Chapter 159: A Grim Confrontation
20th October 1995, Hogwarts (Earth 2)
(Jasmine Sayre POV)
I sigh in relief as my last class is finished. My revelation of Umbridge’s firing and the news of my continuous stay as a professor had garnered me some sort of hero worship from the student population. I hadn’t expected that Umbridge would be this disliked this quickly by the students. I knew that the professors hated her, even Binns who was pretty much a delirious ghost had actually showed up to a staff meeting just to complain about the woman’s behavior.
With me having dealt with Umbridge, the students kept trying to get me to recount what happened during the board meeting, and how I managed to turn the situation on the evil toad woman. It was childish, then again, this is a school. Anyway, I did end up summarizing what happened to my first class of the day, which happened to be my fifth year class. After that, I kinda glared at any student who asked me about it and just said that it was classified.
Turns out that teenagers are very persistent, which explains how tired I’m currently feeling. Still, I wasn’t done ruffling feathers today. I still had one last move to make.
I teleport towards 12 Grimmauld place, the supposedly secret headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix. It was supposed to be under a Fidelius charm, so I shouldn’t have been able to even see it. But relying on the charm too much is a recipe for disaster, as the Potters have probably learnt by now, it was possible for the secret keeper to be untrustworthy, or to be deceived into telling the secret.
The charm, in itself, is simple and complex at the same time. The premise itself is straight forward, by sealing a location or a secret inside a soul, no one should be able to know it. It causes a change in reality where the secret exists only when someone knows that it exists.
However, this has a price. Like I said to my students, magic works using equivalent exchange and the power to permanently change reality except for a few persons, is extremely high. It’s not just the amount of magic that’s required to maintain the spell, since it has to be anchored to a ley line for it to work, there has to be restrictions.
For instance, the secret must belong to the caster. In the case of the Potters, they owned the cottage, Lily Potter being the one who cast the spell. In Grimmauld place, Sirius Black is the one who cast the charm, Dumbledore had probably helped him and done all the leg work, but Black must have been the one acknowledged as the caster for the charm to work.
You can’t just go into an empty place and put up a Fidelius charm and say that it’s yours now. Possession of a land is a complicated thing when magic is involved, you need to acknowledge it, without a doubt in your heart, and you need to make sure that no one has a prior claim on it.
There’s also the requirement where the secret keeper should not own the secret. It’s why Lily didn’t choose James as the secret keeper. And finally, there’s the fact that the caster must trust the secret keeper implicitly which, in return, will cause the secret keeper to be cursed with misfortune if he betrays them. Pettigrew, as far as I knew, lived his life as a pet rat to poor children, and now he lives as little more than a slave for the Death Eaters, let alone the Dark Lord himself. Of course, to trust someone, you need to make sure that there are no backups, no hidden traps, no extra wards, meaning you need to entirely rely on the Fidelius charm.
Still, this is all very interesting but what I’m trying to convey, is that no matter how powerful the charm is, the secret keeper is a liability and could very easily be tricked. It would be easy to use an illusion to trick them into revealing the secret, or even be invisible while the secret is uttered.
I step onto the front steps and walk inside the ancestral home of the most ancient and most noble house of Black. I could feel the Black wards being deactivated. A shame, they would have been enough to stop even Voldemort from entering the home. Too bad they’re too ‘dark’ to be used by a group like the Order of the Phoenix.
I slowly walk up and silence the screaming portrait with a wave of my hand. Walburga Black would not utter a sound until the morning came. I relished the terrified look she had when she saw me entering.
I ignore the meeting room and the hushed whispers coming from there. I could sense that my target was upstairs. I walk up the stairs, taking my time admiring the dump that the house of Black has become. Who the fuck displays the heads of dead house elves just as you enter the damn place? There were cursed objects everywhere, I could feel the remnants of their magic before they were obviously removed by the Order. Who would live in such a place? I can’t imagine a healthy child growing up in an environment like this. If I could summarize what this showed me the house of Black was, it would be a bunch of inbred nutjobs.
I continue to walk up until I find the room I am targeting. I open it and look at the face of the skinny pale man with long hair, who was petting a hippogryph. This was Sirius Black, a shell of the man who should have ended up as the lord of one of the most powerful families in Britain’s history.
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I sneer at him, “Well, aren’t you a treat to look at, Sirius Black.”
The man looked up and stiffened as he took a proper look at me, “Lily?”
I smirk, “Not quite.”
I think I just shocked him a bit too much. He jumped and hugged me while babbling apologies and regrets. I just let him get it out of his system.
It took a good ten minutes for the man to calm down. “How?”
Sirius looked like he was begging for an answer, so I gave him one, the truth, “I’m not Lily Potter. My name is Jasmine Sayre, but the name I was born with was Jasmine Potter, daughter of James and Lily Potter. I am from another universe, technically, I’m Harry’s counterpart.”
He looked at me incredulously, “This has to be the biggest batch of bullshit I've ever listened to.”
I shrug, “If you don’t want to believe me, don’t. I have nothing to lose if you don’t believe me either way. I’m hunting for something in the house, and I saw you alone in here and honestly, you’re the one who was screwed over the most compared to my universe’s counterparts.”
“Huh, do I not end up in Azkaban in your world?”
“Oh, hell no. As far as I know you’re sitting on the Black seat on the Wizengamot, much to your constant complaints.”
Sirius looked aghast, “Are you sure that I’m not the lucky one? I would take Azkaban over politics anytime.”
I snort, “We both know that you wouldn’t, Padfoot.”
Sirius stiffened and changed the conversation, “So, I’m the one who took care of you when James and Lily died?”
“No, James and Lily Potter did not die on Halloween 1981. Pettigrew was arrested soon after, and you kept on living your Bachelor life.”
The dog Animagus looked floored at that. He obviously didn’t even consider the idea that his best friends would be alive, “Lily and James, alive? How? Lily’s spell should’ve killed her.”
I shrug, “As far as I know, I was saved by a higher power. Let’s just say that my world is a lot more complicated than yours.”
Sirius stayed silent for a good minute before asking, “How are they? James and Lily, I mean.”
“They’re good, I’m assuming. We don’t get along very well. Well, I told them that I wanted nothing to do with them and just left. I’m pretty sure they think I’m dead.”
“What?”
I snort, “Apparently after the whole thing happened, they thought my twin, Nathan was the one who offed Voldemort, so when they announced it, the house was being attacked by assassins every day or so, just so that they could kill the kid. Anyway, Lily ended up having a mental breakdown, and they didn’t have any gold left to buy a new place and ward it properly, so Dumbledore came up with this blood magic ward, that only let three people be trapped inside.”
“How did they not have any gold left?”
I shrug, “I looked at the finances and apparently James let Dumbledore use as much as he wanted from the vault to fight the war. My Dumbledore is a lot more heavy handed than yours and ended up almost emptying the vault. James didn’t care, if the war was won, he didn’t care about the money. I don’t know the specifics and didn’t care either. So, anyway, only three were allowed inside the ward, so they chose Nathan over me because he was the one being hunted down. Well, James is the one who chose, Lily was barely cognizant at the time. So, they cast a similar spell on the Dursley home and left me there. Let’s just say that my Dursleys were a lot worse than Harry’s, I ended up being left in America and then adopted by the Sayres. It’s why I don’t get along with them.”
“And James and Lily just gave up on you?”
I shrug, “Hell, no, they got Dumbledore to summon me using the Goblet of Fire, making me do their little tournament. Voldemort tried to come back but I just killed him, and Dumbledore got himself killed from some weird artifact. When I was done, I washed my hands of them, and faked my death, a hero’s death who killed Voldemort in her dying breath or whatever. The only one who knows I’m alive is my younger sister Rose. I moved back to the states and kept working on my research.”
I wasn’t going to tell him the entire truth, like how I killed Dumbledore, and how I traveled back in time. It still would have been nice to get to know him, even if he’s a barely functional human being.
Sirius looked aghast, “And where was I during all this?”
“I honestly have no idea, I didn’t care. Like I said, I washed my hands of all of you. I don’t know why you didn’t take care of me. I might have just forgotten it; it’s been so long since then. Still, I had better things to do, and I didn’t care about an absentee godfather.”
Sirius suddenly lit up, “So, you’re here to kill Voldemort for us and save our lives, Ms. I killed Voldemort when I was fourteen. I still don’t know how you did that.”
I wasn’t going to tell him that I was thousands of years old when I fought Voldemort, so I gave him a dry look, “Of course I’m not going to kill him for you. This isn’t my world, so this isn’t my responsibility, so why should I fight him for you. Don’t get me wrong, I’m probably going to kill him, if only because he’s an inconvenience, nothing more, but you can’t just count on someone to do all your work for you. As for how I killed the bastard, I’m a genuine magical prodigy. Seriously, I got my NEWTs at thirteen, had two masteries almost finished by the time I killed Voldemort, and I am a master in thirteen different fields of magic, although with a different name each. Comparing Voldemort to me, is like comparing Dumbledore to a first year muggleborn student. I’m not kidding when I say that I’m a prodigy. I probably discovered more about magic than Dumbledore ever learnt. So, yes, at fourteen, I was strong enough to beat Voldemort.”
The more I spoke the more I let my aura go a little bit. It was barely a fraction of my presence, but it was more than what a wizard could hope to have. Sirius was gaping at me, wide eyed at my display of power.
I continue, “But, I’m not here to talk about my past, Sirius Black, but about your future. What the hell have you become? Look at you, a shell of the wizard you used to be, spitting at your traditions and at your family’s legacy. You’re barely a wild animal leashed by Dumbledore with the promise of your freedom. How the house of Black has fallen! Regulus would be so disappointed if he saw you now. Marlene would be weeping at your fall. What has become of you, Sirius Black?”