30 May 1983
The Three-in-One, Knockturn Alley
After they sauntered back up the witch-steps and trundled back into the shop, Nimüe shuffled over to the counter where she set her things down and rifled through them. "Before anything else, girlie, the bonds must be reforged" She stated as she laid out the jam tarts in nice & neat rows of three, mindless of the crumbling pastry. "We'll need a blood sacrifice"
The way she spoke, it was as if one were talking about the weather and not ritualistic murder and Jean, who had joined her at her side to set the basket of flowers upon the counter, appeared to be completely unbothered by it. In fact, it was almost as if she were expecting it. Regulus balked at that and translucent, though he was, quickly placed himself in front of Kreacher in an effort to shield him from the old hag's line of sight.
Seeing this, Nimüe chuckled. "Not him, boy! He's not big enough"
"Kreacher is plenty big…!" Kreacher grumbled to himself as he fingered with the pillowcase that he was dressed in.
"Fine, then you're not the right fit for this ritual" Nimüe corrected herself.
"I'll go get one" Jean replied as she recalled the various scoundrels that loitered in the alley outside. "Is there a preference?"
Nimüe thought for a moment, lips pursed. "Make sure that it is someone that no one will miss. A wizard, perhaps? Maybe someone middle-aged? Or younger, school age, perhaps? Someone average—easy to miss in a crowd" She suggested, "Whatever the case, you'll know it when you find it"
"Right" Jean licked her lips, "I'll…be going then" She then turned to Regulus who remained hanging back amongst the stacks. "Do you…want to stay here or come with me?"
"Why?" Regulus asked, his brow furrowed in puzzlement. "Where are you going?"
Instead of answering, Jean simply ran her hands through her hair, the voluminous brown curls he'd come to know, giving way to soft blonde locks. Brown eyes brightened to harsh greys, losing some of that golden shine he'd see flicker inside the orbs and she physically shrank a few inches before his very eyes. It was a rather impressive feat of wandless & silent magic. Nimüe didn't bat an eye at the showcase, instead busying herself with the things on the counter, but Regulus was certainly impressed. Wandless and silent casting! From a muggleborn, no less!
"So?" Regulus persisted as he eyed up the now blonde-haired, grey-eyed child in front of him. "Where are you going?"
The Jean-who-wasn't-Jean looked Regulus dead in the eye and replied in one of the driest tones he had ever heard. "Fishing"
30 May 1983
Ottery St Catchpole, Devon
Stepping out of the public Floo in Ottery St Catchpole, Jean trotted down the trail towards the estate which held the Burrow as if she was without a care in the world. As she walked, she passed a gaggle of muggles in their blinding athleisure that was two sizes too small and their poor pet corgis who had been stuffed to the brim in a little red wagon, like sardines in a can. They were squished, but they seemed happy, nonetheless. The same could not be said for the morning walkers, who glared at Jean with open disparagement.
It was always the older ones who cared, Jean found. The ones who could intuit anything and everything from the slightest glance, no matter the current political climate or popular opinion. Usually gritting your teeth and ignoring them was the way to go; something that came easily to her thanks to years of practise with her schoolyard bullies.
But today a cold sweat had gathered itself at the base of her nape; the kind that made her shiver. They didn't know, She reminded herself. If I've had properly prepared myself, then NOBODY will. Paranoia, she had quickly discovered, was a worse feeling than guilt. And it didn't help matters that kept jumping at every loud noise; only guilty people—people who had things to hide—jumped at innocuous noises like that.
As for her disguise, Jean had hastily thrown this look together for a couple of reasons. One; she had gone for younger, so that Percy might actually engage with her, should the need arise. Two; she hoped to be overlooked by the muggles who populated the town, thanks to her apparent age. And three; she hoped that the mages of this area would mistake her fore a Lovegood relation or some wayward fae. These were fae-tainted fields, afterall, and it wasn't unusual for children to go missing out here.
It wasn't her best idea, she would admit, but it was all she had and, quite frankly, her thoughts were more focused on a certain troupe of red heads than anything else. She knew it would hurt, seeing them again, but she had a task to complete and she would not—could not—be swayed, no matter how much she wanted to relive the magic of the Burrow. Not this time.
Keeping that in mind, although a bonafide troupe of pixie-blooded redheads lived down this way, Jean only had one particular redhead in mind for this. Of course, there were certainly bigger fish to fry in this world, but most of them would've been conspicuous or hard to handle for a (transfigured) eleven year old. And, quite honestly, Jean had never really forgiven Percy for what he had done nor the grief he put them through.
Jean reasoned she was just tying up loose ends. Afterall, with Percy gone there would be no "Scabbers" in the Weasley household as there had been before. No Scabbers meant no Pettigrew at Hogwarts, and no Pettigrew at Hogwarts meant that Sirius wasn't going to go (back) to prison for crimes he didn't commit. He was just a means to an end, it was nothing personal, really. Lies, of course, but she told them to herself as she skipped down the path, nonetheless.
If Jean remembered rightly, from her summers at the Burrow and the few garbled stories that Ron told at dinnertime (around mouthfuls of half masticated food), then Percy was typically to be found out in the fields of wildflowers; hiding amongst the tall stalks with a good book until he was called home for dinner. Which was where she was headed right now, and there she hoped to find him. He would be all of seven years old by now; seven years old and free from the cages of his office. Sun-kissed skin that would be peppered with freckles and rosy red hair glinted in the sunlight; naming him a Weasley in looks alone.
And as she came around the bend, there he was settled upon the edges of the wildflower fields with an old book perched in his lap just as she hoped he would be. The book was more of a tome, really and it was almost as big as he was. Clearly, it was something that he'd taken from his father's personal stores (like all of the others) and scurried out here to read away from the twins' endless pranks and tomfoolery.
His head was bowed low over the pages and his locks were tousled in the breeze, but he kept on reading unawares of the Jane Austen picture he painted. One might've called him charming, in that boyish way that most countrymen were, but all that Jean saw was the nightmares of her past. Nightmares that were made all the more aching by a man who came crawling back on his knees only after his brother had left, walking arm-in-arm with Death. He was far too late and full of shame.
But there he was. There was Percival "Percy" Weasley—Percy Weasley who liked to come to work with his father in the Ministry of Magic, right up until he did. Percy Weasley who (unknowingly) sheltered a murderer for twelve long years. Percy Weasley who was a stickler for the rules even when they were to everyone's detriment.
Percy Weasley who turned his back on his family as fame & fortune called. Percy Weasley who sided with the wrong man right up until his brother's own untimely death. Percy Weasley who was never prosecuted for his war crimes, and walked free whilst others rotted in Azkaban. There was Percy Weasley, a child of seven years old with none of these sins currently marring his name, but colouring Jean with hate all the same.
You know, people often thought as the patented Teacher's Pet™, Jean would never even think about doing something so cold as irreparably hurting someone, let alone murdering them. But those very same people never actually knew Jean, not beyond a cursory glance. Afterall, if they did know her, then they'd know that she had nearly barbecued an entire cabin when she was the slap-happy age of eight years old.
She had set her teacher on fire when she was the bright & shiny age of eleven years old, kept a woman hostage in a jar for a year and various other smaller felonies that would've landed anyone else in prison. Or, at the very least, have her wand snapped and barred from obtaining another one. How did that muggle saying go? "Kidnapping was the gateway to murder?" or perhaps it was, "The difference between insanity and genius is measured only by the resulting success and failure"
As for Jean, herself, she had once thought herself incapable of murder but that was then and this is now; she knows better now. Because Jean was one that could've never been called stupidly naive in her lifetime—bullheaded & determined, sure—But naive? No siree! And that wasn't just something she'd learnt from her books (books that told of her the far, wide world and all the horrors within it), she'd also experienced some of those things too.
From warring with her deep-seeded fear of drowning, thanks to her own mother's repetitious exorcisms that had been forced on her as a child, to the slogging through the hell of burn-out at the ripe old of thirteen years old just because she had to be a perfectionist and take all of the electives in her third-year; even if it did result in her first tryst with time travel. From worrying herself to death over the fate of Harry, to battling for her life whilst trying to escape said fates.
There was the invasion of Hogwarts—both politically and rebelliously—the gruelling, thankless hunt for the horcruxes and the penultimate battle at the castle, where she had seen her peers lain out like little broken soldiers, lined up in neat rows of linen-covered corpses. Suffice to say, she had learnt quickly that simple and juvenile spells were only so if one did not succeed, or that quite literally anyone could cast a spell that resulted in an opponent falling badly. Bad enough to injure or maim, or even kill.
Jean summarised, that it must've been during her fight in the Battle of the Prophecy, in the Department of Mysteries in her fifth-year when it had finally sunk in. After taking a rather nasty and miscellaneous curse to the torso, courtesy of Dolohov, she'd responded in reflex like she was swatting at a fly. It was then, as she'd heard bones crack and break under the force of her spell that she'd finally come to understand that one day she might very well cause someone's death…if she hadn't (inadvertently) already. But that was not MURDER, Jean would argue.
Murder, she thought, True and honest, premeditated murder was prowling the streets of Ottery St Catchpole under the guise of a young girl as she planned to catch & slay one Percival Ignatius Weasley. Murder, she mused as she watched the unsuspecting redhead, was sitting in the Potter Manor with a snoozing kitten in her lap and planning when & how to take out the Dark Lord's soul. Murder, she utterly & honestly believed, was taking a life and REVELLING in the blood that shone so brightly red upon your hands.
To be honest, when Jean awoke that morning, she didn't think that she was going to be planning Percy Weasley's death. But in the days after the Battle of Hogwarts and all of the suffering that his caustic actions had put them through, it was certainly an entertaining possibility. She would admit to no one—not even herself—that her dreams had been filled to the brim with images of Percy's hands tinted red with Harry's blood and her mind screaming his name in blinding vicious fury. After the first one, she'd had to flood her bedroom with silencing spells 'least her roommates heard her yell the name of a (un)persecuted man.
Other days those very same dreams were filled with images of Ron who laid down at Percy's feet in her nightmares. On those days, other members of the Weasley family also featured—Fred, most prominently—with their bodies sprawled out across the ground and standing in the rear would be Percy fucking Weasley; his face expressionless and his hands stained in red.
Some days, though (the days she revelled in the most) when her nightmares turned dark and scary, it was Percy who lay at her feet and it was her own hands that were stained in his slick wet blood. On those days, she would wake with a distastefully wicked grin marring her lips and her hands would grip the bedsheets so tight, as she ripped into the boy who had stuck by his morals until it was too late to run. And, in doing so, he had made a bad situation, worse.
Occasionally in her dreams, she wasn't alone. In fact, sometimes there might even be someone else in her dreams too, just watching the carnage play out and cackling at the madness of it all. It might be one of the Three, her slew of friends, the darkest kneazle known to mankind, Death itself or even—once—a creepy man in a sharp business suit with teeth for eyes. He probably would've been a dentist's dream, with all of those pearly whites to charge for.
Jean often wondered, after waking up covered in cold sweat on either occasion, just what it was that the other witches of the Old Religion dreamed of. Over the course of their relationship, she had never even thought to ask. Though, she suspected that Merlin featured in Nimüe's dreams, for he was reportedly not as kind of a father after King Arthur's untimely demise.
As for the old crone, Cailleach? Jean could only presume that hers were filled with the screams of the Veil and all of the screeching souls that laid beyond its doorway. They all had their own triggers; ones that united them against common enemies and such. But this one was personal, and so Jean would be fishing alone (apparently luring in unsuspecting fellows was too much for the boy Death Eater).
With clinical detachment that she usually reserved for potion's class, Jean quietly wondered to herself as she stood there upon the crest, partially hidden by the tall wildflowers and blonde braids swaying in the breeze. She wondered if this—these thoughts & her laissez-faire attitude towards murder—was the Dark magicks taking root inside of her, just like a drunken Nott had warned her it would. Poisoning her thoughts and her dreams, pushing & stoking their hatred within her like a bubbling pot waiting to boil over until they finally exploded outwards in the most destructive way possible. If it was, Jean quietly apologised to the Slytherin, Then apologies, Nott, but there's no turning back now.