," both her companions reaffirmed.
"And it will mean we're all taking three," Nadia added.
"Wait, I know you're taking Care and Runes, but what's your third?" Jasmine inquired curiously.
"Ah," the brunette blushed a little, "I'm doing some work with Madame Pomphrey. There isn't a Healing OWL, but there is a NEWT, which I can take in sixth or seventh year and then start an apprenticeship or enter St. Mungo's at a junior level."
"Healer Longbottom," Jasmine mused, rolling the words around on her tongue, "fits you." The girl flushed again, before giving a hesitant smile. Nadia was most likely entering into this in hope of fixing her parents from their permanent place in St. Mungo's, but from Jasmine's view, it kept pushing her towards the figure of Doctor Watson in her own eyes.
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Shaking her head at the memory of the Gryffindor's obsession for knowledge – even by her standards, she sometimes craved a bit too much – and her mind turned to the Ancient Runes texts she was planning on buying. She knew Futhark fairly well, and had a passing familiarity with Ogham, having expressed an interest in runes not long after entering the magical world, but she had never studied Sumerian, or Hieroglyphs, let alone some of the African tribal glyphs studied beyond NEWT level, generally for bodily enhancement and healing, and there were languages from South America still trying to be understood from ruins of the magical peoples who once resided in places like Peru in ancient times, and had mysteriously disappeared.
Her passage to Flourish and Blotts was paused, however, as she regarded the small groups of people moving hurriedly through the Alley, glancing nervously around. With a frown, she looked about to see if anything had changed, and spotted the large poster nearby. She moved almost on autopilot to stare at the scraggly haired man holding up a card with a long number upon it, jostling back and forth as he screamed and shouted. Her eyes travelled down, and met the words at the base: 'WANTED: Sirius Black.'
"Shit," she enunciated clearly, and spun her heel to walk briskly back to the Leaky Cauldron. 'That throws a few bloody spanners in the works,' she growled out in her head.
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Jasmine tapped her foot impatiently, checking her watch for the umpteenth time as she waited for Scabior to eventually show up. It's not like he was that late, not even five minutes, but each second felt like a bloody hour, and she did feel slightly conspicuous in her Irene Adler getup while below Madame Rosa's. Eventually, after another few eternities, the ruffian showed up, not that he looked quite so rough anymore. He'd cleaned up a bit from being involved in her business for two years, and he could afford much better. Even Greyback sitting across from her at the table looked cleaner and a little less gruff than he once did.
"Finally, sit," she said with a frustrated tone, pointing at the third chair.
"Sorry, I was in Glasgow when you called," the man said, "dealing with a few supply lines."
"Yes, I'm aware," she relented, fully realising it was a bit of distance between the Scottish city and London. "Now here's why I called you here. I'm guessing you are aware Sirius Black has escaped custody?"
"Yeah," Scabior replied, and Greyback simply nodded.
"Our employer is not best pleased," she leaned back in her chair, trying to make it seem like this stress was coming from dealing with Moriarty – her cover was more important that exercising her annoyance on these two. "He is quite adamant about finding and capturing him. Alive."
"What does he want with an escaped Death Eater?" Greyback queried confusedly.
"I haven't the faintest bloody idea," she replied, a lie of course, "but I've spent all day scurrying about on his orders getting any and all information I can find on him." She pulled a pair of brown information packets from an enlarged pocket, and set them on the table. "This is everything I've gathered so far, and I'll be able to get some more from his old friends in the next few days." Lucius was coming to her office in roughly an hour for that very purpose. "And any more Ministry contacts. In the meantime, I want you to put out every feeler, every man you've got on finding this bloody bastard. Keep a skeleton crew guarding the businesses and our current enterprises, but cancel any expansions for now. This is our priority."
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"Ah, Mr Malfoy, please have a seat," Jasmine gestured across from her as she sorted various letters on her desk.
"I'll confess, I'm curious about what needs be discussed at such short notice," the man drawled out.
"Black," she answered simply, "Moriarty wants him, alive." The blond man raised an eyebrow at this statement.
"Why?" he inquired.
"I don't know, but I don't envy Black if the amount of work we're expending to catch him is any indicator," she returned, finally finishing looking over the bits of parchment and grabbing a blank sheet and a quill before turning her attention upon Malfoy once more. "I need any and all information from your Death Eater days on him."
"I don't quite know what you're implying," the Malfoy patriarch began after a moment, but she interrupted him before he could continue.
"Mr Malfoy, let's make one thing clear. You are not before the Wizengamot, and what you tell me now is going to my employer; a criminal mastermind," she stated, looking him in the eye from behind her glasses. "What you know, if you please." He scowled for a moment, formulating his reply before saying anything.
"I'm afraid I have next to nothing to tell you," he replied. "We knew the Dark Lord had a spy of some sort in the Order of the Phoenix, but even being among the Inner Circle, I was never privy to said informant's identity. The only times I ever saw Black was when he fought with the Order, and I will confess to being impressed by his acting if he really was a turncoat."
"Wonderful," Jasmine said a tad scathingly as she massaged her brow. "So he had no friends or allies among your ranks, and he betrayed all those on the Light." She dropped her quill and leaned back in her chair, musing on the situation becoming even more awkward. "Well, could you spread around the word amongst your former cohorts that significant reward for information relating to Black is being offered? And perhaps keep a lookout; your wife is the one he's most likely to come to, being of Black birth. And any information she could offer on her cousin would also be similarly appreciated."
"Naturally," he made a hand gesture to his agreement.
"Right, then if you'll excuse me, I have to talk to a man from the DMLE about their search efforts," she stood, "thank-you for your time."
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As Jasmine sat in her compartment on the Hogwarts Express – already changed, as per usual – her mind was not upon the school she was soon to be returning to. Instead, she was concentrating upon the copy of the Daily Prophet within her grasp, and the article about Sirius Black being 'You-Know-Who's right hand man.' It was mostly conjecture, par for the course as far as the Prophet went, and Jasmine still found it amusing that they refused to print Voldemort's name. 'You-Know-Who' was a very silly thing to call someone, especially if you didn't know who it referred to.
Her thoughts were interrupted by the door sliding open, and a brunette poking her head through; something only two people who were keyed into the notice-me-not charm she had cast could do.
"Hello, Nadia," she greeted casually.
"Er, sorry, do I know you?" the girl replied, and Jasmine blinked before remembering the glamour she had cast over herself to get through the station un-accosted. With a flick of her wand, auburn hair turned black, and her other features returned to normal. "Oh, why the glamour?" the girl said as she moved into the compartment, storing her trunk overhead.
"The public is still flustered over the basilisk thing, and now they recognise me from the photographs from that Order of Merlin ceremony," she replied. "It's a pain."
"I can imagine," Nadia replied as she sat down opposite her. "I just realised, where's your luggage?"
"In my pocket," the ravenette pulled the miniaturised trunk from her right pocket before slipping it back in.
"How did you shrink it, we aren't allowed to practise magic outside of school," the girl said with a frown.
"It's enchanted to do it itself," Jasmine stated, "after my last one was broken into, I bought a new one with all the bells and whistles, as it were." No-one would be going through her property again any time soon; that thing had its own wardstone, numerous secret compartments, and several different openable spaces. Depending on how she opened it, she would receive either one of five trunk-sized spaces, or a set of stairs going down into a mid-sized room, and from all of those, more space were accessible.
"That can't have been cheap," said a new voice, and the pair turned to see Hermione dragging her own trunk.
"Not particularly cheap, no," Jasmine replied nonchalantly. 'Try a few hundred galleons,' she added silently. Her privacy was something she valued. "but then again, we are all students at the most exclusive private school in all of Great Britain and Ireland."
"Hah, I suppose plenty of comparisons can be made," Hermione relented.
"Ninety percent of the students would probably vote Tory."
"Well, magical Britain is about as conservative as you can get," mused Hermione, "I mean their views on plenty of things are practically Victorian." At this, Nadia made several faux-coughing noises.
"This is my culture you're insulting here," she spoke up.
"Yes, but it is also silly at times, and thereby deserving of mockery," Hermione returned light-heartedly.
And so began a debate that would last for several hours.
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The Hogwarts Express was fairly well-known in magical Britain; it took children from London all the way through the North of England to the upper reaches of Scotland, and it did this six times during each individual school year – at the beginning and ends of the Autumn, Spring and Summer terms – it was also well-known to be a heavily enchanted muggle object, and had been running on those hidden tracks since it was bought many years before.
Never, however, had the locomotive been known to halt before reaching its destination. Not in living memory, anyway.
"What the hell?" was Nadia's response as she looked out of her window into the darkened early evening sky, "since when do we stop halfway to Hogwarts?"
"This train doesn't stop," Jasmine added, looking out of her own and downwards, taking in the viaduct they rested upon. "This isn't looking good; we're in a heavily exposed location, where any method of fleeing would practically involve single file. This is the perfect location for an ambush."
"Why would someone attack the Hogwarts Express?" Nadia queried, bewildered.
"Because this train contains half the magical nation's children," Hermione answered with a grave face, "if you want to make an impact, you go after what people hold most dear." Both of them were more familiar with the muggle world - where events like this were feared by almost rabid parents.
"Wands out," the ravenette commanded, "and ward the…doors." She grew distracted towards the end of her sentence, trailing off as she regarded the sudden creeping build-up of ice across the window, moving at a pace best measured in inches per second. It even froze a bottle of water Nadia had purchased from the trolley earlier, and when Jasmine saw the flitting of shapes outside through the icy glass, her heart sank as she deduced what this was. "Oh hell, that shouldn't even be…" she was about to say 'possible,' when a dark aura settled over her, and the life was sucked from the cabin. A glance at the drawn faces of the other two showed they felt the presence as well; of all the light and joy being sucked from the world.
Agonisingly sluggishly, Jasmine forced her wand towards the doorway, from where the feeling seemed at its strongest, even as a grey-fleshed, bony hand wrapped spindly fingers around the frame.
"Ex…" she tried to summon the words as the sound of screams imparted upon her ears. The door slid open with protesting squeals on icy rollers, displaying the ghastly figure in tattered black robes floating beyond. As it reached that bony hand forward, Jasmine's revulsion gave her strength, "Ex…Expecto Patronum!"
With a stab forward of her wand, a slew of white mist formed at the end of her holly wand, creating a meagre shield against the Dementor. Blinking as the aura's presence lessened, she physically pushed her magic into the spell, increasing the power behind it to force away the backpedalling creature until an ethereal raven spread its wings from the tip of her wand, launching itself at the Dementor.
Facing the personification of its prey's will to fight, the monster scarpered, and lamps they hadn't realised had gone out flickered back on. Once she was sure it had left, Jasmine drooped in her seat, the misty raven flapping back over to set its effervescent claws onto her shoulder. She smiled slightly at the bird, feeling a little stronger for its presence.
"What…the hell…was that?" Nadia gasped out.
"Something that really shouldn't be on a train of school-children," Jasmine replied as she flicked her wand in a sideways slash to close the sliding doors. She didn't cancel the Patronus however, even if it was steadily draining her magic bit-by-bit. "Do either of you have chalk in your trunks?"
"What?" Nadia spluttered confusedly, although Hermione evidently understood, standing to yank her trunk down from its place above her, and swiftly opening it up to throw a hoodie out. Grasping a blue box, she pulled out a white stick of chalk triumphantly and set about the doors. A few scrabbles later, and four simple glyphs of Futhark were set upon the door; never before had Jasmine been so glad of the Gryffindor's over-studious nature as right now.
"Alveo," the bushy-haired witch incanted with her wand to the chalk, and a slight shimmer coated the doorway like a giant bubble of water while the chalky runes glowed a soft white. "That should hold for about ten minutes, max."
"That should do," Jasmine replied, relaxing a little and letting her raven fade into wispy smoke and then nothing. "Does either of you have any chocolate?"
"No, how about you explain what the bloody hell is going on," Nadia replied.
"That was a dementor," Jasmine answered, "they're the guards of Azkaban island." She took a breath before continuing, "you don't want to know what they do."
"What?" Hermione asked.
"Hermione, trust me on this. This is one of those things you're better off not knowing," she resolutely affirmed. "Safe be said, at the range we were at, they feed off your happiness – literally sucking it away – and leaving you with nothing but your worst memories."
"I've never felt so cold to the bone," Nadia shivered.
"Chocolate," Jasmine stated, "do you have any left? It helps against dementor exposure; presumably by releasing endorphins."
"I think I have a few chocolate frogs…" the brunette murmured, searching around herself. While she was doing that, the Ravenclaw casted a warming charm upon the window, melting the thin ice on the other side and allowing her vision of tattered robes flying through the air away from the train, chased by a pair of silver darts of light.
"They're leaving," she said without turning away, "or being chased off more accurately; probably by two of the teachers."
"That's a relief," Nadia replied as she divvied up her remaining chocolate, which they shared gratefully, quickly feeling a bit warmer. With a slight jerk, roughly a minute after the Dementors were chased away, the train once again began to plod its way to Hogwarts. "So what the hell was all that?"
"With this many…" Jasmine pondered, having counted at least a dozen fleeing, "I'd assume these were part of the group looking for Sirius Black, and presumably some moron at the Ministry decided a search of the train would be a good idea." She snorted, "as if a mass-murdering Death-Eater would be hiding amongst a group of school-children."
"So, they were doing that under the Ministry's order?" Hermione asked in an astounded tone.
"I hope so," the ravenette replied, "if the dementors are free to do as they wish, then Gods help us." Both Gryffindors shivered slightly at the idea.
"What was that spell you used to make the raven?"
"Ah, the Patronus charm. I originally learned it for sending messages." That much was true, as she had been in something of a bind before First Year of needing to go to school and potentially not being able to leave for a large length of time. Of course, it was only after she'd finally succeeded in casting it – through much work – that modified voices didn't carry over into messages, instead being given in the caster's original voice. "It's pretty much the only spell that's known to be useful against dementors."
"Sounds useful."
"Not so much, the chance of us encountering one of them again is pretty much nil."
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"What was it you said earlier on the train?" Hermione queried as she stared out of their carriage at the Dementor floating above one of Hogwarts' winged boars on the gate pillars.
"Yes, I rescind my statement," Jasmine answered while looking at the matching one on the other side, "the whole Ministry is apparently testing new levels of stupidity, not just one dumb employee."
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"Well, now you have all been fed and watered, allow me to welcome you all to Hogwarts for this new school year," Dumbledore declared as the last of the desserts vanished, and Jasmine turned bored eyes upon the old man. Another year, another speech by an annoying, ancient codger. "To begin with, as many of you will know, Auror Shacklebolt has returned to his post in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement after kindly standing in as our Defence against the Dark Arts teacher last year. So, it is my pleasure to introduce the new teacher for said course; Professor Remus Lupin." That got the ravenette's attention. Remus Lupin. She had been looking high and low for that man since Sirius Black had escaped, but he had proved extremely difficult to track down, not least because his file at the Ministry was sealed by Dumbledore as Chief Warlock for some reason. Of course, she could get ahold of that information, but it would require physically stealing it from a heavily guarded location and so far hadn't been worth the effort involved. For the most part, this man had disappeared after the end of the war – presumably after losing two of his best friend's lives to the hand of the third – and hadn't been seen or heard from since then.
And now here he was, giving a shy wave to the student body in his slightly worn robes.
"And furthermore," Dumbledore continued as the whispers about the new Defence teacher abated, "I must announce that Professor Kettleburn has retired in order to spend more time with his remaining limbs. From now on Care of Magical Creatures will be taken by Professor Rubeus Hagrid." Here the huge man stood from his place at the far end of the table, and gave a jaunty wave to the student body. The Gryffindors cheered for the most part, along with a lot of Hufflepuff. Slytherin and almost all of Ravenclaw were silent at the appointment, however.
When she had gotten the man pardoned, inadvertently, from the crime of manslaughter by incriminating Voldemort in opening the Chamber of Secrets, Jasmine would have never considered that it meant he could now hold a teaching position. She didn't look down on his obvious creature heritage, but the man was a bumbling oaf, not the right sort of material for a teacher. The Slytherins would eat him alive, and the Ravenclaws would dice him first. For Gods' sakes, could he even read?
Dumbledore then proceeded to give a speech about the Dementors, in which he didn't imply favourably in terms of the Ministry for appointing them as 'guards' of Hogwarts. Jasmine had certainly felt his eye upon her when he mentioned invisibility cloaks. She doubted they knew about the secret tunnel from under a mirror on the third floor to a cave in the Forbidden Forest, and she didn't need to set foot above ground to use her two-way portkey she had spent hours down in the passage enchanting to go between there and her office at the Diogenes Club. Plus, she did know the one charm used to keep them away.
It also reminded her of how important it was for her to catch Black; she couldn't let the Ministry get ahold of him first.
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As the Gryffindors and Ravenclaws walked into their first lesson of the term, they viewed the Defence classroom with interest. The classrooms at the school had a tendency to reflect the teacher currently in the post. Quirrel had the room slightly stuffy with burning incense, and was generally fairly dark in ambiance. Lockhart, reflexively always had the windows open, and the room bright, while he covered the walls with paintings, photos and posters of himself; the textbook narcissist. Shacklebolt had been fairly simple, having a few posters on how to hold your wand for certain movements, and a few recruitment flyers and pamphlets here-and-there for the DMLE. Lupin had paintings of creatures along the wall – dragons and a nundu being the easiest to discern. Furthermore, the desks and chairs were piled up against the sides of the room, and a large wardrobe rested in the centre of the floor.
The students jerked back as one when the piece of furniture jumped and shook suddenly.
"Don't be afraid," declared a voice, and they turned to see Lupin walking down the stairs from his office, "what you're looking at is the home of a boggart. I spent a day last week scouring the castle and nabbed this one in Filch's office." He gave the wood a knock as he got close, stopping the rattling from within. "As you all know already, my name is Professor Lupin, however I ask you allow me a few weeks before being expected to know all your names by memory." That wrought a few chuckles, and he gave a small smile at the achievement. "Now, last year you were all taught by a capable man who grounded you in defensive and offensive spells, yes?" After receiving several nods, he continued. "Well, since Auror Shacklebolt already covered a good deal of that, I'm not going to focus on wizard-to-wizard combat this year, although I will perhaps try to run one duelling lesson a month to keep that ticking over. No, my proficiency is in creatures. Not the same kind as Professor Hagrid will be teaching those of you taking his class, but the sort that would do you harm in the real world. For the most part, I will try and teach you in practical lessons, such as today." He gestured to the wardrobe. "Can anyone tell me anything about boggarts? Hands up if you know." Jasmine, alongside a few other Ravens and one specific Gryffindor raised their hands. "Yes, Miss…" he pointed at the eager girl.
"Granger, sir," she answered, "a boggart is a creature which lives in small, dark spaces close to centres of magic and magic users. It assumes the shape of its victim's greatest fear in order to feed off their dread."
"Excellent, five points to Gryffindor," the man stated. "As Miss Granger said, the boggart feeds off your fear by becoming it. Now what really hurts a boggart is laughter, feeling happy around it gives it nothing to feed off of, so we use a charm to turn it into something funny. The incantation is Riddikulus, can you repeat after me? Riddikulus," the class intoned the word as one voice, and the man nodded, seemingly satisfied. "Perfect, and the wand movement is a simple flick. Now can we have a volunteer to step up? How about you…?"
"Ron Weasley, sir," the redheaded boy mumbled as he walked forwards a bit.
"Right, now what is it you're most afraid of Mister Weasley?"
"S-spiders, sir," he answered hesitantly.
"Ah, arachnophobia, a fairly common fear," Lupin stroked his chin for a moment as he pondered, "right, how do you think a spider would look with no legs, hmm? Would it still be scary?"
"Er, I guess not."
"Brilliant, well I want you to visualise a spider without any legs in your mind," the man moved over to stand by the wardrobe, "keep that visualised, and when you see the spider, cast Riddikulus." At the boy's tentative nod, he threw the door to the wardrobe open.
Immediately, out stepped a giant spider, which was probably fairly close to what an acromantula looked like. Ron looked terrified, shaking slightly as it advanced upon him before sticking out his wand.
"R-Riddikulus," he shouted, flicking his wand. In an instant, the spider's body fell to the floor, wobbling helplessly.
"Excellent, Ron, and let's keep it going. Form a line, and let's have the next person!" Lupin called, flicking his wand to a record player on his desk that began playing some old Jazz music, even as the class shuffled into an orderly queue before the wardrobe, Jasmine finding herself behind Sally-Anne Perks, and with Padma Patil at the front. As soon as she got close, the boggart twisted into mid-air to reform as a rather large cobra – which was an intriguing choice for a native to India. Of course, said snake quickly tied itself in a knot before being replaced by an old-fashioned Egyptian mummy as the other Patil moved up.
"Isn't this a bit public?" Nadia whispered from behind the ravenette, "airing people's fears for everyone to see."
"My thoughts exactly," the Ravenclaw responded with a frown. It did indeed seem a little insensitive to air the students' fears to their peers; open for mockery.
All too soon, Jasmine stepped up to the mark, and it seemed as if the prior muggleborn girl's clown jack-in-the-box stared her in the eye before twisting to reform as a familiar woman.
The adult version of Hermione she had committed to memory in the Mirror of Erised stood before her in the flesh, but her face was twisted into a snarl of pure hatred and loathing, disgust seeping from her very pores.
"I know," the words dropped from the mockery's lips, and Jasmine's heart dropped into her stomach.
"Riddikulus," she all but yelled at the figure, watching as she turned to gleefully ripping a copy of Hogwarts: A History to shreds; the sight being so absurd as to make her give a small snort of laughter as she made way for Nadia.
Jasmine barely noticed the boggart reforming into the brunette's grandmother shouting down the girl as a 'Sorry excuse for a witch' before being suddenly garbed in a bright pink and yellow sundress, which looked quite odd on the old lady. She did pay a little more attention as in front of Hermione the creature became Professor McGonagall, yelling about expulsion until she was turned into a kitten playing with a ball of yarn.
The rest of the class passed quickly, before the Professor stepped in-front of the wardrobe, watching the boggart become a silvery disk before bursting and whizzing back into its container like a balloon, at which point he called the lesson done.
"Are you sure you don't want to talk about it?" Hermione whispered to the ravenette as she prepared to leave, having been quite anxious upon seeing the other girl's boggart.
"Maybe I'll tell you one day, but not today," Jasmine answered resolutely, watching as the bushy-haired girl left the room. The Ravenclaw, however, did not.
"Oh, hello there Miss Potter," Lupin said as he noticed she was still present, "was there something you needed?" She didn't comment on the fact he already knew her name, despite not calling on her during the lesson.
"I was wondering what you could tell me about Sirius Black, professor," the man froze like a deer caught in headlights, although his back was still to her.
"I don't know why you would ask me such a question," he replied after a moment.
"I know about the Marauders, sir."
"That…was a long time ago, Miss Potter."
"Not that long ago; you worked together as members of the Order, didn't you?" Lupin deflated, and finally turned to look at her with a drawn face.
"You are quite well informed," he eventually relented.
"Not as much as I would like to be," she answered firmly.
"I haven't seen Black in more than a decade," the Professor stated, "and as far as I'm concerned, the Sirius Black I knew died the day he betrayed Prongs and Lils to Voldemort." At that moment, he just looked tired, like a man who had lived longer than he really expected or wanted to, and carried many a burden. "Any information on Black I might have would clearly be useless, as I apparently did not know him at all."
"You can't think of anything that might help lead to his capture?"
"No," he replied, but Jasmine noticed the hesitation and slight tick as he blinked. He was lying, she was practically sure of it. However, prying now would do her no good.
"Alright, thank-you sir," she turned to walk away, already formulating how she could try and extract the information from him. He had something, and she needed to know what.
A/N: Calling it there I think. So much for moving quickly, I think most of this is filler, as I'm sort of rolling with what comes to me; my plans for Third Year basically amount to nothing. Anyway, I'd appreciate reviews to know whether people like where this is going - I am uncertain about several of the things I post.
