Chapter 217: Closure
21st March 2012, Potter Cottage, Godric Hollows
(Lily Potter POV)
Lily snorted, “I don’t think so; she didn’t mention anything the last time she came over. As far as I know, she’s still traveling the world with her friends.”
“Wanda and Jean, right?”
Lily nodded, “Alright, let’s get ready before they arrive.”
James sighed and got up. They both went to their bedroom to wear clothes that are at least acceptable for receiving visitors. By the time they were done, they heard Rose’s voice, “Mum, Dad, I’m home.”
Lily stepped down to speak with her daughter, but as soon as she took a look at her guest, she froze completely. She recognized the black hair, the porcelain white skin, the green eyes, her green eyes. That couldn’t be. Lily muttered while stuttering, “J-Jasmine?”
The young woman in front of her gave her a complicated smile, “Hello, Lily.”
The Potter lady was stupefied from the response. Her husband wasn’t any better. The couple just gaped at their eldest daughter in front of them. It was impossible, inconceivable, unthinkable. Did Rose somehow find a way to bring her sister back to life. Lily knew that the two of them were very close before her untimely death. Dumbledore, that backstabbing son of a bitch, had always said that reversing Death was a feat that no magic can do, and the people who are desperate enough to try either die in the process or become monsters by doing something abominable.
Lily looked at the girl who claimed to be Jasmine and tried to make out any type of deception or corruption. After a while, when she saw nothing, she gasped, “How?”
Jasmine shrugged, “I never died in the first place. I waited until Dumbledore pretty much confessed his crimes in front of millions of people and fought enough to make our little duel look realistic, and when he tried to kill me, I just used an illusion. I had a fake body prepared and everything, but he chose to use a disintegration curse to not leave a trace of his crime, so I didn’t even end up using it.”
James was the one who spoke next, “Why? Why go through all this trouble just to fake your death?”
Their eldest daughter shrugged, “It was nothing personal, believe me. With Dumbledore dead, and Voldemort following him, alongside his Death Eaters, Magical Britain was going to change irrevocably. And for the first time in centuries, there was no Dark Lord or Light Lord to influence its evolution, which meant that for the first time since the Statute of Secrecy, Magical Britain was going to grow. You can see it now, how all wizards and witches are included, while traditions are still being maintained. From what I understand, everyone seems to have the potential to innovate and grow, so no one is segregated immediately. I didn’t want to mess with that. My presence, as the most powerful mage in the country would have upset the delicate balance, I designed during my stay here. I wanted to see how this country would progress without someone leading it by the nose.”
James was starting to get angry, “You made us, your parents, think that you were dead, and you said that it wasn’t personal? Your mother had a nervous breakdown. She didn’t even leave the house for years until Nathan graduated, and you say that all this suffering was nothing personal?”
Rose interrupted his rant, “Dad, you see Jasmine is a bit different than us. She just thinks differently.”
The Potter Lady was confused at this, “What do you mean, she’s different than us.”
Jasmine was the one who responded to his rant, “I really didn’t anticipate such an emotional response from you, especially considering that you’d barely had your daughter for a year. I guess, that’s my bad, my mistake. You weren’t innocent in the matter, but I didn’t do this out of malice or because I was angry at you. I just had more important things to do outside of Britain.”
The Potters contemplated this for a minute before Lily spoke up, “Rose said that you were different. Care to elaborate?”
Her eldest daughter snorted, “After I escaped the Dursleys, I accidentally touched an artifact, a temporal one to be specific. I was sent back in time, and I couldn’t die without closing the time loop, so I lived, I was adopted by a wonderful man, I grew up, I fell in love, had daughters, apprentices, and much more over the years. I am far older than I appear. And the truth is, that whatever animosity I had for you had died down centuries ago. You were just a remnant of my past that I honestly forgot about until you summoned me during the previous Tri-Wizard tournament.”
James chuckled, “Do you honestly expect us to believe this nonsense? Time traveling centuries back? What a joke.”
His eldest daughter just shrugged, “Believe what you want. It doesn’t change anything for me. It is your choice whether to accept or deny what I have just said.”
Rose stepped in, “she’s telling the truth. She showed me stuff, especially in Hogwarts that made me sure that she was saying the truth.”
James looked disbelieving, “Like what?”
“Like a lot of things. Even the castle recognized her. She knew passages that even you didn’t know about even when she just arrived in the school. She knew secret rooms, secrets lost to time, and so much more. And what would you expect, she was one of the founders, after all.”
Lily gasped. Her daughter was one of the Hogwarts founders. Which one was she? She wouldn’t put it past her to pretend to be a man just to mess with future generations, “which one were you?”
“I had many names over the centuries, but during the creation of Hogwarts, I went by the name ‘Helga Hufflepuff’”
Well, wasn’t that surprising. She didn’t see that one coming. She expected her to be Ravenclaw, not the rumored kind motherly lady that Helga Hufflepuff was rumored to be. But with that said, there’s something that didn’t make sense. She turned towards her daughter and voiced her questions, “Why now?”
Jasmine raised an eyebrow and Lily continued, “You had your chances to clear things up with us. You waited almost twenty years to do so. I want to know what made you do it now. What changed?”
Jasmine gave her an approving look, “You’re a sharp one, aren’t you, Lily Potter. Well, I will admit that a good part was because of Rose wanted me to. I made her an offer and she accepted with the condition that I clear things up for the two of you. But I will say that I was planning on doing this either way.”
This time Rose was the one who looked surprised, “Really?”
The green eyed girl nodded, “Yes. During my time away, I ended up in a dimension that was similar to this one and I met my counterpart. Things were different. For one, my counterpart was a boy named Harry Potter. He had no brothers or sisters, and like me, he was targeted by Voldemort when he was a baby and was able to repel his killing curse as well. Unfortunately for him, his parents didn’t survive. The young orphan was then sent by Dumbledore to the Dursleys, where he was hated and scorned, by your sister. It wasn’t as bad as my counterparts of the Dursleys, but it was still horrible for an innocent child. That boy was as pure and chivalrous as they came. He was altruistic to a ridiculous degree, but his deepest wish, his deepest desire was to meet the parents he never got to see. He would have sacrificed his own magic for a single day with the two of you. He made me realize that I had deprived you of closure. You failed me, as parents, but still, disappearing like that from your lives, faking my death like that, was unnecessarily cruel to the both of you. And I wanted to make amends by meeting you, at least one last time. It was only fair, after all.”
Lily leapt into her eldest daughter’s arms, babbling, “My baby…”
Jasmine stood there awkwardly and waited as the hysterical woman finish sobbing. Lily didn’t care, her baby wasn’t gone. All that stuff with the time travel didn’t matter, because her baby was back. She was alive.
After a good ten minutes of sobbing, Lily released herself from Jasmine’s grasp and sat down. She asked in a tiny voice, “Do you hate us?”
Jasmine shrugged, “Not really. I have suffered so much over the centuries, both physically and emotionally. What you did pales in comparison to my own sufferings. This would be like seeing your bully in primary school. It doesn’t matter much in the long run when you’re an adult. I don’t even care about the Dursleys, even if I took my revenge on them, just for the principal, honestly.”
Lily didn’t know what to say to that, “But we abandoned you, we betrayed you.”
“Yes, you did. You believed an untrustworthy man and abandoned your child to a miserable childhood. However, you were young, obscenely so. Lily was unstable and wasn’t in her right mind, and James was a young man who was desperate for things to go back to normal. He took the first opportunity in front of him to get things back on track, and Dumbledore took advantage of that. You were young, you were naïve, you were scared and hurt. I can understand making a mistake like that. What I don’t understand is why you never tried to see me after things were in order.”
James answered, “I’m sorry, the wards wouldn’t let us get out, and us coming to get you would have destroyed the ones protecting you.”
Jasmine snorted, “That was what Dumbledore told you. But you didn’t even try. You were locked in your cottage for years and yet you never tried to research the so called ‘bonds of blood’ ward. It might be obscure, but you could have asked anyone on the outside to get the limits of the ward, to understand what you can and can’t do. You would have realized that the ward, while powerful, and limited to the number of people it could protect, induced aggression when muggles lived under it. Everyone is born with a spark of magic, even muggles, it is a fundamental part for their soul to anchor itself to their bodies and minds. That ward kept messing with this connection, and in response it made them more aggressive. It wasn’t something hidden, even, you just didn’t try to look. You would have realized that your daughter was in danger in your sister’s household. You could have had someone check on her, adopt her and pretend to be her birth parent. You could have done so much, and yet you didn’t.
“You wanted to be my parents, and yet I was far older than you could possibly imagine. I had no need for a mother or a father. I was an adult with centuries of experience in life. I could have tried being friends with you, but I just didn’t see the appeal. Don’t get me wrong, I stopped hating you a long time ago, but the way you handled yourself in the years after you left me is what prevented me from even wanting to know you as people. I had let go of my hatred of you, and chose to treat you as strangers, and if I meet a stranger who acted like you, I wouldn’t want to be close to them. That was it, nothing more.”
Lily was heartbroken with this, as this was far worse than what she imagined, “Do you think you would have loved us, if things were different?”
Jasmine gave her a warm smile, “From what I could see, you were wonderful parents to Rose and Nathan and for that you have my respect. Perhaps if your family hadn’t been in the middle of Riddle’s and Dumbledore’s vendetta, things would have been different, but it does not do well to dwell on possibilities of what could have been and forget to live. The past is the past. It is immutable, unchangeable. You just have to live for what you have left. If it’s any consolation, for all the pain your actions produced, all the suffering I got through, I am glad for it. I wouldn’t be the woman I am today without it. And for that, I forgive you for any pain you caused me.”
Jasmine turned around calmly went through the door and disappeared, leaving Rose, Lily and James alone in the living room. For the first time in decades, Lily Potter’s eyes weren’t so dim, she didn’t feel heartbroken. I guess this is what it meant to have closure.
Chapter 217: Closure
21st March 2012, Potter Cottage, Godric Hollows
(Lily Potter POV)
Lily snorted, “I don’t think so; she didn’t mention anything the last time she came over. As far as I know, she’s still traveling the world with her friends.”
“Wanda and Jean, right?”
Lily nodded, “Alright, let’s get ready before they arrive.”
James sighed and got up. They both went to their bedroom to wear clothes that are at least acceptable for receiving visitors. By the time they were done, they heard Rose’s voice, “Mum, Dad, I’m home.”
Lily stepped down to speak with her daughter, but as soon as she took a look at her guest, she froze completely. She recognized the black hair, the porcelain white skin, the green eyes, her green eyes. That couldn’t be. Lily muttered while stuttering, “J-Jasmine?”
The young woman in front of her gave her a complicated smile, “Hello, Lily.”
The Potter lady was stupefied from the response. Her husband wasn’t any better. The couple just gaped at their eldest daughter in front of them. It was impossible, inconceivable, unthinkable. Did Rose somehow find a way to bring her sister back to life. Lily knew that the two of them were very close before her untimely death. Dumbledore, that backstabbing son of a bitch, had always said that reversing Death was a feat that no magic can do, and the people who are desperate enough to try either die in the process or become monsters by doing something abominable.
Lily looked at the girl who claimed to be Jasmine and tried to make out any type of deception or corruption. After a while, when she saw nothing, she gasped, “How?”
Jasmine shrugged, “I never died in the first place. I waited until Dumbledore pretty much confessed his crimes in front of millions of people and fought enough to make our little duel look realistic, and when he tried to kill me, I just used an illusion. I had a fake body prepared and everything, but he chose to use a disintegration curse to not leave a trace of his crime, so I didn’t even end up using it.”
James was the one who spoke next, “Why? Why go through all this trouble just to fake your death?”
Their eldest daughter shrugged, “It was nothing personal, believe me. With Dumbledore dead, and Voldemort following him, alongside his Death Eaters, Magical Britain was going to change irrevocably. And for the first time in centuries, there was no Dark Lord or Light Lord to influence its evolution, which meant that for the first time since the Statute of Secrecy, Magical Britain was going to grow. You can see it now, how all wizards and witches are included, while traditions are still being maintained. From what I understand, everyone seems to have the potential to innovate and grow, so no one is segregated immediately. I didn’t want to mess with that. My presence, as the most powerful mage in the country would have upset the delicate balance, I designed during my stay here. I wanted to see how this country would progress without someone leading it by the nose.”
James was starting to get angry, “You made us, your parents, think that you were dead, and you said that it wasn’t personal? Your mother had a nervous breakdown. She didn’t even leave the house for years until Nathan graduated, and you say that all this suffering was nothing personal?”
Rose interrupted his rant, “Dad, you see Jasmine is a bit different than us. She just thinks differently.”
The Potter Lady was confused at this, “What do you mean, she’s different than us.”
Jasmine was the one who responded to his rant, “I really didn’t anticipate such an emotional response from you, especially considering that you’d barely had your daughter for a year. I guess, that’s my bad, my mistake. You weren’t innocent in the matter, but I didn’t do this out of malice or because I was angry at you. I just had more important things to do outside of Britain.”
The Potters contemplated this for a minute before Lily spoke up, “Rose said that you were different. Care to elaborate?”
Her eldest daughter snorted, “After I escaped the Dursleys, I accidentally touched an artifact, a temporal one to be specific. I was sent back in time, and I couldn’t die without closing the time loop, so I lived, I was adopted by a wonderful man, I grew up, I fell in love, had daughters, apprentices, and much more over the years. I am far older than I appear. And the truth is, that whatever animosity I had for you had died down centuries ago. You were just a remnant of my past that I honestly forgot about until you summoned me during the previous Tri-Wizard tournament.”
James chuckled, “Do you honestly expect us to believe this nonsense? Time traveling centuries back? What a joke.”
His eldest daughter just shrugged, “Believe what you want. It doesn’t change anything for me. It is your choice whether to accept or deny what I have just said.”
Rose stepped in, “she’s telling the truth. She showed me stuff, especially in Hogwarts that made me sure that she was saying the truth.”
James looked disbelieving, “Like what?”
“Like a lot of things. Even the castle recognized her. She knew passages that even you didn’t know about even when she just arrived in the school. She knew secret rooms, secrets lost to time, and so much more. And what would you expect, she was one of the founders, after all.”
Lily gasped. Her daughter was one of the Hogwarts founders. Which one was she? She wouldn’t put it past her to pretend to be a man just to mess with future generations, “which one were you?”
“I had many names over the centuries, but during the creation of Hogwarts, I went by the name ‘Helga Hufflepuff’”
Well, wasn’t that surprising. She didn’t see that one coming. She expected her to be Ravenclaw, not the rumored kind motherly lady that Helga Hufflepuff was rumored to be. But with that said, there’s something that didn’t make sense. She turned towards her daughter and voiced her questions, “Why now?”
Jasmine raised an eyebrow and Lily continued, “You had your chances to clear things up with us. You waited almost twenty years to do so. I want to know what made you do it now. What changed?”
Jasmine gave her an approving look, “You’re a sharp one, aren’t you, Lily Potter. Well, I will admit that a good part was because of Rose wanted me to. I made her an offer and she accepted with the condition that I clear things up for the two of you. But I will say that I was planning on doing this either way.”
This time Rose was the one who looked surprised, “Really?”
The green eyed girl nodded, “Yes. During my time away, I ended up in a dimension that was similar to this one and I met my counterpart. Things were different. For one, my counterpart was a boy named Harry Potter. He had no brothers or sisters, and like me, he was targeted by Voldemort when he was a baby and was able to repel his killing curse as well. Unfortunately for him, his parents didn’t survive. The young orphan was then sent by Dumbledore to the Dursleys, where he was hated and scorned, by your sister. It wasn’t as bad as my counterparts of the Dursleys, but it was still horrible for an innocent child. That boy was as pure and chivalrous as they came. He was altruistic to a ridiculous degree, but his deepest wish, his deepest desire was to meet the parents he never got to see. He would have sacrificed his own magic for a single day with the two of you. He made me realize that I had deprived you of closure. You failed me, as parents, but still, disappearing like that from your lives, faking my death like that, was unnecessarily cruel to the both of you. And I wanted to make amends by meeting you, at least one last time. It was only fair, after all.”
Lily leapt into her eldest daughter’s arms, babbling, “My baby…”
Jasmine stood there awkwardly and waited as the hysterical woman finish sobbing. Lily didn’t care, her baby wasn’t gone. All that stuff with the time travel didn’t matter, because her baby was back. She was alive.
After a good ten minutes of sobbing, Lily released herself from Jasmine’s grasp and sat down. She asked in a tiny voice, “Do you hate us?”
Jasmine shrugged, “Not really. I have suffered so much over the centuries, both physically and emotionally. What you did pales in comparison to my own sufferings. This would be like seeing your bully in primary school. It doesn’t matter much in the long run when you’re an adult. I don’t even care about the Dursleys, even if I took my revenge on them, just for the principal, honestly.”
Lily didn’t know what to say to that, “But we abandoned you, we betrayed you.”
“Yes, you did. You believed an untrustworthy man and abandoned your child to a miserable childhood. However, you were young, obscenely so. Lily was unstable and wasn’t in her right mind, and James was a young man who was desperate for things to go back to normal. He took the first opportunity in front of him to get things back on track, and Dumbledore took advantage of that. You were young, you were naïve, you were scared and hurt. I can understand making a mistake like that. What I don’t understand is why you never tried to see me after things were in order.”
James answered, “I’m sorry, the wards wouldn’t let us get out, and us coming to get you would have destroyed the ones protecting you.”
Jasmine snorted, “That was what Dumbledore told you. But you didn’t even try. You were locked in your cottage for years and yet you never tried to research the so called ‘bonds of blood’ ward. It might be obscure, but you could have asked anyone on the outside to get the limits of the ward, to understand what you can and can’t do. You would have realized that the ward, while powerful, and limited to the number of people it could protect, induced aggression when muggles lived under it. Everyone is born with a spark of magic, even muggles, it is a fundamental part for their soul to anchor itself to their bodies and minds. That ward kept messing with this connection, and in response it made them more aggressive. It wasn’t something hidden, even, you just didn’t try to look. You would have realized that your daughter was in danger in your sister’s household. You could have had someone check on her, adopt her and pretend to be her birth parent. You could have done so much, and yet you didn’t.
“You wanted to be my parents, and yet I was far older than you could possibly imagine. I had no need for a mother or a father. I was an adult with centuries of experience in life. I could have tried being friends with you, but I just didn’t see the appeal. Don’t get me wrong, I stopped hating you a long time ago, but the way you handled yourself in the years after you left me is what prevented me from even wanting to know you as people. I had let go of my hatred of you, and chose to treat you as strangers, and if I meet a stranger who acted like you, I wouldn’t want to be close to them. That was it, nothing more.”
Lily was heartbroken with this, as this was far worse than what she imagined, “Do you think you would have loved us, if things were different?”
Jasmine gave her a warm smile, “From what I could see, you were wonderful parents to Rose and Nathan and for that you have my respect. Perhaps if your family hadn’t been in the middle of Riddle’s and Dumbledore’s vendetta, things would have been different, but it does not do well to dwell on possibilities of what could have been and forget to live. The past is the past. It is immutable, unchangeable. You just have to live for what you have left. If it’s any consolation, for all the pain your actions produced, all the suffering I got through, I am glad for it. I wouldn’t be the woman I am today without it. And for that, I forgive you for any pain you caused me.”
Jasmine turned around calmly went through the door and disappeared, leaving Rose, Lily and James alone in the living room. For the first time in decades, Lily Potter’s eyes weren’t so dim, she didn’t feel heartbroken. I guess this is what it meant to have closure.
