30 May 1983
Eastbourne Beach, East Sussex

Meanwhile back with the children, Jean had taken a little detour from her presumed destination of school, after calling in "sick" once the Potter parents had left to do God-knows-what. Instead, she'd headed a little further inland, down towards the eastern end of England where one of the horcruxes (supposedly) lay. Two wondrous years had passed with her in the past, but yet she'd done nothing but lay in bed and learn. Yes, those years had been spent recovering from the "trip" but that didn't make things any easier. In fact, it was a miracle that she'd been able to manage the few things that she had done, at all.

Okay, sure, the Dursleys were broken up and yes, the Potters were safe, back in Potter Manor, away from the grimy clutches of Dumbledore. But there was still the horcruxes to deal with; the entire reason that she'd come back at all! Well…not the entire reason, but her point still stood! Whilst she'd been moping about for two-ish years, those horcruxes had been building up dust in their little hidey holes, keeping Tom Riddle alive faaaar longer than he should've been! He should've been looong gone by 1983 and part of Jean knew that was her fault since the Potters hadn't been in the cottage when he'd arrived. And who knows if he'd even made any more? She shuddered to think if more had been made since then, but tried to focus on her current goal.

C'me on, Granger! Focus! Jean slapped her cheeks, as her thoughts drifted onto other, lighter, things. Life in the past is sooo strange. She mused as she watched the early morning swimmers jump in and out of the waves, goosebumps decorating their skin. And it was, but it was made only marginally better by the fact that her rehabilitation—both magical & muggle—had dwindled done until she was now happily up & about, nearly back to normal.

She was even attending the local muggle school on the island; the one that was dedicated mostly to primary school students and the first couple of years of intermediary. And the one that was only a hop, skip and a jump away from the pre-school that Harry & Dudley attended. Jean didn't hate it like she had done in the time before last, but she didn't love it either. Not the way she had loved attending Hogwarts School of Witchcraft & Wizardry.

And whilst there was nothing that she loved more than sitting, curled up in a cozy corner with a good book and a cup of steaming tea—something made infinitely better with the gentle pitter-patter of rain against the window—it felt like she had finally rediscovered a piece of herself when the magical side of that rehabilitation reared its ugly head. It was like scratching at that phantom itch after so long and relishing in the relief that it brought; like filling in a hole that she didn't know had been there.

Lily had urged her time & time again to go slow with the magical part of her recovery, but Jean hadn't listen; in fact, she almost seemed to devour those (text)books with a fervour that was almost delirious. Which had led to where she was right…well, not right now. Right now she found herself kicking at the lapping waves as she wandered aimlessly through the water's edge; the cool waters kissing at her ankles as she moved.

When she'd first awoken, it had barely been a handful of months before she had more or less thrown herself into relearning and reacclimatising herself with her own magicks including some of the darker stuff that she had been reluctant to touch before. Although that was more thanks to her newly furbished connection/fascination to the Old Religion and as such, she found herself practising other such arts under the safety of the stars, warded behind precariously constructed spells & a blanket over her head. Like that would help.

Jean had tried to take it slow in the beginning—honest!—but her resolve had crumpled like a wet rag almost as soon as she had gotten ahold of that first book (the Standard Book of Spells, if she remembered, rightly). Devouring text after text, she was almost chomping at the bit to get more—to know more—to practise again. And practise, she had.

Admittedly, she had started out with the first-year stuff (it was just about the only compromise that she had come up with, when adhering to Lily's warnings), but it hadn't taken very long after that for her to move on & up through the years, and before she knew it, she was using the sprawling Potter lans to practise her apparation away from prying eyes.

Going further and further afield (leaving behind her cane more & more until she no longer needed it anymore) until she could reach sites farther from reach and further from sight. Until she finally found herself hopping back and forth, from one end of the isle(s) to the other without much hassle. Destination, determination and deliberation, indeed.

In fact, today had been the very first time that she had even tried to go further abroad than the little Scottish islet(s) without the use of the Floo. Jean had chosen to test this particular stretch of apparation under the cover of morning dew when she was supposed to be in school. Jean abhorred having to get up so damn early—getting up even before toddler feet could thunder throughout the house or even before kneazle paws could knead bread into the warm spot left behind—but it was necessary if she wanted to get her practise in before watchful eyes could stop her. The excuse of (skipping) school was a good reason too.

Now admittedly, it had taken her a few tries to get it right and even then, Jean had still landed a little too close to the water's edge for her liking (no one liked wet socks), but it was progress, nonetheless. It was progress that she took great pride in; particularly considering how quickly she had recovered from such an arduous ritual (two-ish years may have seemed like a long time to some, but people had taken far longer to recover from such things, if they ever had at all). And it seemed almost like a miracle that her magic had interwoven itself so carefully—so intricately—with the hellish magicks of the eldritch beast which had hitched a ride inside of her.

She was only apparating now, but before she'd know it, she'd be romping back & forth through the Scottish undergrowth in her animagus half (transformed, once more, by the eldritch creature). Not that she regretted it, of course, for what she had to do she would take anything—do anything—to get the outcome she desired. And in that way, she wasn't too far removed from Riddle, himself (of course, the Dark Lord had destroyed his life before it had even begun. Trashing any hopes of immortality before even reaching his first century. Idiot) or any other mage of that calibre. Their methods were different, but the outcomes were more or less the same.

Back in the day, one might find power like this by signing their name—their identity & soul—away in one of the grimoires of the Old way. Blood pricked from fingers and smeared across yellowed pages; names upon names written down in dark ledgers as you pledged yourself to a coven. Or perhaps, you might pledge yourself to a dark creature of Hell (a demon, perhaps?) just as many a-mage had done in the past. Siphoning power from the darkest of creatures that bound you by soul contracts and let you feed upon more than just their magicks, until your dying day and even then.

You might study old texts and follow old laws, or maybe you would pledge yourself to Dark Lords & Ladies as was popular in her time, hoping that their power would flow unto you and offer you protection, as well as power & influence. But very few—brace or stupid—people would do what Jean had done; hosting one of the Old Religion within you, so that you might travel in the footsteps of those before you. To give more than everything you are—everything you have—over to the Old ways; to the Fated Three, to the Mother, to the Maiden and the Crone.

But Jean had done just that, not out of love or the thirst of knowledge & power (although, an undertone of that may have of been there, hidden behind pretty lies and prettier words), no she had done it simply because she could. Because it was the most reliable way to overcome her obstacles, to achieve her goals in a way that this new modern Light magic could not. There was a reason that the Old Religion had persisted for more than a few millennia; there was a reason that the Old Religion was so reliable, because it was all about balance.

You had to give just as much as you took; which was something that these new modern magicks—both Light & Dark—no longer felt the need to do. Which is why they were so much weaker than the older ones and why Merlin was so revered as he was. Not because he was such a brilliant warlock (although, he was that as well), but because he dallied in the Old magicks and performed feats that today's magical folk could only dream of. That was why jean had turned to the Old Religion, to Lady Nimüe, to Morgana Le Fay, to Circe and Hecate; to all the witches who came before.

Because, Jean had reasoned at the time, to defeat a monster, you had become one, yourself.

Aimlessly wandering along the shoreline, Jean's arms swung idly at her side with bare feet barely lifting from the waves as they dragged themselves through the cool waters with a sort of languished ease despite the serious intent of her "day-out" Regardless of the fact that she had had to get up so goddamn early that morning, she had to admit that it was nice like this, having the beach more or less to herself as she let her feet take her down towards the caves at the end of the coast.

With her trusty little bag (in which she had stuffed both her socks & her shoes, earlier) thumping periodically against her thigh, the young witch made her way along the shoreline with a gentle sort of air that she had been revelling in since her return to the past. Despite—or in spite—of the fact that she had this self-imposed deadline hanging over her head (which had been extended from the original one, to the time when Harry turned eleven years old), Jean felt far more relaxed here than she ever did in her own time.

Perhaps it was because no one knew who she was. There, she had been a slew of titles: Brightest Witch of her Age, Undesirable Number Two, Mudblood, Muggleborn, Know-It-All and so many more. But here, she was just some muggleborn who had been misplaced thanks to the war; one amongst hundreds and no more special than the last.

Save, for maybe the fact that the childish versions of Harry, Dudley & Crookshanks (not her Harry, Dudley & Crookshanks, but close enough) had latched onto her like a limpet and refused to let go. It pulled at her heartstrings to think what might become of them once she was done, so she tried not to think about it too much.

And then, before she knew it—just as before, when like called to like—Jean found herself stood at the edge of a series of caverns embedded into the towering cliff face of the looming rock wall. Sheer white cliff face stared down at the witch from up on high, towering over her with a looming sort of presence that threatened to cave in on her should she step just an inch wrong.

Which was entirely illogical, of course, but that didn't stop the hair on the back of her neck from standing up, either way. Then again, that tingle of fear could have of just been the dark magic that seemed to leak out of the centre-most cavern and yet whispered dangerous words of promise, that beckoned Jean inside. It was alluring in that forbidden kind-of-way and she couldn't help but listen.

Harry hadn't said much about his experience in the cave—of more accurately, The Cave—other than how he & Dumbledore had left during school hours. He told them—through blithering tears and shaky breaths—how they had entered the maze of caverns to find The Cave, which they entered through a blood seal on the cavern door. Then hopped a small dingy across an inferi-infested lake and forced several cupfuls of poisoned potion down the Headmaster's throat.

For some reason, Harry hadn't been able to stomach whatever had happened afterwards and downright refused to tell them. Jean only knew that it had been bad because when he had reunited with her & Ron (in the brief window before Dumbledore's death), he had been pale, shaky and stumbled over his words like a drunkard on Christmas. From what she had been able to ascertain through further research, it hadn't been pretty and that had only been the start of it.

With that in mind, Jean approached the dark cavernous maze without much preamble; she moved mostly on instinct—one the strange tug that pulled at her magical core, beckoning her closer and closer. She assumed that it was because of the little eldritch parasite inside of her—the same one which had called to Snape's Dark Mark—now called to the dark magic that festered deep within the bowels of The Cave; where whatever lay inside the dark seemed to sing.

Thanks to her numerous hours of Hermione-patented research, Jean knew that only three people had ever survived the ordeals within that cave and lived to tell the tale about it. Of course, there was Harry who had fed cupfuls of poisoned potion to the Headmaster, only to very nearly drown in a lake of inferi on the way back. And the other two? They were two orphans children by the name of Amy Benson and Dennis Bishop.

They were two nondescript orphans who had been at the Wool's Orphanage with Tom Riddle and subsequently taken into the cavern where unspeakable things had been done. Things that were so horrible, that even to this day, they refused to talk about what had happened in there. All that Jean knew for certain was that seven children had gone in, and only three children had come out—one of them being Riddle, the puppeteer.

But those were just the ones who had lived and that didn't take into account the dead ones who still lingered. They were mainly ghost children who still haunted that dark alcove and the infernal bodies that populated the dim waters, which surrounded the sparse islets within. They might tell you a tale, if they felt so inclined—if you could even understand their garbled nonsense—but it would only go so far and you could never guarantee how much of it was truth & how much was just wishful thinking, or the tales of a dead man.

Amphibious eyes lit her way as she traipsed through the dark with one hand on the closest wall, fingers tracing invisible lines through the schist as she went. Scaling the rocks with the kind of ease normally only afforded to salamanders (and a skill that would've of been made much easier if she had been able to fully transform in to her animagus, but she had yet to relearn those ropes), Jean made her way deeper and deeper into the dark cavern until she found herself confronted by an eerie sight.

Standing on the edge of the outermost rock, bare toes digging into crumbling schist, Jean stared out at the dark cavern which had haunted Harry's nightmares for some time. The great black lake was vast (not as vast as the Great Lake at Hogwarts, but close enough), that she couldn't make out the distant islets or banks, and in a cavern whose ceiling reached heavenwards, that too, was smothered in darkness.

Although a misty greenish hue did pepper the landscape, thanks to the light of the same colour which shone far away in, what looked to be, the centre of the lake. It painted the rocks in this toxic green colour and danced across the nightmarish waters in wafting waves, far enough that she could make out the tips of a skeletal hand or a bony toe from the inferi buried deep below the calm & mirror-like surface.

The greenish glow of the strange light settled above the waters the illuminance from her amphibious eyes were the only things that broke the otherwise velvety void, though neither of their rays penetrated as far as Jean would've like or expected. The darkness was somehow denser in here, cloying and heavier than a normal darkness would be.

It weighed on her bones like it was threatening to suffocate her and down below, the water had this sort of thick molasses quality that slithered against the shore like thick, greasy oil. And yet still, something within the void beckoned her further inside; all she had to do was take one step forward—

"—I wouldn't go in there, if I were you"