Freya Jade
Kai wasn't thrilled about their spontaneous plan to sneak in and get the memory. However, he was thrilled to have a way to maybe infiltrate Freya's crew. Freya apparently kept the memory on a necklace, but Jack hadn't seen her wear it. They assumed it may be in her room. They had to figure out a way to get close to her. They had surmised a plan, one that could potentially work if the timing was exact.
She and her brother spent time catching up a little as they traveled through the Underbelly. Duke was on guard perched on her shoulder but had affectionately nudged against Jack a few times. Jack was excited to hear their mum still had her shop and her dad still worked for the same hardware company.
"I'm nervous to see mum and dad." He looked down, "I must have been a real shame to them."
Samantha shook her head, "No, Jack. They've been looking for you. I didn't tell them I was coming here because I was sure they'd try to come too. I thought it would be better as a surprise when you come home."
He nodded, "The things I said about dad and about mum being a blood traitor, I must have hurt them."
"You were young and stupid. I forgive you if that makes a difference." She said smiling at him.
"So what about you? Other than being bloody amazing as an Editor-In-Chief, how are your trouble making friends? How's Ginny? Are you married? Any Kids?"
She looked at him with wide eyes. She neglected to tell him anything about her not having much of a social life, he didn't need to know what she'd given up.
"Sorry, too many questions. Sometimes when I had a few moments alone, I would imagine what everyone back home was doing. I always imagined you'd be an amazing journalist, and here you are, the greatest in the world. The Editor-In-Chief of the Daily Prophet, my little sister." He spoke with wild pride, something she had never known him to give.
"I also thought you'd be married and have a couple of little brats running around. Mum would love to have a bunch of grandkids running around and dad would deal with it." Jack and Samantha both chuckled. "I mean, I wasn't sure who you'd be married to. Maybe that Longbottom kid who'd always followed you around like a lost puppy, or one of those idiot Weasley boys." He rolled his eyes a little, "I'd have even been ok with the delinquent, since you and him did that whole radio program together. I just always imagined you surrounded by all your friends, having picnics and going to Quidditch matches. You know? Doing all those silly mundane activities people seem to enjoy."
"Well, I'm not married and no children, but I do throw the biggest Hogwarts Gazette Alumni Parties." She chuckled and scratched her neck. It hurt to think about if she were honest. "I buy out the whole Leaky Cauldron once a year. Two years ago I had the Weird Sisters perform, it was amazing."
"Wicked." Jack beamed with exceptional pride. "I never thought you'd be so cool Sammy."
"I wouldn't exactly say cool." She felt her face turning red.
"You two aren't together right?" Her brother asked nodding towards Kai who was just a bit ahead of them.
Samantha's thoughts fluttered back to their embarrassing tryst beside the fireplace just an hour before, "Merlin's beard no."
Her brother shrugged, "Sorry to ask, he's just your type that's all."
Samantha stopped walking, "I have a type?"
"You haven't changed at all Sammy." He smiled widely. "Still oblivious to your own life. Always more interested in what's on the page."
"I don't have a type." Samantha sat to thinking, her few romances all seemed impossibly different from each other.
"You have a type." Her brother chuckled, "Except that odd fellow you went to the ball with. I've never figured that one out."
Samantha shuddered, "He was French and I was fourteen. Now I'm curious, considering I haven't seen you in years, what's my type?"
"You prefer men with psychotic death wishes who were raised by a single parent or grandparent. They averagely have special interests, these special interests are always uncomfortable to you. You try to learn the special interest to escape your comfort zone, just to realize you secretly like it and the person." He chuckled and continued speaking in a casual way, "Extra points if they are close to a Weasley or two, and if they compliment your writing."
"Thought about this much?" She asked before they continued.
"In my solidarity, I have often considered the complexities of the woman's mind. Yours of course seemed one of the simplest to evaluate since I knew you the longest." He chuckled slyly. "Mum's desire for dad definitely stemmed from a deep craving for freedom and rebellion. Dad was the ultimate rebuttal to her family and their strict expectations."
"You haven't changed either." She laughed remembering how at one point she'd found his ramblings to be ridiculous. Now after years of living without them, they were almost a comfort.
"All right, come on you both." Kai yelled back waving them up as he looked around the corner of the alleyway near the Scales INN.
They hurried and followed up to reach him.
"Jack, you are going to take me to see Freya, I'll be your prisoner." Kai said, his eyes looked like cogs were racing through his mind.
He handed Jack his wand, "Give this to me if anything goes wrong. Samantha, you slip in and search Freya's room. We will be able to distract her for maybe twenty minutes, tops, then we have to get out of there. If you see my eggs, leave them there, I'll find another way to get them."
The three nodded in unison.
"Now come on Duke." Kai motioned to his little dragon who stayed on Samantha's shoulder, refusing to budge. "You come with me."
Duke stuck out a little tongue before flying up and climbing into Samantha's hair.
"I see how it is." He groaned to the little dragon. "Fine, you take care of her Duke. Not that she really needs it."
Samantha chuckled before pulling her cloak over her head and Duke. "I'll keep him safe. Let's do this."
She watched her brother grab Kai's arms and stride him over to the front door. Samantha waited till they were inside the building before Apparating into the room Jack had said was Freya's.
It was about as dilapidated as Jack's had been, but it had more items in it. She had several traveling trunks along with a closet full of clothes. Her room also had a pile of large silver dragon eggs in one corner. Duke went and flew around them excitedly.
"Don't worry Duke." She whispered, "Kai said he'd get them later."
Duke flew back to her shoulder.
"Accio Memory." She called, but nothing came. It must have had a charm to keep it from being magically retrieved. She began ransacking the room. She checked every closet and trunk.
She didn't find a memory, but she did find something interesting. At the bottom of one of her trunks was a picture. It showed a younger Kai Jones, dipping a beautiful young woman with blue streaks in her hair while dragons flew behind them. They were laughing and they looked at each other with a deepness Samantha couldn't describe. She only remembered when someone had looked at her like that. She stole the picture and stuffed it into her satchel, she'd give it to Kai. Maybe prove Freya still loved him too.
She continued digging in the trunks when Duke began hissing and whining at the open window behind her.
"Shhh." She whispered at the dragon before pulling out a golden pocket watch her mother had given her on her seventeenth birthday. Twenty minutes had nearly passed.
She could hear footsteps coming and several voices. She tucked her watch back away.
One voice was Jack's.
"Come one Jade, why would I even associate myself with this man? I saw him trying to sneak into your room."
She could hear Jack struggling.
"I'm not sure, but it seems awful suspicious that you just happened to catch him trying to steal the eggs." The voice Samantha assumed to be Freya Jade's answered back. She had a distinctly American accent. "Now be a good boy and tell me what's going on. Maybe, I'll give you your wand back Fyre."
They were caught. She couldn't just leave them there.
Duke kept hissing and pulling on her cloak towards the window. She jumped up and knew she couldn't jump out the window, it was too steep a drop.
She grabbed Duke before throwing him out the window he could fly away and be safe. Samantha began climbing under the bed. She wrapped herself in her cloak and tried to stay as quiet as she could.
She made it just in time as the door opened, light from he hallway flooding in.
Several curse words escaped Freya's mouth. Samantha could hear dozens of footsteps but she dared not look up on fear of discovery. The door closed and the lights went on.
"Someone's ransacked my room." Freya growled before Samantha felt something be thrown on the bed above her. She held her wand close, thinking of every defensive spell she knew.
"See?" Jack's voice sounded, "I wasn't lying Jade, he was climbing down from your room when I caught him. Now give me my wand back."
The voices of a few men's laughter sounded through.
"Then why, pray tell, is there still a stack of dragon eggs Fyre?" Freya cackled. "I know Jones pretty well, I know he would never leave dragon eggs here."
"Yeah, but why would your room be ransacked?" A booming voice sounded.
"I don't know." Freya surmised, "But the good thing about this room is, you can Apparate in, but not out.
Samantha felt like swearing, especially when she felt a tingling feeling. Someone had nonverbally enacted a human revealing spell.
Samantha felt her feet be grabbed and she was yanked from under the bed.
"Stupefy!" She yelled and hit the person before pointing her wand at everyone in her path. Spells went flying around the room and she did her best to fight back, but she was only one person and there were six or seven other people in the room. Even after she was disarmed she kept physically fighting until two men had hold of both of her arms.
"Hold her back now." Freya yelled, holding both her, her brother and Kai's wands in her back jean pocket. She was thin, with burn scars up and down her arms. She only had some of the hair with blue streaks, it looked like half of her hair had been singed off. She strode up to Samantha and sized her up.
Samantha had a man on each arm, and each man had a foot on one of her feet, keeping her from kicking. Samantha struggled against the arms of both men still.
She was able to survey the situation briefly. A man was holding her brother back, while Kai was sprawled out on the bed, hopefully only stunned.
"Don't touch her Jade." Jack said aggressively, "I'll murder you."
"I doubt it. Mr. Anti Murder is going to kill me?" Freya rolled her eyes at him. "And I'll touch what I want."
Freya grabbed Samantha's cheeks and tilted her face. "You are feisty."
"Get off me." Samantha growled back.
Freya asked letting go, "Who are you?"
"Rebel Jones." She lied.
"Jones?" Freya looked her over.
"Didn't Copernicus say Jones was with a woman he said was his wife?" The man holding Jack asked. "Didn't he say she beat him to an inch of his life?"
Freya nodded, "Is that you sweetheart?"
Samantha lied, "Of course. I'm here to get his dragon eggs back."
Freya cackled again looking back to Kai's stunned body, "Oh sure. I can't believe any woman would be desperate enough to marry Kai."
"Well, call me desperate." Samantha quipped.
"My real question though, is how Fyre here knows you." Freya pointed at him with her wand.
"I don't know her." Jack lied and continued struggling.
"You just said you'd murder me if I touched her." Freya coughed. She then tilted her head at Jack before looking back to Samantha and scanning her. "Wait a minute, is this a resemblance I see?"
"No." Both Fyre children exclaimed, identically.
Freya and everyone in the room laughed heartily.
"No, there is." Freya laughed before pointing to Jack's face. "The freckles, the curly hair, the exponential hatred of authority, it all makes sense."
"I don't know what you are talking about." Samantha breathlessly said before meeting her bother's eyes.
"Oh, how didn't I see this?" Freya exclaimed. "Let go of her, now don't fight me honey, unless you'd like to join Jones over there."
"Did you kill him?" Samantha asked, "Because I'll have a real problem if you did."
She pouted with her face a bit, "Unfortunately for me, I still have a soft spot for that idiot. I wouldn't kill him unless he makes me. Now play nice sweetheart."
Samantha grunted as they let go of her, but she stayed still. Freya walked around her in a circle before grabbing Samantha's right hand and pulling it up looking at the scar on it.
She squealed, "Oh this is rich. It's really there and everything. Just like big brother said."
Samantha grunted, "Get off of me."
Freya stepped around her and pulled up the back of her hair up aggressively, "Where'd you get these though? Only dragon trainers have these."
"I was set on fire." Samantha spitefully responded.
"Well, that was never in any of the stories about you." Freya threw her hair down before putting her wand to one side of her neck. She leaned her head on the other and whispered in her ear. "It's nice to meet the famed Samantha Fyre."
"Who?" One of the men who had been holding her asked.
"Remember the article that went around when Voldemort was destroyed?" Freya asked.
He and the other men around them nodded.
"She wrote that. She's also the Editor of the Daily Prophet, the biggest source of news in the UK." Freya chuckled and kissed Samantha's cheek.
"Editor-In-Chief." Samantha reminded with a sarcastic laugh.
"Oh this is a treat. I always imagined famous authors to be old and ugly. You my dear are neither."
"Don't hurt her! Don't you dare hurt her Jade!" Jack called at her. "I'll do whatever you want, memory or no memory."
"Is that what you are here for?" Freya took her chin off of Samantha's shoulder. She kept her wand to her neck. She reached down her shirt and held up a chain with a bottle at the end. "You are here for this? Set big brother free? I do hate to separate families, let's keep you together now shall we?"
Freya turned to look at the people around her. "If someone had control of you, they could control an entire world. They could form the news however they wanted." She stepped back around Samantha to face her again, "I wonder what that's worth?"
She lifted her wand to Samantha's temple. It was warm and sharp against her skull. "Now, beautiful, you've put up a real fight, but I think you are too valuable to get rid of."
Kai was stirring off the bed and began to stand up. His eye was swelled up and his mouth was bleeding. "Let them go Freya."
"Go back to sleep Kai, if you know what's good for you!" Freya snapped. Her face's maniacal smile dropped. "I'll be happy to deal with you later, you may even like it a little."
"No." Kai said standing up fully and tried to charge at her. A man grabbed him from behind.
At the same time, the door to the room opened, a bigger woman leaned in, "Jade, I think we may have a situation."
"I'll handle it in a moment Gracelyn." Freya snapped, pulling the top of Samantha's hair and getting closer to her again.
Samantha tried to wrap her arm around Freya to grab her wand. Samantha noticed as she tried, that ever so slightly a paper that had once been on an end table, was now falling towards the floor.
"I'm going to take over this little whore's mind." Freya whispered, "Imp-"
"No one messes with my best friend." A red haired woman materialized behind her and she pointed a wand at the back of Freya's head. It was Ginny. Ginny pulled the three wands from Freya's back pocket. No one in the room moved, everyone seemed stunned by her materialization.
"Who are-" Freya began but she was interrupted by a swift punch to the face by Ginny. She fell onto the floor.
Samantha took the opportunity and pulled the necklace right off of Freya's neck. She stuffed it into her skirt pocket.
The men began firing spells. One spell almost hit Ginny, but she was an expert at shield charms.
The doors bursted open. People came flooding in. All people Samantha knew, but she didn't waste time identifying them immediately. Ginny handed her wand to her before tossing Kai and Jack's wands to them.
"What the bloody hell are you doing here?" Samantha asked.
"Saving your life of course." Ginny laughed musically. "Did you really think I'd let my best friend do something stupid without me?" She fired a spell at one of the men while they were back to back.
"I love you Gin." Samantha yelled out before joining the escape.