Hello, I'm back again. So we have now arrived at the gossip part of the story. How quick do we think it would take a boarding magical school, to tell the gossip? My guess is very quick! :)

Chapter 11

'So she's a muggle?!'

'Are you sure, that seems very far-fetched?'

'I'm telling you she told us, it came from her!'

'I bet she's something to do with Dumbledore, that's why he'd have her teaching here even though she's not magical.'

'Maybe she's his daughter?!'

'The greatest wizard since Merlin, has a non-magical daughter?! Yeah right.'

'It could happen!'

'If she is Dumbledore's daughter, I wonder who her mother is.'

'I bet it's McGonagall!'

Jenny couldn't help but laugh to herself at the last piece of gossip she heard. She had only told her class she wasn't magical that morning, and yet already the gossip had spread around the entire school, from the youngest students to the oldest. The looks she got as she wandered around the castle were hilarious. Remus had given her a map he and the other Marauders had made in their school years, and he'd charmed it to open at her touch. Jenny couldn't have been anymore grateful, not only did it help her find her way around the castle, it also told her where everyone was at any given time. It was around lunch time and Jenny had made her way to the great hall, when she heard all the gossip. She had wondered how long it would take for her non-magical status to get around the school.

'Quicker than I thought.' She mumbled to herself. Jenny had a bet with herself that it would take at least a day for her status to get around, but she hadn't thought that anyone would think that she was related to the staff, well apart from Lily, but that still had to be confirmed.

She slipped into the Great Hall for lunch and hundreds of students stopped and stared at her. Jenny smiled and slipped into a seat next to Minerva.

"You seem to have a captive audience." The older woman chuckled.

"I did wonder how long it would take for me to become the latest piece of gossip. Have you heard any of the rumours?" Minerva chuckled again.

"Oh yes. Some of them are quiet good my dear." Now it was Jenny's turn to laugh.

"I bet I can top your best one." She whispered. Minerva gave her a funny look.

"You're on. Let me have a think." The older woman smiled. "There have been the odd few about you being related to members of staff, I think the one about you being Severus's sister was quite a good one."

"Still not as good as mine." Jenny smirked.

"Ok, how about the rumour that you are actually a ministry spy, who is here to check on the teachers?" Jenny thought for a minute.

"Good, but still not as good as mine."

"Well this I have to hear." Poppy Pomfrey commented from the other seat next to Minerva.

"Have you heard any good rumours then?" Minerva asked one of her oldest friends.

"Well I heard one about you being a vampire my dear." Poppy said with another chuckle.

"A vampire? I know I don't know much about magic yet, but don't they have problems with being out and about in the day time?!" Jenny said sarcastically. Minerva and Poppy burst into fits of laughter. Some of the other staff members looked at the women with funny expressions. Tonks and Alice who were sitting a little way from Jenny turned their heads.

"What's so funny?" Tonks asked.

"Just discussing some of the rumour about me so far." Jenny informed them.

"Oh they are good." Alice said. The others stared at her. "Well they are, and some of them are very funny." She admitted.

"Heard any good ones?" Poppy asked. Alice and Tonks thought for a minute.

"Well there was that one about you being a ghost?" Tonks said after a while.

"A Ghost!" Jenny, Minerva and Poppy gasped together.

"So you hadn't heard that one then?!" Tonks smiled.

"Or" Alice piped in. "I heard one about you being a decedent of Merlin."

"Typical," Jenny said "I tell the students I have no magic, and they all think I'm lying." The women began to chuckle.

"So what was this rumour you heard Jenny?" Poppy asked. Jenny smiled a huge smile.

"Apparently I am the non-magical daughter of Headmaster Albus Dumbledore and his Deputy Minerva McGonagall."

The women were silent for a minute, before they burst into laughter. Tonks and Poppy actually had tears pouring down their faces, Minerva was laughing so hard she thought she was going to have to excuse herself to sort herself out. Jenny and Alice were trying to hold in the laugher, but both failed miserably. The students just stared at the staff table where currently five of the staff were wetting themselves laughing, including Professor McGonagall, who had the honour of holding the title of 'Humour killer' amongst the students, as none of them had ever heard her laugh.

"Oh that's so good." Tonks gasped in between the tears.

"How did they get to that?" Poppy asked.

"Apparently I have to be related to Dumbledore since he hired me knowing I didn't have magic. How they connected you Minerva, I have no idea."

"Maybe Minerva has something she needs to tell us?!" Poppy said with a huge smile at her old friend. Minerva scowled at her through the laughter.

"Very funny Poppy."

"What's that then?" Dumbledore asked taking the other seat between Jenny and Alice. The women looked at each other again before bursting out laughing again.

"Just discussing the rumours about Jennifer." Poppy said through the laughter.

"Ah yes I have heard some of those." He said with a twinkle in his eye.

"Have you heard the one about Jenny being yours and Minerva's daughter?" Poppy asked him. The look on his face was enough to send the women into hysterics again.

About 2 weeks later after the rumours had died down a little, Jenny was on her way to Dumbledore's office. She had been thinking lately about how she could jog her memory. If there was anything in her mind about Hogwarts and its occupants, she wanted to remember them. She had come to the conclusion that maybe she needed to be more involved with the other members of staff; and her plan was to ask Dumbledore if she could sit in on some of the other lessons, to try and get a feel for what her life could have been like if she was Rachel. Jenny still had doubts in the back of her mind; yes the timing all fit, and she did feel at home in the castle like she had spent an enormous amount of time there, but something in the back of her memories, told her something wasn't what it seemed. She knew about Rachel's relationships with most the staff her own age. She knew that Lily was Rachel's twin, and the others were considered as close to family as they could get. She also knew that Severus and Rachel had been a couple when she disappeared, she'd wormed that out of Minerva a few days after she arrived; since Severus wouldn't talk to her she thought she'd find out why. Jenny understood that Severus still held a candle for his old girlfriend, Minerva had told her he hadn't dated anyone since or before for that matter, and Jenny thought it was sweet that he wouldn't move on with his life till he knew Rachel was ok; even she didn't want to see him anymore.

As she rounded a corner, the man who was occupying her thoughts appeared in the corridor she now stood in. Jenny stopped and Severus spotted her, he stopped as well. Jenny took a deep breath and made the first move towards him. It was late in the afternoon and most of the students were in their common rooms, a few were dotted around the castle, but the corridor Jenny and Severus were in was deserted.

"Hello." Jenny said out of politeness. Since arriving at the castle she and Severus had barely spoken two words to each other, not through lack of trying on Jenny's part. Severus normally answered her with a grunt and walked off in the opposite direction, this time Jenny wasn't going to let him. The man grunted as normal and tried to walk past her.

"This is silly." She said grabbing hold of his arm. Severus instantly turned to face her, his obsidian eyes glaring at hers. Jenny held her ground, but she understood why most of the students were scared of him.

"You and I are working together, we should at least be civil towards each other." Severus continued to stare.

"And you can do that all you want, I'm not giving up." He was taken aback by her words. No-one had ever dared to stand up to him before, well apart from his friends. The glare he was giving Jenny was reserved only for his students, and normally it made them run off screaming, not Jenny.

"Will you let go of my arm?" He asked in a monotone voice.

"I think that's the most you've ever said to me." She said in her normal cheerful tone. "Severus, why do you hate me? I know about your relationship with Rachel." A flash of sadness was evident over his face. "And I don't want us to fight, I want us to be friends." She said letting go of his arm.

"Why?" He asked, not moving away. 'Good.' Jenny thought, 'At least he's talking to me.'

"Why not? I don't want to be a source of pain for you, for any of you. I can guess how much it's going to hurt if I turn out to be someone else, you're not only one who's lost someone. I don't know anything about myself. I don't know if I have a family out there looking for me, if I have a partner, siblings, friends." She trailed off. "You know Rachel, you have memories. Me? I don't have anything. All I know is Jenny Matthews, and I want to know more." The pair were silent for a while.

"I don't hate you." Severus finally admitted. Jenny looked up. "You asked me why I hated you, and I don't. It's just you brought back memories I hadn't thought of for a long time." He said in a whisper.

"I get it." Jenny smiled comfortingly. Severus looked at her.

"It's just, you're so much like her. Not just in the way you look, but your personality, the way you act, the way you sound when you speak, you even have the same little noise you make when you laugh. You could be her, and it hurts." He admitted finally breaking down and having tears form in his eyes. Jenny sighed and pulled the man into a hug. Surprisingly for Jenny, Severus didn't pull away; he instead pulled her closer and tighter.

"I miss her so much." He sobbed into her shoulder.

"I know you do." Jenny said rubbing a hand over his back as the man cried.

"Having you here, it makes me think about if I could have done something to stop her." Severus admitted to Jenny. She pulled him out of the embrace.

"Don't think like that. Trust me thinking like that leads to a path that you don't want to go down. Minerva said she disappeared in the middle of the night, how could you know what was going to happen?"

"Because I saw it!" Severus shouted. Jenny's eyes widened.

"You saw her?" She questioned in disbelief.

"Yes, no, sort of."

"You're going to have to explain Severus." He sighed.

"I saw her being attacked." Jenny's eyes got wider. "I thought it was a dream, a nightmare, when I woke I just wanted to see her, to reassure myself she was ok." He admitted leaving out the bit about how his soul mark had faded when he awoke. "When the girls came down and Rachel wasn't with them, I knew my dream was real. I knew she was hurt, quite possibly dead." He said still crying.

"How could you tell, all you saw was her being attacked, people are attacked all the time and they survive." Jenny tried to reassure him.

"I recognised the spell she was hit with." He said. "It was the killing curse. No-one has ever survived that."

"Maybe she could be the first?" Jenny said quietly. Her mind was racing, if Rachel had been hit by a killing curse, why did everyone think she was Rachel? Suddenly it clicked in her mind.

"You never told anyone what you saw did you?" Jenny realised. Severus shook his head.

"They knew I had a bad dream about her, but I never told anyone what I saw. All I said was I saw Rachel walking away from the castle. I couldn't tell them, how could I? Her parents arrived and her older sister, how could I tell them that I thought she was dead?" He said. "That's why I helped them look, I hoped and prayed I was wrong. But we never found anything. Until you came along." Severus turned to look Jenny square in the eyes again. Jenny found herself staring into those deep obsidian eyes, but seeing nothing but regret and a scared young man.

"When you arrived, everything seemed to be better. I thought I was wrong, that you'd finally come home."

"What's to say she hasn't? I don't know if I am Rachel, but I sure as hell am gonna find out." By now Jenny was crying too. "And even if I'm not, I'm gonna help you find her." Severus looked at Jenny with a confused expression. Jenny smiled.

"I can help, get a fresh pair of eyes to look at everything. I might think of something you haven't."
"We thought of everything."

"Well, if your dream was right and Rachel was hurt, surely she'd seek medical attention?" Jenny said like it was the most obvious think in the world.

"None of the magical hospitals in Britain had anyone matching her description admitted." Severus argued.

"What about the non-magical hospitals?" Jenny pleaded. "If she was like me, and she found herself somewhere she didn't know, or if someone found her unconscious, they would have taken her to the nearest hospital magical or not." Jenny said. Severus looked at her.

"You're right." He said with a smile.

"So she could have gone to another hospital and you wouldn't have known because you wouldn't have been looking for her there." Jenny smiled. Severus could have kissed her.

"You're right, I never thought about that."

"Well then, go find her." She told him. Severus beamed and hugged Jenny again before running back towards his quarters.

Jenny laughed and continued towards the headmaster's officer. She felt like she'd finally got through to Severus and maybe, just maybe, they could start to build a friendship.

And there we go. A lot of people have been saying they hope Jenny will get her memories back soon, but I am afraid to announce it will be a while before she can remember everything about herself, otherwise I'm gonna need to rewrite my plan for this story. But she will remember, it's just gonna take a while.

So I hope your all having a lovely summer, even if the sun isn't shining and it's pouring down with rain, but hey that's England for you. A quick update on my other planned stories, I have mentioned about a secret NCIS story, well I am pleased to announce it is finished, and I am in the process of writing it up and correcting any mistake, as for my HP/NCIS crossover, I have it planned and the first chapter is written, so it is all a good at the moment, and trying to find the time to write about 3 different stories is a bit of a problem, but hey I love a challenge.

So as normal please read and review, I love hearing from you, and if anyone has any questions please feel free to ask, I will try to answer them in the best way possible.

Hugs and cookies to everyone, speak soon.

Beth xx