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galadriel1010Biography: Jasmine Angela Penrica Nox was born sometime in 1986 to supporters of the dark lord Voldemort. They already had an older daughter, named Emerald (Emmy) Slytherine Virtua Nox. Her parents were rich and reclusive, and nearly a year passed between any of their friends seeing them; during this time Jasmine was born, but they never recorded a date of birth, merely registering her when they visited London for Emmy’s first day at Hogwarts school of Witchcraft and Wizardry.
Jasmine was largely ignored by her parents, even with Emerald out of the house at school. She was raised mainly by the house elves, but developed a dislike of them at a young age due to their unswerving loyalty to her parents. A naturally gifted child, being just the latest of a long line of pure blood witches and wizards, her rejection and isolation caused her magic to develop in dangerous and unexpected ways. By the time she reached seven years old she was prone to uncontrolled bursts of magic which manifested when she was angry or bored. Scared and annoyed by their daughter, her parents persuaded Dumbledore that he should accept her at Hogwarts early, for their and her protection. Due to her parent’s implication in the first war and his memories of his sister’s tragic death due to similar circumstances, Dumbledore accepted and placed her in the care of the Head Girl of the time, Amber Black (the daughter of Sirius Black), who he expected to return to the school the following year even after she left. His expectations turned out to be accurate, as Amber married the Potions’ Master, Severus Snape, during the summer and returned to the school as his wife and in a student counsellor role.
Jasmine started the September after Emmy left at eight years old, was sorted into Ravenclaw (Amber‘s house), and took lessons both with Amber alone and in a class with other members of her year. She excelled only in Defence Against the Dark Arts, although her teachers frequently commented that she was more likely to hit anything attacking her than hex it. Even so young, her disillusionment with the magical world was starting to manifest itself.
Her close relationship with Amber and Severus Snape and her cynicism didn’t appeal her to many students, who either thought her too young or too opinionated, and for the most part she kept her head down and got on with her work. When war broke out again, however, her parents quickly and publicly allied themselves with Voldemort once again, and she allied herself with Dumbledore’s Army and the Order of the Phoenix. During the course of the war year, Amber Snape was forced to go into hiding, partly due to the fact that Voldemort discovered her opposition to his plans, which jeopardised the life of her husband, and partly due to an argument with him. Whilst Amber hid in the Room of Requirement with other members of Dumbledore’s Army, Jasmine acted as a go between for her and Snape. Voldemort discovered this and ordered Snape to capture her, but he managed to get word to her before he was forced to do this.
Jasmine’s main appeal to Voldemort was her young age, she was only 11 or 12 years old, and her association with Dumbledore’s Army and the resistance, and he believed that her death or conversion to his cause would severely demoralise the resistance fighters. In an attempt to capture her, he turned on her parents and threatened to execute them if she didn’t turn herself in. Jasmine stayed hidden in the Room of Requirement and Voldemort carried through on his word, killing both of her parents. Although she had no desire to ever see them again, let alone acknowledge them as her parents, the guilt over their deaths lingered for many years.
During the final Battle of Hogwarts, Jasmine was sent by Amber to get a message to Snape. She managed to track him to the Shrieking Shack and stepped in in time to persuade Voldemort that killing him would not achieve anything. Her arguments and explanations, in order to save Snape and still leave Voldemort believing that he was in possession of the Elder Wand, relied on him believing that she was the one he needed to kill. (She leapt from her hiding place and ran across the room, snatching Snape’s wand from him as she did so, thus disarming him.) Her willingness to die, a self sacrifice she believed was necessary, and her lack of resistance gave her a choice like was provided to Harry, but in her case there was no one there waiting for her. She therefore chose to return and take a chance at life (mainly rather than the potential of facing her mother).
At the end of the war year, the Snapes returned as Headmaster and Potions Mistress of Hogwarts and legally adopted Jasmine. Older students, Jasmine included, resat that year, so she left Hogwarts two years later at the age of fourteen.
One year later, she was staying on her own in London at the Leaky Cauldron for a while, needing to get away from the place that held so many bad memories for her. Walking across muggle London, regretting having chosen to live as her life seemed as empty as ever, she was attacked by an alien. This seemed like the desired way out, but she was saved by Captain Jack Harkness along with the Doctor and Rose, although she asked him not to save her. This, along with her severe injuries, convinced Jack that he couldn’t leave her behind and his actions in saving her were enough to convince the Doctor to agree with him.
Jasmine recovered on the TARDIS and initially resented Jack and the others for saving her life, but as she travelled with them and encountered her first alien culture (apart from the Doctor) she realised that they had actually given her the second chance she had wanted. Over the course of a year, her relationship with Jack shifted, until his near death experience on the Novrosk Peninsular forced her to face up to her affection for him, whilst he had acknowledged the attraction and affection before but never believed anything could come of it due to the age difference. They took a chance on a relationship together and seemed to have settled into a sort of partnership. As well as her relationship with Jack, Jasmine had also found close friends for the first time in her life with the Doctor and Rose, and despite taking the opportunity when they visited Cardiff to take her apparition exam, she embraced the new world of technology she had been introduced to and largely rejected the magic she had grown up with.
This partnership was ripped apart after two years aboard the TARDIS, when both she and Jack were killed by Daleks aboard Satellite 5, but separately. Rose, with the power of Bad Wolf, brought them both back to life, but neither was aware of the other’s survival. Jack, believing that she was dead, used his Vortex Manipulator to try to find the Doctor again, whilst Jasmine was rescued from the space station by a man calling himself simply ‘Aladdin’ (he rescued her with his ‘magic carpet’, Jasmine became simply ‘Princess’). They travelled together for some years, during which time Jasmine entered into a marriage of convenience which provided her with her first miscarriage and her first widowhood. She became an embittered freedom fighter, joining any resistance group which would have her. When Aladdin started to fear for her sanity (having realised that she was immortal), he returned them to Earth in the hope that it would help her to find herself again.
This plan backfired enormously, but still succeeded, due to Emmy. The older sister had survived the War and blamed Jasmine for their parents’ deaths and the downfall of the dark forces. She captured her sister and tried to get revenge by killing her, but discovered that she didn’t stay dead. Furious, Emmy killed Jasmine repeatedly, searching for the source of her immortality and a way to end it.
The continuous deaths and torture she suffered, combined with her already fragile state of mind, triggered hysterical amnesia, causing Jasmine to lose all idea of her own identity and history. Aladdin eventually rescued her, killing Emmy in the process, but was too late to save her. The only solution that he could see to her vulnerability combined with her suppressed knowledge of alien cultures and her immortality was to leave her in the care of UNIT. With only a limited explanation of her situation, and a promise to return for her in a few years, he left her to continue his search for his former lover.
Her physical recovery complete, UNIT were at a loss for what to do with her. Technically, as they had realised that she had travelled in time and space from Aladdin’s explanation, she was a prisoner, but she was a prisoner with no recollection of the reason for her being a prisoner and as she was human they should release her with surveillance. On the other hand, she had no identity and therefore made the perfect UNIT personnel. Whilst they tried to decide what to do with her, she was asked to help out in the archives and showed a proficiency, creating a new archiving system which sped up the whole reporting and researching process.
Around this time, rumours of the revival of Torchwood 1 as a global archive were mooted and UNIT heads saw the opportunity to control the information. They therefore recommended their personal Jane Doe as head archivist there. This was approved by the few organisations they gave a say in the matter, and Jane Donovan became the head of Torchwood 1, thus giving UNIT a theoretical leverage over the wayward Cardiff branch of the organisation.
Unsurprisingly, the controlling attitude of certain high ranking UNIT personnel (among them Commander Mace) did nothing to appeal them to Jasmine, who did her best to set herself up as an independent, deliberately allying herself with the team in Cardiff as a statement of political alliance (much like she had with Dumbledore’s Army. Not because she wanted to be with them, but because she didn’t want to be with anyone else). To form her team she recruited the whole of an extraterrestrial conspiracy theory group who were particularly interested in the actions of Torchwood (Torchwatch). As Ianto Jones had been part of this group before he was recruited to Torchwood 1 by his then girlfriend Lisa Hallett, the relationship between the two organisations was always likely to be close, but Jasmine was able to befriend him on her own through her lack of preconceptions and her desire to remember the victims of the Battle of Canary Wharf.
Through this friendship, and Ianto’s desire to bring the Cardiff archive into the same system as UNIT’s archive and the new central Torchwood Archive, she visited the team in Cardiff, where she was reunited with Jack Harkness. This alone did little to trigger her suppressed memories, but when she read a report he had written recalling his own experiences of Daleks, it reminded her of her own experiences (they were the same experience, after all) and her memories returned fully.
With a full knowledge of who she was and who she had been, Jasmine recognised the final complete chance to start afresh and kept the surname she had been given by UNIT in a total rejection of her magical upbringing, although it still provided her with an alternative perspective and an alternative knowledge base for her work.
She went travelling with the Doctor again after the creation and apparent death of his daughter Jenny and stepped in to save the life of Roger Curbishley. Her twenty-first century attitude to sexuality initially brought her into conflict with his parents, but when she suggested that she provide a legitimate relationship and (hopefully) heirs to the name and title they accepted, on the condition that they didn’t do it in the house whilst his father still lived. Roger, Jasmine and Roger’s lover Davenport therefore emigrated to the USA. They have been living there for a few years when an invasion attempt by Daleks in New York was prevented by the Doctor, prompting the formation of a Torchwood style defence organisation. Jasmine offered her services and experience and was eventually chosen as the leader of Liberty Towers.
Shortly before the outbreak of World War Two, Sir Hugh Curbishley died, enabling Roger to return to his home, taking Davenport (who became the new butler of the house) and his five children by Jasmine with him. Jasmine, however, remained in New York, and the word was put about that she had died, which theoretically was why Roger had returned to England. Tragically, only two of her children survived the war, as two died serving their country and one was killed in a direct hit on an air raid shelter. Their youngest son remained in the UK and inherited his father’s titles, but the eldest daughter returned to the US to live with an American pilot and to be closer to her mother.
One of Jasmine’s greatest regrets is allowing her son-in-law to join Liberty Towers, an ever growing organisation, as it led to many of her descendants being involved with the lifestyle she wanted to protect them from.
Now stuck on the slow path, Jasmine had to avoid the world of alien investigation she had got so used to and also avoid any major historical events. She therefore spent her time studying, attending universities across America with fake identities provided by Liberty Towers and gaining degrees in such varied subjects as Forensics and Criminology, Teaching, English Literature and Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. A slight miscalculation meant that she actually returned to the UK two weeks after she left, and returned to discover that Owen Harper had died and been resurrected in her absence.
She returned to London and resumed control of the Torchwood Archive, but with a much more flexible attitude to where she worked. As a result, she enlarged her team, enabling her to take her skills around the world to where they were most needed, working on translations in pyramids in Latin America, on training in China and on recruitment in Australia, to name but a few. She also took control of the Cardiff branch more, giving the small team a chance to get away more often, a particular relief for Captain Harkness.
She and the Captain came into conflict more often in the aftermath of his brother’s horrific attacks on Cardiff, due both to her overbearing concern for him and her renewed relationship with ‘Aladdin’, now known as John Hart. Although Jack didn’t blame him for what had happened in the city, others did, Ianto Jones in particular. Jasmine had rejected his advances when they had been travelling before, due to the still too recent loss of Jack, but was now determined to take the chance, whilst Hart was determined to prove to Ianto that he could change and also determined not to lose Jasmine again. She was prepared to give him some of her limitless time, unlike Jack, so their relationship was based initially on his revenge on Jack for rejecting him and her need for reassurance.
By the time Jasmine travelled to Las Vegas to help out at the crime lab there, however, their relationship had become a much more mutual one of trust and affection, or at least great sex, and he followed her there with Jack and Ianto. The couple had actually been drawn together by trying to repair the damaged relationship between the two men and both relationships drew together sufficiently for the two former time agents to propose marriage, although not at the same time. (John proposed at Jack and Ianto’s civil partnership)
Shortly after Jack and Ianto’s civil partnership ceremony, Ianto disappeared mysteriously in the middle of the night. Jack was left distraught and terrified and relied heavily on both Jasmine and John during this time , especially when they located Ianto and he had to leave the team behind to go to retrieve him.
Jasmine and Jack work together frequently, as she will often call on him to lead field assignments wherever she is in the world. He is the first person she calls on in such a situation, although it is clear that the river of respect still does not run in both directions. Jasmine’s slim build, blonde hair and permanent 17 years old appearance do not lend to getting respect, often a problem when she goes overseas to work with other teams, and she has known to belligerent with anyone who does not give her the respect she desires. She is a high ranking official (technically outranking Jack even) and uses this on anyone who annoys her. As well as this, she is also experienced with computers and uses techniques like ‘Rick-Rolling’, ‘rubberising’ files (moving form their original locations but with a command to return to place after a certain length of time) and the Crazy Frog to punish people she feels deserve it. Late report submissions are frequently punished with an inbox full of spam.
Despite all this, when people eventually meet her they tend to get on with her, as she has a cheerful, positively bubbly personality, and will flirt with anyone who moves (guess where she got that from). She is fiercely defensive of her friends, and is drawn more to people who dislike her initially and gay men. Her reasoning for the latter tends to revolve around the fact that they’re less likely to take her flirting seriously, but this doesn’t explain why she avoids heterosexual women.
Her cynicism has been tamed slightly over the years, but her outlook on life is still jaded. Despite this, she retains a strong faith in something more than the physical, although has been has been heard to say that she hasn’t decided whether it’s benevolent, malevolent or simply watching.
