Welcome to a part two of The Twins AU.
Hogwarts, dungeons, 5:00 pm
"And remember your homework is reading chapters eight through ten along with a Twelve-inch essay on the property of Lacefly wings and their different uses in potions," came the sound of Professor Snape's monotone drone filtering through the classroom, "Dismissed," he says as looking over the class with battle black eyes and a sneer towards the Gryffindor side.
Harry, Ron, and Hermione quickly pick up their bags, and like the rest of the Gryffindors. Rushing out of the class in hopes of not getting caught in the potion professor's wrath.
"Wow, mate, I don't think I've ever seen Snape in that bad of a mood before," Ron says under his breath as the trio walks out of the classroom and Harry couldn't help but agree. Snape was in a foul mood all class, nip-picking and taking points for every single little thing that the Gryffindors did wrong, Harry being the biggest target of point loss like always.
As soon as they swept out of the class, Harry froze at who he saw, Jasmine in her silver jacket and leaning against the wall. It had been three days since the two twins met and Harry had found out he was a Demigod of all things(Which honestly made sense when he stopped and thought about all the horrid luck in his life) and about Artemis. Harry himself didn't know how to feel about any of it, he wanted to feel mad or jealous of his twin. That she had got a life free from the Dursleys, free from the cupboard, and free from the abuse that he faced at home; but he couldn't bring himself to feel anything like that. He also wanted to be happy for her for not having to suffer under the Durleys' "Tender Care"; For her actually being alive and Here with him. But he couldn't feel that fully either.
So, Harry has been doing the one thing he was good at doing, avoiding and ignoring any problems outside of Hogwarts. He either kept away from the trio of girls in silver jackets or ignored them as they talked around him. His sister had tried to get him to go on walks with her or talk but when they had tried the first time they found they didn't have a lot in common. While Jasmine was loud and in charge, Harry was quiet and very much wanted nothing to do with leading anything. Jasmine was upfront and always smiling, and Harry wanted nothing to do with most people, Jasmine was outgoing while Harry was not.
When they had met for lunch two days ago Harry had left as soon as the topic of where he was staying came up, and he hadn't accepted any more offers to do it again.
One of the older girls, the one with the hat, had tried to talk to him as well. She was a bit weird, always asking questions that Harry didn't want to answer. So he had made an excuse and left her on the grounds without looking back.
What Jasmine was doing outside of his last class for the day, he had no clue. But she soon spots him with a small smile before pushing off the wall and walking over to him, Ron, and Hermione.
"Do you have any idea how hard it is to track you down in this castle?" Jasmine asks as she walks up to Harry. "If it wasn't for the Deputy Headmistress I wouldn't have even known where to look for you, let alone find ya," she says with a grin as the students begin to part around them to avoid whatever drama that Potter had got caught in this year.
Harry, secretly cursing McGonagall in his head, shuffles his feet and looks anywhere but at his twin. "Um, Y-yeah, what- can I h-help you with-," Harry stutters and stumbles over his words. Not wanting to be rude and tell Jasmine to bugger off because he didn't know how to deal with her.
Jasmine looks at him oddly for a moment before speaking. "I was wondering if you wanted to have dinner with me, Atalanta, and Zoë. Maybe hang out for a bit if you're up for it," she offered Harry, who now felt ready to run from what was going to be a disaster he was sure. But luckily for Harry, a distraction comes along in the form of the most unlikely person, Draco Malfoy.
The snide tone of the rich pure blood ponce echoes over the conversation of the crowd of students as he santures up with Crabb and Goyle in tow. "Well, why doesn't this just warm your hearts, huh boys?" Draco says as he walks over with a smirk. "The Potter twins reunited at long last when everyone thought one was dead," he says, making Crabb and Goyle grin at the coming joke.
"Such a shame one turned out to be useless and the other even worse," Draco says before turning to Jasmine with a cruel smirk. "A squib. If I were you, I would have just stayed dead and spared my family the shame," he says looming over Jasmine who was now looking at them with a flat bored look on her face as the other two boys laugh at her.
Jasmine just quirks her brow. "Listen, buddy, I don't care to hear about how your mom feels every time she has to look you in the eyes. But I'm trying to talk to my brother here, so can you kindly fuck off?" She tells Draco whose face begins to turn red but before he can say anything else as he opens his mouth, Jasmine cuts him off. "And when you get to where ever you're fucking off to, could you fuck off from there as well?" she says before turning back to face Harry.
"Well?" Jasmine asks while looking at Harry hopefully.
"I-I have a lot of homework," Harry half mumbles as he shuffles his feet, not daring to look at Jasmine. "I need to get started on, so, …" Harry says not doubting that Hermione was giving him an odd look because she knew Harry hated doing homework. But before Jasmine could say another word, Draco had had enough and drew his wand and aimed it at Jasmine.
"Now listen here, you filthy little squid, I will not be talked to like that-" Draco begins to say but faster than most people could follow Jasmine reaches out and grabs his wrist before bending it at an odd angle. Draco cries out but Jasmine doesn't even turn to look at him like everyone else does and continues to talk to Harry.
"Come on Harry, forget the stupid homework for one night. Come hang out with me and the others, they've been wanting to get to know you as well," Jasmine tells Harry, who watches Jasmine twist Malfoy's wrist a bit more to make him drop his wand. Crabb and Golye look on confused, not knowing what to do for they knew not to hit a girl from how they were raised.
Harry didn't care if the other two girls wanted to get to know him, he didn't care that Jasmine wanted to hang out. He just wanted to be left alone and it seemed to him that no one wanted to respect that. As Malfoy struggles in Jasmine's grip, he tries to pull his hand out of her gasp but Jasmine just readjusts her grip and twists his arm behind his back. It was then that Pansy began to scream at Jasmine.
"What are you doing!? Let him go, you disgusting little squid!" Pansy yells before drawing her wand and the attention of most of the crowd who were watching with morbid fascination as Jasmine manhandles Malfoy easily.
"Harry, Please," Jasmine pleads with him, a haunting look of want in her eyes but as Harry opens his mouth to say something, the door to the classroom behind him slams open.
"What is going on out here!?" Demanded Snape, causing most of the crowd of students to start running. As Jasmine snaps her head to the Professor, Harry takes the opportunity to escape. Disappearing into the crowd of students dispersing at the wrath of the Potion Master of the school and by the time Jasmine looked back to him, Harry was already gone.
Jasmine Potter, Twenty Minutes later.
Jasmine sighs to herself as she steps out of the classroom. She has no idea whose crazy idea it was to hire an overgrown bat with an attitude problem but she thinks the Headmaster of the school should have some words with them. The man had pulled her into the classroom and proceeded to lay into her about proper respect as guests in the school. About how she was not to put her hands on the students going about their days and classes, blah, blah, blah. She had stopped listening to him halfway through his little speech until he yelled at her to leave.
Honestly, the guy was such a cunt.
Jasmine glowered and glared at anyone in her way as she walked through the dungeons, she was in a foul mood. Getting yelled at by someone wasn't all that big of a deal, someone was always yelling at her for doing something. From Monsters, she was hunting and killing, to Chiron at Camp Half-Blood for picking a fight with the Ares cabin, to Zoë when Atalanta and she played a prank on her. No, what turned her mood foul was her twin, Harry.
All her life she had been told two things, one: she was the daughter of Artemis and Heir to the Hunt, and two: she had a dead twin named Harry. Every year, as far back as she could remember on Halloween, she and Artemis would meet up and go to Prospect Cemetery. Sitting in a corner of the oldest Cemetery in New York City was a small marble headstone that read:
"This stone stands in memory of a family torn apart by war."
The Potter Family.
They were dead and she, by some miracle, had lived. Her father whose eyes she had died fighting for her, her mother, who she looked like, had died for her, and her brother, her twin, had taken a curse that could have hit her. Jasmine loved the hunt and she loved each of her sisters in it, even Zoë. But there has always been a hollow ache of wanting to know what you've never had in her and now all these years later she learned that Harry was alive. She wanted to get to know her sibling, her twin, but it seemed that he didn't want to get to know her.
And that hurt.
Not even Atalanta could get Harry to open up, and she was the most personable in the hunt when it came to guys. But getting Harry to hang out with them or eat dinner was like pulling teeth and it was starting to get to her if Jasmine was being honest. These thoughts bounced around in her head as her own will fight off the influence of the Hunt in her mind. Always looking for a way in, always looking for its next meal and it was for these reasons she never noticed the two kids in red and gold robes approach her until they were right next to her.
"Excuse me? Excuse me, Miss Potter?" A voice says as hurried footsteps echo behind the distracted hunter until she feels a hand grab her shoulder. Jasmine's training kicks in as the surprise gives way to quick movements as she grabs the offending arm and twists it before reaching for her knife. The only thing that stops her is the sudden wand in her face and a red-headed boy growling out at her.
"Don't even think about it," the boy says as he jams the wand into her throat.
"Ow-Ron, no, stop! It's fine!" the girl says with a wince as Jasmine twists her arm painfully.
Jasmine's eyes flick between the two as the girl continues to speak, "I'm sorry for grabbing you but we really need to talk to you, please, it's about Harry," the girl says quickly before Jasmine turns her full attention to the girl.
"Do you know where he went?" Jasmine asks quickly, fighting off the urge to demand answers from the two magical mortals in front of her.
The girl squirms a bit in her grasp as the boy doesn't remove his wand from her throat, "N-no, when Harry doesn't want to be found in Hogwarts it is a challenge to track him down," The girl lied, Jasmine could tell by the way her eyes shifted to the boy, Ron. "But I would like to have a proper conversation with you, so if you don't mind letting me go, please," the girl says before Jasmine growls a bit before releasing her.
"Thank you," the girl says before she takes a step back from Jasmine while rubbing her wrist and flexing her elbow. Ron removed his wand from her throat but didn't put it away as he narrowed his eyes at her. There was a flash of something behind his green eyes as if he were thinking of what Jasmine would do next and how he would stop her. But before either of them could do anything, the girl introduced herself. "I'm Hermione Granger," she tells Jasmine, waiting for some type of recognition from her but Jasmine just continues to glare at the girl.
After a moment, she continues. "And this is Ronald Weasley, we're Harry's friends, his best friends," Hermione says as she folds her hands in front of her and gives Jasmine her best smile, but still, Jasmine just glares back.
When Jasmine doesn't speak, Hermione continues, "We were wondering if we could speak to you for a moment, about something private that has to do with Harry," she inquires only to see Jasmine raise a brow at her with interest flickering in her eyes.
"Well, if you haven't noticed, he doesn't really talk to me," Jasmine says as she crosses her arms and continues to glare.
"Yes, well, that isn't as surprising as you might think. Harry isn't the most…social person," Hermione informs her with a pitched look as Ronald scuffs a bit at the understatement of his friend's words. "We were also wondering who you've been staying with all these years, and-and what they're like," the bushy-headed girl asks with an awkward tone.
Jasmine once more narrowed her eyes at the other two with a frown. "Why?" her question came out harsh and quick, full of protectiveness.
"Well-" Hermione says, stopping after a moment with her eye drifting around the corridor they found themselves in. She watches the lingering students coming and going from class and chatting with their own friends. Hermione turns to Ron and Jasmine can see how nervous the two are about something. Ron was giving Hermione a disapproving look, something that looked twisted and ugly on his round face before Hermione sighed and turned back to Jasmine.
"We think- well, no, we know Harry is having trouble at-at home. We don't know the specifics but we know that, that's it's bad," Hermione admits as Ron makes a sound halfway between disapproval and agreeing with Hermione. "And we were wondering if the person you've been staying with could help him," The girl asks, standing a bit straighter as she does. Jasmine's eyes flick between the two, her thoughts becoming even more erratic as she considers what the two were hinting at and why they would be asking her this. Because under all the disapproval and nervousness that the two friends were projecting, there was something else hidden underneath it all; desperation.
Jasmine relaxes a bit as her curiosity increases about what the two friends know about her brother. "What do you mean by trouble at home?" Jasmine asks as a pit begins to form in her stomach.
Zoë Nightshade, Hogwarts Library.
Zoë wasn't looking for the boy, when he had first shown he had no interest in getting to know either his sister in blood or sisters in the hunt she decided that she would respect it. The boy had gone his whole life believing he was the only survivor of what happened to Jasmine's mortal parents and had gotten used to the idea. For Jasmine to burst back into his life and expect him to jump for joy was, to Zoë, a foolish notion. But she also couldn't help but feel disappointed that she was right, she had hoped to have the twins get along and perhaps even take the boy out into the woods on the grounds to see if he shared any of Jasmine's natural skill with hunting.
So when Zoë found herself browsing the creature section of the Hogwarts library looking for anything good to read, she was surprised when she spotted the boy sitting by himself. He sat in an out-of-the-way section of the library with an open book in front of him and on one side he was trying to write with an old ink and quill on a piece of parchment. However, the boy's face was pinched in a look of pain and frustration as his eyes scanned the pages with a glazed-over look as if he wasn't truly seeing the words on the page. His shoulders were hunched and it looked as if he was trying to curl in on himself. The boy had a defeated air about him, as if he had given up on life and was simply going through the motions of life hoping to get whatever he was doing over with as fast as possible.
He lacked the grace and wildness that his twin had, taking on a more morose and quiet air about him. Like he had settled into the finality of his fate and did not wish to leave it, and seeing that, in some way, broke Zoë's heart. She had yet to speak to either Jasmine or her Lady about the signs that she and the fetish had seen in the little interactions they had with the boy, and she did not look forward to it. But as she watched the boy work on his schoolwork, she made a decision, and after grabbing a book at random she made her way over to Harry.
She slides out the chair right across from where the boy is sitting, the long sound echoing among the stacks of books and schools found in the library, and taking a seat. She opens her book, one about Wyverns, to the forward before she begins to quietly read. She could feel the boy slowly turn to look up at her with a confused look and questions floating in his sullen and sunken-looking emerald eyes, but still, Zoë kept reading.
It was only a few minutes after Zoë started reading and got past the introduction by some wizard by the name of Snodgrass that the boy spoke to her. "What are you doing?" he asks, to which Zoë turns to look at him with a raised brow.
"What does it look like?" Zoë asks in a flat voice with an unimpressed look on her face. "I am reading, it is what one does in a library," she states before turning back to her book and turning the page to find a beautiful wood press of interlocking Wyvern scales and a paragraph on the properties of the scales.
"I can see that," the boy snaps at her, "But why are you reading here? Why not go read at one of the other tables that are free of people?" the boy rudely asks, frowning and angry the whole time.
"Perhaps I wanted some silent company?" Zoë answers easily back as the boy fumes at her, much to her personal amusement.
"Maybe I just want to be left alone? Have you ever thought about that?" The boy snaps at her with a glare. Zoë fights against the smile threatening to crawl across her face for while Jasmine inherited the wildness and grace of her Lady, the boy seemed to inherited her temper.
"The thought has crossed my mind, yes," Zoë admits before turning the page. "But have you ever thought of how it hurts Jasmine?" she asks, causing the boy to freeze before looking away from Zoë. "Your sister has been carrying the thought that she had no one left for as long as she understood what those words meant, and longer still, has Lady Artemis. I can not put into words the joy both must have felt when they learned you lived, but now all you do is push them away," Zoë says, not looking up from her book but also not letting any judgment into her voice over it.
She continues to read as the boy sulks like a child and silently fumes before turning back to his schoolwork without another word. Trying to focus on something he knows how to do instead of her. Out of the corner of her eye, she watches as the boy reads from the book in front of him. Well, it's more like trying to read from the book, his eyes darted around the page too much to be reading it. He would lean in trying to focus on the words bringing his nose an inch away from the page before pulling back and rubbing his eyes.
"How long has it been since you got your prescription checked?" Zoë asks before turning the page of her book to the next chapter, she could practically hear the boy grind his teeth at her probing question.
"None of your business," the boy mutters under his breath before refocusing on the page.
"Hmm, you're probably right. It could be the dyslexia," Zoë states simply causing Harry to look at her confused.
"The what?" Harry asks, his face scrunching up as he tries to figure out what Zoë is talking about.
Zoë then turns from her book to look at him, "Dyslexia, it's something that is ingrained in all half-bloods thanks to the fact that your brain is hardwired for ancient greek. I'm sure if you find something written in it, you won't have trouble reading it. Were you never diagnosed?" she asks curiously and watches as the boy's lips press together into a thin line before he looks away. Zoë's eyes sweep over Harry, noticing he is smaller than his twin, thinner as well. She could see the sharpness of his cheekbones and the bones of his wrist protruding as if he had lost all the baby fat on him very early on in his life. His eyes were sunken into his face with deep bags under them from sleepless nights, he was hunched over with a tightness in his shoulders as if he was ready to run at a moment's notice.
"Did they hurt you?" and Zoë regretted asking the question as soon as it left her lips. The boy froze as his breathing became shallow and rapid, his eyes turned to her and she could see pain and anger and resentment in equal measure flash in haunted emerald eyes. The grip the boy has on his quill snaps it before he shuts his book with a slam before standing, knocking over his inkwell, and shoving the book into his bag before rushing out of the Library.
Zoë sighed before standing up and placing the book back in its place on the shelves. She was not looking forward to the conversations she would need to have with Jasmine and her Lady. For how the boy reacted to her question was all she needed to know what she and the fetish had suspected was correct.
Artemis, Hogwarts, one week later.
Artemis was not in the best of moods when she arrived at Hogwarts early in the morning hours. She had a long week and a half since finding out Harry was alive before interrogating the Headmaster of his school on how a seemingly dead baby to the eyes of a god was now a living, breathing boy. The headmaster's answers did nothing but bring up more questions than answers for her, but she had put them aside for now. She had a child to reclaim after all and she wasn't about to waste time trying to figure out a mystery she couldn't even begin to fathom.
Her to-do list was short but it required her to operate on mortal time which wasn't very conducive to her patience in this matter.
The first, and most time-consuming annoying thing was tracking down Sirius Black. She had found him hidden away in South America hiding among the mundane as a stray dog, he was half mad from his time spent in an icy hellhole with monsters for guards. She had dragged him back to America and called in a favor that Dionysus had owed her. While he could fix the mad dog's mind completely, he could help it along with its natural recovery. After that, she brought him before the DoMC in MCUSA to get asylum in the States while he recovered fully.
The DoMC was currently building a case to see the dog free from the international manhunt going on for him that's to the false imprisonment he had faced. Because if it was one thing the Magical Congress of the United States of America took seriously, it was infringing on what they saw as God-given rights. When Sirius Black was finally free, it was going to be nothing but a blessing for Artemis. For the last thirteen years, she had struggled with what to do with Jasmine when she wasn't with the hunt. For the first six years of her life with Artemis Jasmine grew up in an orphanage under the watchful eye of Artemis' mother, Leto. With Artemis visiting them as much as she could, but when Jasmine turned seven and the monsters started to endanger the other mortal children it was time to move her to Camp Half-Blood.
She was alone in cabin eight for most of the year with the hunt only showing up for one weekend at the end of the month. When Jasmine had turned ten Artemis started to take her with them on their hunts every six months or so. Jasmine loved her sisters in the hunt as her sisters loved her, and she had aspirations of joining the hunt when next there was an opening for her, but that could be many years away. Artemis would not force one of her hunters out for her daughter nor would she ever hope one of them would die so Jasmine could join. Jasmine, thankfully, understood this and has only brought it up once that she wanted to join and was told she had to wait.
The thing that frightened Artemis the most was when Jasmine turned twelve and chose to face the Oracle at Camp Half-Blood for a quest. It wasn't that Jasmine wanted a quest that scared Artemis, it was what the Oracle had said.
"We laugh in irony at the shadow, for you are your mother's child to the marrow; but this one waits till the full moon's gaze and for you to return with your other half,"
At first, Artemis had thought the Oracle had spoken of Jasmine falling in love, but now Artemis knew better. Her other half was Harry, the son who died.
It was because of Harry that she was even in this godless land, to begin with. His and Jasmine's names came out of some magical artifact and bound them both to some inane competition. The only good thing that had come from all of this was the discovery that Harry lived and now she was going to do something about it. The rest of her time away was spent on tracking down who was taking care of her son and to do that she had asked Johnathan Doe for his help. The man once again proved his value in finding out where the boy stayed and with whom in three days before arranging a meeting with Petunia Dursley and Artemis in London.
One short lunch and six signatures later, it was done, but now came the hardest part; something Artemis was sure Harry would be angry over. But it had to be done, Artemis wanted her children safe, she wanted them nearby and not halfway across the world. For that to happen she has to make one more stop at Ilvermorny in Massachusetts to ask another god for help. Artemis had very little knowledge about mortal magic and how it works, but Professor Mystra Trivia knew more about magic than most mortals could ever hope to.
The three of them made for an odd group. Artemis dressed in boots, jeans, a blouse, and a silver jacket with her dark hair done up in a high ponytail. Agent Doe with his dark gray suit and tie with his duster on. And Mystra, in a set of dark gray robes and black cloak with gold trim, looking like every bit of a ghost she could call upon. They climb the steps of the school quickly enough and are welcomed by three of the five people that Artemis had come to see this day. Albus Dumbledore, Cornelius Fudge, and her lieutenant, Zoë.
Both Zoë and Albus bow as they greet her warmly, though the Minister steps forward to shake her hand.
"Miss Phaesporia, a pleasure to meet you. I've heard a lot about you from Albus here, so sorry about how one of your hunters got caught in this mess," Fudge says as Artemis takes his hands and shakes it.
"That is what I've come to clear up today, Minister, along with a few other things," Artemis informs him before turning to the headmaster, who was looking at her with curiosity and a healthy dose of caution "Allow me to introduce you to Agent Johnathan Doe and Professor Mystra Trivia, they're here to help me clear all of this up," she says with a gesture to the two behind her.
"Don't worry, Miss Phaesporia, the tasks we came up with are perfectly safe. No harm will come to your hunter during their time here," Minister Fudge says in his most placating voice as Artemis looks at him blankly before speaking.
Artemis drops her hand before speaking. "I believe you have the reason for me being here confused," she tells the Minister, who turns to look at the Headmaster. "I am here to free both Jasmine and Harry from the contract forced upon them before taking my Hunters and Harry back to the States," Artemis informs the small group of now one smirking hunter and two shocked mortals.
This is posted to celebrate this story hitting 1000 follows.
Hope y'all enjoy it!
