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Chapter 50: Helena
🕑 Added 2021-12-02 12:00:03 +0000 UTC24thMarch 1995, Hogwarts
(Jasmine POV)
It was a beautiful day at Hogwarts, I spent the whole day outside on the lake. It was so calm there, in contrast to the care of magical creatures lesson that her former twin was having. The lesson itself was quite interesting, it was about Nifflers, magical creatures with a long snout and a coat of black, fluffy fur. They were attracted to shiny things, which made them wonderful for locating treasure, but that also meant that they could wreak havoc if kept indoors. They were mainly used by curse breakers to burrow underground in search of hidden treasure, so this was a very informative lesson for those who wish to continue in this path.
It was quite an interesting lesson. Using the Nifflers as treasure hunters with a prize in the end. The entire class was participating, even the students from noble families, who were openly stoic and never expressed any emotion, were laughing and smiling. The Greengrass Heiress was even smiling, something I never saw during my entire stay in Hogwarts.
This lesson was quite the contrast to the previous one with these hideous hybrids of Manticores and Fire Crabs that they called Blast-Ended Skrewts. It was quite the useless creatures. The fire crab negated any magical properties from the manticore. Other than an arguably very spell resistant shell, it couldn’t even be used as potion ingredients. I had checked, out of curiosity mostly, and found no ingredient that couldn’t be replaced by another ingredient that would be safer and cheaper to get.
These lessons were a hazard. No Professor should have asked his student to help him discover the properties of an unknown and dangerous magical creature. The Skrewts could be venomous, and a student might have died. And While I do admire the ingenuity involved with breeding two magical creatures, sometimes the result could be completely different from the original. Chimeras were created in Greece by the breeding of a Nemean Lion (Lions with physically impervious skin) and an Amaltheia (a goat that could negate practically all magic and whose milk healed all non-magical ailments), hoping to create some sort of being that would be practically invulnerable and ended up creating the Chimera. Both creatures were extinct now, but the Chimera remained. Similarly, the combination of a giant’s essence and a spider created the first Acromantula.
Although, magical breeding needs the used of alchemy, especially between magical creatures. And from what I understand Hagrid didn’t know a hint of Alchemy. It’s curious predicament. Giants are inherently magical and have an instinctual understanding of magic but they’re too undeveloped mentally to make use of it. Hagrid has used this connection to understand magical creatures. He could have used it to understand that the union between manticores and fire crabs is possible somehow. The idea brought a smile to my face, even now, after all these years, magic keeps surprising me.
After the lesson, I was summoned into the quidditch pitch from Ludo Bagman. The Quidditch field was no longer smooth and flat. It looked as though somebody had been building long, low walls all over it that twisted and crisscrossed in every direction.
I wait for him there and soon the other champions arrive as well. I kept listening at Nathan’s complaints about ruining the Quidditch field, but I did notice that he kept glancing at me wearily. Finally, Ludo Bagman appeared. “Hello there!” he said with his annoyingly cheery voice.
“Well, what do you think?” said Bagman happily. “Growing nicely, aren’t they? Give them a month and Hagrid will have them twenty feet high. Don’t worry,” he added, spotting the less than happy expression on Nathan’s face, “you’ll have your Quidditch field back to normal once the task is over! Now, I imagine you can guess what we’re making here?”
I knew of course but couldn’t be bothered to answer.
“Maze,” grunted Krum. “That’s right!” said Bagman. “A maze. The third task is really very straightforward. The Triwizard Cup will be placed in the center of the maze. The first champion to touch it will receive full marks.”
“We simply have to get through the maze?” asked Fleur. She seems to be losing her accent with her stay here. Well, good for her.
“There will be obstacles,” said Bagman happily, bouncing on the balls of his feet. “Hagrid is providing a number of creatures, then there will be spells that must be broken, all that sort of thing, you know. Now, the champions who are leading on points will get a head start into the maze.”
Nathan seemed to shiver on the fact that Hagrid will be the one bringing creatures into the maze, and I smile inwardly at his nervousness. Krum asked Nathan to have a word with him and I remembered what will happen here with Barty Crouch Senior and I wanted nothing to do with it. The man was a horrible one and a bigoted hypocrite. He sealed his fate when he broke his son out of prison.
So, I decide that it’s time for me to get back to the castle. I’m a bit hungry, so I head towards the kitchens to grab a bite to eat.
I kept thinking about Moody, well Barty Crouch Junior. I noticed him trying to subtly follow me whenever I am in the castle. Voldemort must be interested in me after my performance in the last few tasks of the tournament. While it was somewhat worrying that he would alter his plans, we were too deep in for it to make any difference to mine.
Either way, to make sure everything will go according to my plans, I had scanned fake Moody’s mind. I have to admit that if I thought that Crouch Senior was screwed up it was nothing compared to what he did. He was a cruel man from the start. He was strict in his hate of anything dark and disciplined his son if he so much that asked about it. And by disciplining, I meant curse the boy until he could barely walk.
It was no wonder that the boy learned dark magic as soon as he came to Hogwarts and became for the first time, free of his father’s influence. Teenage rebellion at its finest. He became what his father hated the most just to spite him. Barty Crouch Senior had truly broken his son before he even got to Hogwarts.
The boy subconsciously wanted to get caught, to ruin his father’s reputation, to have him realize how much he failed as a father and while he did succeed, he was sent to Azkaban to live in agony for the rest of his life.
Even when Barty Crouch Senior broke him out of Azkaban at his dying wife’s last wish, he did not just put his son under the imperious which is horrifying by itself. He used his son as a way to relief his stress by torturing him whenever he had a bad day. The last two members of the Crouch family were both monsters. I saw no need to save either of them from their fates.
After a rather delicious meal, on my way back, I was faced by someone I haven’t seen in a very long time.
The grey lady, also known to very few as Helena Ravenclaw, and to me as a surrogate daughter, was floating in front of me.
She spoke in a monotone voice, “The Headmaster asks you to come to his office.”
“Alright, Helena.” I answer.
She looked frazzled by my knowledge of her name, “How do you know that name?”
“I practically raised you, child. Did you not think I could recognize you?”
“Who are you?” She demanded. The gall of that girl.
“Perhaps, you remember me like this.” I shifted into my Helga form. Helena gasps in shock at my form.
“You are not my aunt, you can’t be. Who are you?”
“If I wasn’t your aunt then I wouldn’t know about the fact that I once caught you wearing one of your mother’s dresses in her office when you were nine. You had stolen your mother’s spare wand and tried to spell it to your size, but you accidentally animated it.”
“Aunt Helga!” I smile at her.
“Hello, sweetie.”
She practically leapt at me, trying to hug me but she goes though me. It seems she has forgotten that she was dead.
“How?” Helena asked, pleadingly.
“I have lived for a very long time, dear. I was already thousands of years old when I met the other founders.”
“So, you lied to us, you’ve always lied to us.”
“Perhaps, but I believe that everyone is entitled to a little privacy. My past was my own and considering the lives I lived in the past, I would have been pestered with questions about legendary figures and my exploits. I have learnt long ago to keep each lifetime as separate as the previous one.”
“Who were you before?” She asks.
“It doesn’t matter the persons I was, only who I am. I do not change my personality every lifetime, I am your aunt, Helena. I was there when you said your first word, when you learnt to walk, when you cast your first spell. I had hoped that after all this time you would let go of your guilt and move on, Helena.”
“You knew, I lingered?”
“Yes, I chose to stay away from Hogwarts. What you did was reprehensible Helena. You used the fact that I was unconscious to steal the diadem. You knew I would talk you out of it. Rowena might have been an amazing witch, but she was a terrible mother, Helena. We both knew that. But did you honestly think that stealing the diadem will help you gain her recognition?”
She stayed silent, “What else could I have done? She stopped listening to me and after Uncle Salazar died, she was catatonic. I had to get her attention somehow.”
“Why did you need her approval so much?”
“She was my mother!” She protested.
“She might have given birth to you, but she hasn’t been your mother ever since your father died. I was the one who fed you when you were hungry, who consoled you when you were sad. I was there when you got your wand, not Rowena. You were my daughter in all but name, Helena. And you threw everything away for a silly tiara and the potential recognition of a woman that barely acknowledged your existence.” I shouted at her.
We both stayed silent for a couple of minutes.
“I’m sorry,” she muttered
“So am I, child.”
“Aunt Helga, about the diadem.”
I interrupt her, “I know, Helena. Tom Riddle, right?”
She looked shocked once more, “How did you know?”
“I found it in my room. What a foolish man he became. How scared must he be to do such a horrible thing to himself?”
“Is there a way to save the diadem?” She practically begged me.
“The Diadem was always safe, Helena. I found it shortly after I left the castle and replaced it with a transmutated replica. I had the thing in my castle ever since then. The boy defaced a replica not the real thing.”
She seemed relieved to hear it. Her conflicted feelings towards Rowena are still there after a thousand years. It’s probably the only reason that she is still lingering to this half-life.
“You said the headmaster wanted to see me?” I turn back into my Jasmine Potter form.
“Oh yes, he asked for you. The Potters were there, too.”
“All of them?” I asked.
She nodded. I say, “It’s time then.”
“Time for what,” she asked curious.
“A little test, I’ve been planning.”
She shook her head in frustration. “You and your tests.” She said fondly.
“I don’t know what you’re complaining about, you passed most of them.”
She giggled and we were at the gargoyle protecting the headmaster’s office.
“I have to ask, why Jasmine Potter, though?”
I smiled at her without answering. She huffed at me without answering. “Alright, keep your secrets.”
“It’s good to see you again, Helena.” I say, before the gargoyle moved away and let me through.
“You as well.”
I turn and walk up the stairs to the headmaster’s office. The door opens automatically in front of me, showing Dumbledore, sitting on his desk with James and Lily Potter standing on his right and Nathan on his left. Rose was sitting on one of the chairs. She had tears streaming on her face. Well, this is ominous.
Comments
j0ntsa
This is gonna end ugly
