A silver glow lit up the dark of Commander Connors' office. Joey was surprised by how easy it was to get in, but the wards didn't differentiate the time of day. It sensed the magical signatures of known Aurors and let them right in.

Harry poured Dahlia's memory into the Pensieve. Incomprehensive images swirled in red, brown, and green, then the surface grew still, liquid moonlight waiting for observers.

Both Draco and Harry hesitated, giving each other one of those glances that Joey had no hope of decrypting. "What are we waiting for?" She demanded.

"It's just…." Harry began, waving his hands about vaguely. "I thought we knew Dahlia. I'm scared, honestly. Of what we'll see."

"She helped us in the end," Draco reminded him. "Remember that."

Harry nodded, steeling himself. Together, all three Aurors leaned forward and tipped themselves into the Pensieve.

• • •

"I don't want power. Not like you do."

It took Joey a few moments to register what she was hearing. The words sounded Thai, but somehow Joey understood exactly what they meant.

A woman wearing a Nirvana T-shirt and torn jeans leaned against the ashy brick of an alley. It was Dahlia, black hair in a buzzcut, eyes smudged with eyeliner. A cigarette, forgotten, trailed smoke in her hand.

In front of her stood another woman, her hair braided, her blouse a familiar shade of crimson.

"You don't have to do anything," said the second woman, and Joey realized with a jolt that it was Dao, her eyes wide and young, her face smooth save for the crinkled brow. "Only come back home. Please."

"Boston is my home now," Dahlia replied. "It's good for me, being around wizards who aren't so… radical."

"The phut ham rai is radical?" Dao spat, stepping back as if Dahlia had insulted her. "The fire-wielders who killed your family - our families are far worse enemies. Perhaps you've joined them, too? Or do you stand alone?"

Dahlia ignored this last barb, flicking her cigarette. A tiny ember landed at Dao's feet. "Kayala didn't want us calling it that."

"I will lead us soon enough," Dao said proudly, straightening. "I've told you my plan."

Dahlia suddenly looked sick. She dropped the cigarette and squashed it under the heel of an impressively grungy black boot. "That's a complicated spell. You won't find anyone in time."

Dao smirked, retrieving a folded newspaper from her pocket. She tossed it onto the concrete, and a bolt of ice shot through Joey as she recognized the mark seething beneath the headline: You-Know-Who's Reign of Terror Peaks in England. It seemed to be a paper similar to the Daily Prophet. "This is the killer running loose a continent away. Light will always rise against the darkness, no?"

Dahlia picked up the paper with increasing curiosity. She mouthed a word, one that Joey found she understood perfectly. Auror. "Yes, it will," Dahlia said confidently. "And someone may rise against you one day. If you're not careful."

"Is that a threat?"

"No. A warning."

The scene dissolved into smoke. The next memory was nothing but a fragment. Joey saw the same burning village she had in Dao's vision in the forest. Dahlia, only a child, screaming as her tiny arm squeezed around the windpipe of a black-robed wizard. The entire village crawled with them, and Joey felt Dahlia's fear as she was surrounded and the strange power that crackled through her fingertips, slaying her enemy.

Then, the Pensieve brought them back to a city again, in front of an old, brick and white stone building dwarfed by skyscrapers; all the facades were blurred in torrential rain.

Dahlia, in a bright yellow slicker, found Dao huddled beneath the old building's overhang. A few years had passed; Dahlia's hair had grown to just above her shoulders.

"I should be offering my congratulations," Dao said in dry, sarcastic English. "Top of your class and bound to be a do-good soldier for a country that's not yours."

"I came to help you, Dao," Dahlia said with a scowl. "You want it or not?"

"Fine."

Dahlia dug around in her jeans pocket, pulling out an amulet made from gold, its charm dangling with a ruby that glistened as if on fire.

Dao regarded the necklace with disdain. "Switching to wands, now, are we?"

"This isn't so ordinary anymore. I've changed it." Dahlia sighed heavily. "I killed someone, only once. Something good came out of it, if you'll believe it."

Then Joey heard something through the rain pounding the pavement. A tinny whispering, malicious and beckoning, emitting from the amulet.

"Oh, fuck me," Harry gasped, and Joey looked at him sharply. "A Horcrux."

"A what?" Joey asked as Draco turned as white as snow. Both he and Harry were staring at Dahlia in horror.

"Killing someone rips one's soul," Draco whispered to Joey as Dao took the amulet and looked it over. Harry was shaking his head, lips pressed together. "One could take the piece and place it into an object. It's very Dark magic. The Dark Lord himself used it. I have no idea why Dahlia would do it, of all people."

Ripping the soul? Joey touched her own chest, aware of how fast her heart was beating. She had killed six people. Out of necessity, maybe. With a sense of justice. But the fact made her akin to a Dark wizard, someone who'd hurt Harry and Draco and countless others. It didn't exactly make her jump for joy.

The Aurors didn't need a detective to guess who Dahlia had learned the magic from. Dao grinned in recognition, curling the chain around her palm. "So, you've found a use for it. I'm glad."

"It hurt to do it," Dahlia murmured. "Keep it with you. Keep me with you."

Her eyes shone with love, loyalty. Her hand reached out as if to curl around Dao's wrist, but Dahlia couldn't do it. Joey blushed, suddenly feeling like she was seeing and hearing something that ought not to be witnessed.

"If this is your idea of a protection charm," Dao said, apparently unmoved, "I'm not impressed. Just because I use Dark magic on occasion doesn't mean I want to wear it around my neck."

Dahlia shook her head emphatically. "That's not what I meant. I thought… you could implement it. Into the mask."

Dao raised her eyebrows. "You'd become one of the souls. A part of you, at least."

Dahlia nodded.

"Well. I suppose that's useful. You'd empty yourself for me." Dao's eyes gleamed wickedly as if imagining harvesting the rest of Dahlia, but either Dahlia missed it or didn't care. "I thank you. But you should know, I've found another right hand."

A flash of jealousy crossed Dahlia's face, but she quickly schooled her expression. "Who?"

"You don't know them. A poor orphan I plucked from the streets. They needed guidance, so I took them in." Dao raised and lowered one shoulder. "Small prices to pay for a servant. They're a slippery little rabbit."

scene changed again. Joey barely had enough time to take in a sunlit, cobblestone-walled classroom before Dahlia's voice, slightly deeper, said:

"My…My closest friend… she's chosen a path worse than death." Dahlia's fists were clenched over a torn envelope the color of fresh blood and an accompanying letter.

"I'm sorry," Harry said, and Joey blinked, confused, looking back and forth between the smooth-faced Harry in black robes standing near the back of the classroom, and the unshaven Harry in a Muggle T-shirt and flannel, watching the scene with rapt attention. Harry from the past was obviously a few years younger, looking awkward as his professor's voice shook.

"Keep your friends close, Harry," Dahlia demanded. "Don't ever let them stray."

The emotion in Dahlia's voice was such that the younger Harry seemed affected, eyes shining and voice breaking slightly. "Yes, Professor."

"Promise me."

"I promise."

Out of the corner of her eye, Joey saw Draco slip his hand into Harry's. As the student Harry left, the trio moved closer to Dahlia's desk, looking over her shoulder at the letter. Most of the words had been blurred by time, but two sentences stood out in black ink.

The rabbit and the tiger move to silence the snake. We proceed.

Dahlia crumpled the page in her hand. The empty chamber filled with the sound of her weeping as the memory dissolved into silver.

• • •

Joey didn't stop thinking about the memories for a long time. Not after Harry said, "The Ministry can't get their hands on this," and Draco nodded silently. Not after all three destroyed the memories and the vial and went home. Not after a night of staring at the ceiling and a morning of nursing a mug of black coffee.

The image of a child strangling a man, no matter how despicable he might have been, was burned into Joey's mind. She couldn't help but be reminded of herself. She replayed the sight of Draco's and Harry's figures huddled around a corpse in the rain. It was as if Dahlia had reached out from death, showing Joey the decisions she'd made and where it had led her.

Killing rips the soul. A life for a life.

It made Joey feel, with increasing certainty, that she'd done the right thing becoming an Auror. She and her partners had spared Dao, leaving her to the fate she'd carved for herself at the hands of the Thai government. Revenge didn't have to be taken in blood. Joey realized that now.

She was sitting at her desk, writing a letter to Latifah, when the sound of fluffing feathers at the window caught her attention. Joey turned, expecting the gray plumage of Harry's and Draco's owl, but this bird was only vaguely familiar. Its lamplike yellow eyes observed Joey as she plucked an envelope from its beak, and the owl didn't fly away until she'd opened it.

Auror Clarke,

This letter is an official Ministry notice. The request for Draco Lucius Malfoy and Narcissa Black Malfoy's criminal trial by Wizengamot has been approved. Expect time and location details at a later date.

Copies of this notice have been sent to Mr. Malfoy and Auror Harry Potter.

Commander Caroline Obianagha Danjuma

Head Auror, Department of Magical Law Enforcement

iustitia perit in tenebris

Joey sat down on the edge of her bed and reread the letter. Then she read it a third time. She thought of Draco and Harry - her friends - and their astonished and happy faces when they opened their envelope.

"Daalu, nwanne nne," Joey murmured.

Draco was freed from twenty years of servitude. Or so Joey hoped. It felt good just to do that, and she was surprised by it, that she cared so much.

She flopped back onto her bed with a relieved sigh, in the safety of the apartment that had finally started to feel like home.

[Translation from Igbo:

Thank you, Auntie.]