Beady eyes narrowed to slits and lips thinned into a line so slim that they could give a slip of paper a run for its money. "Well?" Regulus pursued.

"Um…" Jean blanked. Her palms suddenly felt very clammy and that translucent gaze felt very solid & heavy where it landed on her. She had no idea how to get out of this situation (nor how she had somehow wound up in it. Perhaps that Golden Trio Luck™ hadn't quite run its course, all these years later?).

On the one hand, here was a house-elf who knew her—the real her—what she'd done, what she'd become and who she really was. But on the other hand, here was a ghoulish wizard whose loyalties still remained unknown to her. Even in life, the youngest Black wizard had been predominantly Dark, until some unknown incident when he had had a rather dramatic change of heart; swapping from one side to the other, not too long before his untimely death (at least according to Sirius and Dumbledore). And, Jean would admit, she wasn't exactly up to date with the abilities of the nether world, which might sway one's opinion.

Could the dead still perform spells like their living counterparts could? They could certainly pick up and interact with things (as evident by Peeves' numerous antics over the years) and they could consume the rotten produce that most people discarded in favour of fresher things (a grainy memory from her first year at Saint Nicholas' deathday party tingled in the back of Jean's mind, behind the fuzz of more important things). So, it wasn't exactly out of the realm of impossibility for them to perform such feats; even if Jean still hard a hard time imagining it that way. (Would they be Masters of the wandless magic, like house-elves? Or would they have to die with their wands on their person, to wield them beyond the grave?)

"Fine" Regulus huffed when he received no more than a startled, wide-eyed expression from the blank-faced witch. Instead, he turned to his ever-loyal house-elf for answers that he knew he could reap from him. Dead or not, Kreacher would always be his elf (as Jean and Harry could attest to). "Kreacher? Would you like to tell me?"

Kreacher, predictably, preened at the attention. His chest puffed up and his expression turned smug as he prepared to answer, taking rather petty pleasure in the way the witch's expression seemed to drop further. "Well—"

"—Kreacher, wait—!" Jean reached out as if to physically stop the house-elf from answering, but it was too late.

"—The Mudblood comes from beyond and—"

"—Beyond?"

"Before"

"Before…?"

"The Mudblood comes from a time before this one"

"Time…? Before…?" Regulus' puzzled, brows furrowed as he tried to figure out his elf's cryptic words.

Jean could see the moment that it registered in the ghost's mind; his expression stretched—practically in slow motion—with the metaphorical lightbulb igniting above his crown. Translucent eyes blew impossibly wide until they looked like a pair of golfballs stuck inside their sockets, and then shock painted his face in a shade, that had he not already been dead, would've of been considered concerning. His waterlogged lips dropped open into a gaping maw that revealed a couple rows of pearly white teeth and his jaw seemed to swing unconnected to the rest of his face. It was uneery. It reminded her, that he was in fact, dead.

Not that she hadn't noticed that particular notion before, I mean, the guy was translucent and as he sat there, perched on the outcropping schist, he was haloed by the morning sun. Waterlogged by the cause of his death, the boy languished on the rocks like a seal in the sun with feet propped up just so and dark eyes that were hooded by a head of locks that was swept to the side in waves, almost mimicking the drenched appearance that he wore like a shroud. He looked no older than the day he'd died, well, of course he wouldn't have aged, since he'd y'know, died. You don't typically age after your life stops.

"Before…?" Regulus mumbled in disbelief, eyes darting back and forth between the elf and the witch. "You…you're a time traveler?!"

"The Mudblood, the Blood Traitor and Master Harry foolishly decided to hunt down the Snake One's tools, just as Master Regulus had done" Kreacher explained. "Kreacher still thinks that the Mudblood is a fool for trying to do it again"

"…Tattletale" Jean huffed as she slumped back against the rock she sat on, all but admitting the truth in the process. She spared the house-elf a well-deserved stinkeye, but annoyingly, Kreacher seemed unbothered by the remark.

"Master Harry…?" Regulus seemed to be stuck on the lesser important things that had been revealed to him. "Sirius had a son?"

"Godson"

"Oh. Oh"

"Yeah…"

Regulus folded in on himself, languish legs coming up to press themselves up agains this chest as he tried to sort through everything that had just been thrown at him. So the witch was apparently a time traveler—something which neither his house-elf nor the witch denied—and had already successfully destroyed the horcruxes (as in plural) once before. Yet, she was here and planning to do all of that again? It was mad! And it was something that begged several more questions than it answered. "Two questions"

"Hm?" Jean hummed quietly, looking both wary and curious as to what he was about to say.

"One; you know how to defeat a horcrux? Successfully?"

Jean hesitated for a moment, before she replied. "…If I said 'yes' would you believe me?"

Regulus then turned to his house-elf for confirmation. "Kreacher?"

("So, that's a 'noooooo…"Jean murmured in the background).

"The Mudblood, Master Harry and the Blood traitor destroyed the Snake One's seven evil tools. But Kreacher still thinks it is a fool's errand"

"Okay, okay, okay. Uh, second question: If it worked—if you're telling the truth and you successfully destroyed all of the horcruxes—why're you back here? Why'd you come back in time?" (Why couldn't you stop me from dying?)

"The Mudblood thinks that she can do it better" Kreacher happily supplied.

"Yes, thank you, Kreacher" Jean bit out.

"How much better can you make it? You'd won! He was mortal! Surely that was enough?"

"Ah-ha…" Jean huffed a sheepish chuckle, "I guess you could say I'm a bit of a, uh, perfectionist"

"…Ravenclaw?" Regulus guessed, trying to place both her and her attributes into a system that he understood well enough.

"Nah uh" Jean shook her head, a fond smile on her lips when she thought about how the Sorting Hat had almost placed her in the bookish house.

"Gryffindor?" He tried again, because honestly? She didn't particularly seem like a Hufflepuff and being muggleborn, there was no way she'd be a Slytherin.

"Mmhm"

"…That explains so much" Mostly, that the witch had easily wandered in to a cavern stinking of dark magic, seemingly without a care in the world.

"Hey!" Jean wore a look of affront. "I'll have you know, that I have it on good authority that if I weren't a muggleborn, I'd have made a good snake!" Mostly, from the few serpentine classmates who had survived the war; a certain blonde with a crooked nose, coming to mind first.

"Really?" The ghost quirked a skeptical brow in her direction.

"Uh…" Jean quickly sobered, "I've done a…few things…that would suggest as such"

"Such as?" He pursued, interested in this little nugget of information that sounded less heavy than the rest of stuff thrown at him.

"Mostly…uh, taking wholehearted advantage of being the teacher's pet" Jean admitted sheepishly, "More than once"

"Hmm"

Regulus sat back on his haunches as he eyed up with the witch (that was now currently glaring at his house-elf like that would do anything) with a new gaze, this one tainted by the fact that he now knew her to be a time traveller. Jean seemed to be quite candid (if a little sheepish) about the whole time traveller-slash-horcrux-destroyer-thing; like that was just another normal Sunday for her. But as far as Regulus knew, time-related magicks was strictly regulated to the Unspeakables in the Department of Mysteries, in the Ministry of Magic.

And there was no way a young witch like herself—a muggleborn, no less—had access to that kind of magic. Not even the Dark Lord, himself, had been able to get his hands on one of those infernal devices and he had infiltrated the Ministry and waged a war. The only one had gotten even remotely close to that department, was Thaddeus Nott who had cornered an Unspeakable from that department. And even then, all he had been able to worm out was a few sparse details before the Unspeakable Curse had taken ahold. Something about blood contracts and eldritch terrors?

In any case, for this witch to speak so candidly about something as complicated as time travel was…unnerving. (Had she done something like this before?) It was a well-known fact (at least to those interested in the field), that time-related magic was as unstable as a two-legged chair and even the smallest upset could cause the biggest destruction. Like that Victorian witch who got trapped in the past, Madam Eloise Mintumble. She had barely in 1402 for just under a week, and just over twenty-five familial lines were irreparably damaged, or just plain, destroyed. Not mention, when she was extracted from that timeline and brought back to the present, she aged all five hundred years overnight and died in her hospital bed.

So, aside from the serious breaches in the temporal laws that usually resulted in such catastrophic events, there were a thousand and one different paradoxes that could arise from such a craft—the muggles had certainly named a few, even if it was only a fantastical idea for them. From the Unbirthing Paradox (where, a witch/wizard could end up killing their past/future selves by mistake or unbirthing an important figure in history), to the Dark Lord/Lady Paradox (where, if you decided to go back with a time turner and kill a Dark Lord/Lady, then whose to say something worse wouldn't show up in its place?), which made it imperative for the Unspeakables to practise such discretion and operate only within the bowel of the Department of Mysteries, lest they do irreparable harm to the timeline. And even then, those Unspeakables were allegedly entangled in so much red tape, that it made it hard for them to even travel about in more than five hours within the temporal plane.

See, time magic wasn't exactly Herbology, there were rules; you couldn't just make things up as you went and it baffled Regulus to see someone so blasé about such a fact. Nevermind the horcrux thing (because that was a whole other can of worms), this witch had the audacity to sit here, look him in the face and just spout off the fact that she was a time traveller without so much as a how-do-you-do? Well, suffice to say, Regulus was freaking out a little bit. It must've been the muggle-upbringing, he thought, because HOW else could one be so laissez-faire about something like this?! It was baffling, to say the least.

And so, holding tight to what little dignity he had left, Regulus drew himself up to his fullest height upon that rock, puffed up his chest and went. "Prove it"

"Huh?" Jean blinked, caught off-guard by the sudden command.

"You say that you're a time traveller, you say that you know how to destroy a horcrux" Regulus expanded, "So, prove it"

"I…I…" Jean stammered as she tried to collect herself. It took a moment, but then she was back to that old know-it-all visage—the teacher's pet—that she'd sometimes wear like an old cloak. It was comfortable, familiar. "I can't do it here because we're too close to the muggles, and there's a shit ton of complications that can—and probably will—arise. But I know a place that could work"

"Take us there" It wasn't a request.

Setting her shoulders back in determination, Jean turned to the house-elf sitting on the sidelines. "Kreacher? Can you take us to Knockturn Alley?"

Kreacher appeared affronted by the request. Not at the notion of apparating both (dead) master and witch, but because of who—or what—she was. "Kreacher is not touching the Mudblood!"

"I s'pose I could always ask Dobby" Jean hummed aloud, as if the thought had only just occurred to her. "But, oh! Wouldn't he still be contracted to the Malfoys at this point?"

Jean turned to Regulus for support, quietly asking the ghost to back her up in this effort. She knew that she was going to have to destroy the horcrux sooner or later, and this was the perfect opportunity to do so. As she'd said, she didn't know if spirits could perform spells in the same way as their living counterparts could, which was why she had suggested going to Knockturn Alley. There was this little hole-in-the-wall place in mind, The Three-in-One, where a certain hag lay waiting. Horcruxes always fought back, no matter how strong or how dark the binding curse was, which was why they were going to go there (she only hoped that she could get back to Kiniman before the Potters caught her).

Regulus, who truly seemed to want to see if Jean was worth her weight in galleons, nodded succinctly and took up one of Kreacher's hands in his own. He nodded again, motioning for Jean to do the same on the other side, which she did and then he turned to the pouting elf between them. "Kreacher, take us to Knockturn Alley"

"Tis a fool's errand, it is…" Kreacher grumbled to himself, but did as he was told. And so with much preamble, Regulus, bound by the golden locket around Kreacher's neck (the one in which he had risked so much for), and Jean, bound by the weathered hand wrapped around her own, disappeared from The Cave with a loud crack ripping through the morning air.