The news of the Halloween night attacks didn't make the Daily Prophet until Saturday morning.
Rachel frowned down at the article. "They don't say how many were killed. They just say muggles." Somehow she knew that there was more than the attack she saw. She knew, with that same knowledge that told her the Dark Lord wasn't willing to wait for politics to head in his direction.
"They're probably trying not to spread panic," Theo said, though he was also frowning as he leaned in to read the article.
"Look at this though. 'Some of the muggles may be related to muggleborn witches and wizards within the community, but nothing has been confirmed as of this time.' There's no way they don't know. They have to know, don't they?" Rachel asked, thinking of Cedric and his friends taking Martin and Martin's family out of the country this summer.
"Maybe not. Maybe they're still identifying the muggles who were killed," Millie said. "Rachel, Hermione's parents did have their home warded, didn't they?"
"Yes. She convinced them it was necessary." Rachel twisted around to look out over the rest of the school. It was early and it was a Saturday so there were only about forty other students in the Great Hall at the moment. "What about everyone else though?"
"I'm sure the school has spoken with the muggleborn families of students by now," Theo said.
Rachel quickly did the math. If muggleborns were about ten percent of the magical population, that meant around thirty students at Hogwarts would be muggleborn. Could the Order protect all of their families?
She turned back to the paper and looked at the article again. How many people had died that night? Maybe it would panic people if they published it in the paper, but maybe people needed to be panicked. People should be scared, they should be downright terrified, and then they should be doing something about it. She might be the only one who could deal with the Dark Lord, but there was nothing protecting the Death Eaters.
The Dark Lord on his own could only do so much damage. He could only be in one place at a time. His Death Eaters were what made him dangerous on this scale.
She exhaled as she took the full brunt of understanding of why the Dark Lord had cursed the Defense position. It hadn't just been about him wanting the Defense position, if he had ever truly wanted it in the first place. In general, the only reason people took a NEWT in Defense was if they needed it for a career. No one wanted to risk being stuck with a terrible teacher for a year or even two years. And no one in the past thirty years had a Defense class that was taught by the same professor for more than a year.
There was no one who could stand up to the Death Eaters. Everyone with the skills was already in the MLE. And the rest of the population had been taught by the likes of Umbridge and Lockhart. Add to that a fair portion of people who would ally with the Dark Lord in order to save themselves or their families, or just because they believed in what the Dark Lord was doing. No wonder they had been losing the war. There was almost no one to fight it.
"Do you want to skip Hogsmeade today? You look like you're having a hard day," Millie said, peering at Rachel.
"No, I want to go. We're going to see Sirius and Remus for lunch." In truth, Rachel did not want to go. The idea of going to Hogsmeade had been filling her with a cold dread for nearly a week now. But she thought it was important to go, and not just to see Sirius and Remus. She needed to prove - to herself - that she could go and would be just fine doing it.
Millie looked at her for a long moment. "If you're sure," she finally said, though she sounded uncertain.
"Professor Snape is coming with us, isn't he?" Theo asked.
"Yes. I'm not allowed to go unless he's with me. And there will be aurors and Order members in Hogsmeade as well." None of that really made her feel better, but she was glad Severus was going with her. The idea that Severus could grab her and apparate her to safety at a moment's notice was the only thing that was keeping her from being completely frozen with fright at the idea of going.
"I'm sure they're making it as safe as they possibly can. And the Death Eaters aren't going to want to attack Hogsmeade when their own children are there," Theo reasoned.
Rachel wasn't too sure about that. From what she'd seen thus far, Death Eaters seemed to show a somewhat callous disregard for their children, particularly in matters relating to the Dark Lord. She knew they weren't all like Theo and Draco's fathers, but she also truly believed that if the Dark Lord ordered one of his Death Eaters to sacrifice their child, most of them would do it.
She grimaced and began looking through the rest of the newspaper. It was the usual nonsense that apparently passed for journalism in the magical world. After glancing through an in depth article that was about charming cheese, and thus now knowing more about cheese production than she really wished to, Rachel set aside the paper.
"Anything?" Theo asked.
"Not unless you want to know how to charm cheese so you can age it without waiting several months."
"I think I'll pass, thanks," he said. "Shall we go get our cloaks?"
Rachel nodded and got to her feet. This was really happening. She was really going back to Hogsmeade.
They went back into the common room and split up to their respective dorms. Pansy and Daphne were still getting ready for the day, both of them on Daphne's bed while she did her make-up.
"Daphne's meeting Robert in the Entrance Hall to go to Hogsmeade with him, they're going to Madam Puttifoots," Pansy told them.
"Robert who?" Millie asked.
"Robert Hilliard, he's the seventh year Ravenclaw prefect. I introduced them," Pansy said.
"It's just one date. I don't even know if I like him," Daphne said, focusing on her eyeliner. "Prefects aren't my usual type."
"You said you'd try," Pansy said.
"And this is trying, I'm going to meet up with him and we'll see how it goes," Daphne said.
Rachel exchanged glances with Millie as she finished getting her cloak and money pouch from her wardrobe. It was a nice reminder that the situation could be worse. She could be dealing with a date.
"Well, good luck. I hope it goes well. We'll see you later. We'll probably be back after lunch if you two want to do Arithmancy after dinner," Millie said.
"Sounds good," Daphne said.
"Glad it's not me," Millie said as soon as they were out the door.
"Me too," Rachel agreed.
"I've decided I'm just not going to date while I'm at Hogwarts. It's not worth it. And Sarah isn't going to go out with me anyway."
"Did you ask her?" Rachel asked, a little surprised. She hadn't realized there was someone that Millie liked enough to want to go out with.
"No, but she was dating Jason last year," Millie said with a shrug. "And I know that doesn't mean she doesn't like girls too, but I still don't think she'd go out with me."
Rachel settled for shrugging. She had no idea what to tell Millie about that.
"Next stop is Professor Snape's office?" Theo asked.
"Yes," Rachel said. There was a small inside part of her that was starting to panic. She swallowed past the lump in her throat and led the way to Severus' office. "I'll go see if he's ready."
His office was empty, so she went through the wall and into the sitting room. Severus was in his armchair with a copy of the Daily Prophet and an empty tea cup.
"Are you certain you wish to do this?" he asked as he set aside the paper.
"Yes." There was no other answer she could give. She needed to do this. "How many muggles died on Thursday night?"
"I don't know. There will be an Order meeting tomorrow, I'm sure I'll learn more then," he said as he retrieved his cloak.
"It was a lot, wasn't it?" she pressed.
"I don't know how many, Rachel, but there were a number of attacks." He came to a stop and looked at her.
"Did the Order put wards on the homes of the muggleborn students who are at Hogwarts?"
"On the homes of all of those who would allow us to, and a few muggleborn students withdrew entirely to be schooled somewhere else. We protected as many people as who would allow us to do so. Rachel, we do not have to go to Hogsmeade today if you are not ready. Or, if you'd prefer, you and I can go another day so you do not have to do this in front of your peers," he offered.
She shook her head. "I want to go. And those questions didn't have anything to do with Hogsmeade. Theo says the Daily Prophet is trying not to cause panic by not publishing the number of muggles who died."
"Theo's probably right, though it's also possible that the MLE simply doesn't know the number yet either. We work with the Department of Magical Transportation and the Office of the Misuse of Magic to try and identify the attacks as they're happening, but it's an imperfect system. In the magical world, people will report if someone goes missing. So many muggles go missing or die every day just due to ordinary muggle causes that we can't always know when there was a magical attack on muggles," he explained.
Rachel felt her eyes start to water. "The family I saw get killed, they're not even going to be able to identify them, are they? Because of the fire."
"If they were in their own home, then there will be records of who lived there. You were planning on meeting Black and Lupin for lunch?" he asked.
Rachel nodded.
"Then I will walk you to The Three Broomsticks when it's time, if you still want to go, but I think we need to stay here for now."
She could feel panic building in her chest. "I'm fine, Severus."
"If you were looking at yourself right now, I don't think you would say that you were fine. We are going to stay here and take a break this morning. You can still see Black and Lupin when it's time. Are your friends waiting outside my office?"
She nodded again, not trusting herself to speak.
"I'll let them know," he said, brushing past her to go through the wall.
Angry and frustrated, Rachel went into her room, shut the door behind her hard, and took off her cloak. After standing still for a minute she went into the bathroom and looked at herself in the mirror. "I'm fine," she said to her reflection, but she could see the edges of her mouth quivering and the unshed tears in her eyes and the way her chest moved as she tried to breathe.
This wasn't fair. She was supposed to be fine. She'd taken the last of the modified Nerve Tonic last night and she was supposed to be better now.
She turned on the cold water tap and took off her glasses. Now her reflection in the mirror was a little blurry and that was a little easier. Leaning down, she cupped her hands and splashed her face with water. Somehow that wasn't enough to stop the panic that was spreading through her body. She felt like a ghost, like she was walking around in someone else's skin.
She turned off the tap and stepped into the shower stall and turned on the cold water. She felt herself gasp as it hit her face and then spat out the water that had gotten in her mouth. Somewhere in the back of her mind she was aware that she was standing fully dressed in the shower, that she'd left the shower curtain open and was making a mess on the floor, and that this was what crazy people probably did. None of that mattered at the moment as long as she could breathe again and stop herself from crying like a baby.
"Rachel? Are you in here?" Severus' voice called.
"Just give me a minute!" she called back. She just needed a minute alone to put herself back in order.
She was freezing. She could feel herself shaking. She could feel the way her underpants were now wet from the shower and were sticking to her. She could feel that her feet were wet in her shoes and that her toes squished like she'd just ran through a puddle. All of these things were good things. She was back in her body and she was okay now. She could breathe again.
After turning off the cold water she stood there for a moment trying to figure out what her course of action was. Her shoes needed to come off if she was going to dry them. Really, all of her clothes should come off, but she'd settle for a couple of drying charms. She didn't want to see any more of herself than was strictly necessary. The floor was wet, but a drying charm would take care of that too. Her hair was probably the biggest problem, but was also the one she could save for last.
She used the drying charm on herself first and settled for being slightly damp. Her shoes came off next, and her socks, and she dried them and then the floor. Then she wrapped a towel around her hair and stepped out of the shower. After getting her shoes and socks back on she squeezed her hair in the towel and then plaited it. She hung up the towel and then put her glasses back on. Other than the fact that she was frozen and that her hair was wet, she didn't think anyone could tell what had just happened.
Going back into her bedroom, she looked longingly at her bed. She did want to lie down and close her eyes, but she was also sure that would just cause Severus to worry about her even more. So she left her room and went back into the sitting room. "Can I borrow one of your books for a little bit? All mine are in my dorm."
"You can, but do you want to talk first?" he asked, worry obvious on his face.
"Not really. I'm alright now. I think it's a good idea to take a break and then we can see Sirius and Remus at noon," she said, going to his large bookcase. She looked at his collections of classics and saw a name she recognized. Or half of a name, really. "Emily Bronte? Is she related to the woman who wrote Jane Eyre?"
"Yes, her sister, though I don't know that I'd recommend Wuthering Heights for you to read at the moment," Severus said.
"Why at the moment?" Rachel asked, thinking that was an odd qualifier.
"Because you seem to be struggling right now and the book is rather upsetting."
If struggling meant standing in a cold shower while fully dressed, she supposed she was struggling. "What about Jane Austen?"
"Pride and Prejudice should be fine. I suspect you'll rather like it, actually," he said.
That was good enough for her. "Was this one you read with my mom?"
"No, I read that after Lily passed. I suspect she knew I wasn't in a place to understand it while we were in school. Would you like tea?" he asked.
"No, thank you." She didn't think she should put anything in her stomach at the moment.
She sat down on the sofa, hyperaware that Severus was watching her, and began to read. There was nothing she could do about Severus worrying except to appear as ordinary as possible. And maybe she shouldn't ask so many questions either.
"Hello Mr. Filch, how are you today?" Rachel asked as she and Severus reached the front doors in the entrance hall.
"Busy as ever. You be careful out there, hear?" Mr. Filch said.
"I will. I'll see you later," she told him, trying but failing to suppress a shiver.
Severus nodded to Mr. Filch and they left the castle.
Winter hadn't quite started yet. The leaves were now mostly brown and red and there was a chill wind, but the ground was dry. There weren't many clouds today, but the sun seemed weak and distant. Rachel was grateful she'd worn her winter cloak, even though she still felt cold inside of it.
The path to Hogsmeade was mostly empty. Most students chose to go up in the morning and then head back to the castle in the afternoon.
"How many aurors and Order members are in Hogsmeade right now?" she asked.
"Four aurors are stationed in Hogsmeade for the day and there are ten Order members there as well," Severus said as they walked.
"Do you think it's likely the Death Eaters would attack Hogsmeade while the students are there?"
"No, and neither does Albus or the other Heads of Houses. If we thought it was likely, we would have canceled Hogsmeade weekends entirely. The safety of all of our students is our priority, I assure you. We would not intentionally place them in danger. Having said that, have you felt something from the Dark Lord that suggests an attack today?" he asked.
Rachel came to a stop, closed her eyes, and reached out with her awareness. She could hear a bird chirping nearby, the rustle of tree branches in the wind. She curled her toes in her shoes. "No. He's annoyed right now, but not seriously. He's mostly…planning, maybe? He's thinking about something pretty intently."
"Any ideas as to what he's thinking about?" Severus asked quietly.
She tried to reach further, imagining herself pushing at the connection between them. "No. I can feel the concentration, but not the thoughts. He's not satisfied."
"If you start to sense his thoughts, I want you to come to me immediately. Or if you sense something that suggests he's about to attack."
"I mostly try not to sense what he senses, but I can check more often if you want," Rachel offered, opening her eyes.
"No. I think it's probably best for you to leave that connection alone as much as possible. We have so little information about it that we can't even begin to predict what might happen if you were using it regularly. Obviously you can't change what you feel from him, but I don't see the point in you seeking it out either," he said quickly.
"Okay. Usually I don't seek it out. Usually I realize I feel something that's not mine and then I kind of reach to check what it is," she explained as they started walking again.
"That's fine. Can you describe what you mean by reaching?"
Rachel considered it. "It's like listening, but with emotions instead," she finally said. "Like if you were in a busy room and someone was having a conversation you wanted to hear, so you sort of focus in their direction. But instead of sound and words, it's with feelings."
"Curious," Severus said. "It's clearly different from legilimency."
"How would you describe legilimency?"
"It's like pushing yourself into a room and then reaching at strands of sound and images. You can try to call specific strands to the surface by directing someone verbally, usually by asking a related question, and then you can seek out related strands. This, of course, changes if the person is an occlumens. In that case you must navigate the barriers and their mental architecture in order to locate the memory you are searching for, and in some minds, they will actively try to repel you," he explained.
"Interesting." She didn't feel that she needed to become a legilimens. She had more important things to do with the limited time she had left and she wasn't all that interested in reading people's memories anyway.
They had reached the main street of Hogsmeade by now and Rachel spotted Tonks standing near Dervish and Bangs. Tonks waved at them and turned her hair purple.
Rachel managed to smile and waved back.
"Are you doing alright?" Severus asked as they continued down the main street.
"I'm alright," she said, though she could feel herself shaking and for once it didn't have anything to do with the after-effects of the Cruciatus curse.
She half felt like her heart had stopped beating entirely as they passed in front of Honeydukes. She bit her lip and kept walking. She was fine now. She was with Severus and she was pretty sure he would hex anyone who tried to approach her right now.
Finally they stepped into The Three Broomstick and Rachel found her friends and Sirius and Remus waiting for her.
"There you are," Sirius said, stepping forward to give her a quick hug.
"I expect you to stay with her the entire time until she's back by my side," Severus said when Sirius released her.
"We will, you have our word, Severus," Remus said.
Sirius nodded. "We'll just be in the private dining room."
Severus nodded once and then turned to Rachel. "I will be right there at the bar if you need me."
"Okay," she told him. Strangely it seemed that Severus was getting along better with Sirius and Remus, at least a little bit.
"Do you want to eat alone with them?" Hermione offered.
Rachel shook her head. "No, all of you should come too. Severus, do you want to eat with us?"
"No, thank you," Severus said stiffly.
Maybe they were getting along better a little bit, but not enough for mealtime conversation it seemed.
"We'll be back in an hour," Remus said, leading the way.
They all settled into their usual spots. Rachel decided not to order anything to eat. Her stomach felt as tight as a knot.
"How is Hogwarts these days?" Sirius asked.
"Better than last year," Millie said.
"Much better than last year," Ginny agreed. "We don't have to hide the DA anymore, so that helps. And Professor Nash seems alright. I'm pretty sure my OWLs are going to kill me though."
"Everyone feels that way and everyone gets through them," Remus assured her.
"And you're already very prepared for them," Hermione reminded her.
Ginny just groaned.
"Has Rachel told you about the Potions Championship?" Theo asked.
"She has, apparently you are up to your eyeballs in potions recipes," Sirius said.
"Just about," Theo agreed with a smile.
"We hear that Slughorn is back in the castle as well. What do you make of him?" Remus asked.
Rachel looked at Theo and Hermione and found both of them with pensive expressions.
"Well, he certainly seems to know what he's doing, Potions wise," Hermione began. "It's very different from class, but as he's explained some of the challenges in the championship, his methods have become clear."
"He's a little obsessed with us, in a way. And with other people. He's always telling us about people he knows and how he can connect us to them. He's offered to get me in touch with some Master Transfigurationists who are accepting apprentices," Theo said.
Rachel nodded. "He says he knows a number of people in the Potions community who would take me as their apprentice after I finish at Hogwarts."
"And he keeps trying to sway me and Draco into a Potions career, but I suppose that's only to be expected," Hermione added.
"Slughorn always had his favorites and the four of you are right up his alley. Lily was a member of his little club, so was James, though I think neither of them particularly enjoyed it. James complained about the parties often enough," Sirius said, nodding as Madam Rosmerta came in with their food.
"Nothing for you, dear?" Madam Rosmerta asked when she finished sending plates to everyone.
"No, thank you, I'm okay with butterbeer," Rachel said.
"Alright then, just tap your menu if you change your mind," she said before leaving again and shutting the door behind her.
"What club did Professor Slughorn have?" Luna asked.
"The Slug Club, everyone called it. Slughorn arranged dinners and parties for his favorites, students from well connected and wealthy families, or students who had proven themselves to be particularly talented. He would invite former students of his to these parties so that everyone could make connections and be introduced to people who would help them further their careers. James met the captain of the Appleby Arrows at one of those dinners. I think, if the war had gone differently, he probably would have gone on to play with them," Remus explained.
"It sounds like nepotism but with more steps," Hermione said, her disapproval heavy in her tone.
"It more or less was. Slughorn had been teaching for a long time and he used a lot of it for his own self interest. I made it pretty clear I wasn't interested and after pranking the parties a few times I stopped getting invited," Sirius said.
"Albus wanted to protect Slughorn though. Better to have him tucked away in Hogwarts than letting the Death Eaters use his skills," Remus said.
"Death Eaters? Would he join the Death Eaters?" Rachel asked, slightly alarmed.
"Not of his own volition, but he would do anything to save his own skin," Sirius said.
"More likely is that they'd place him under the Imperius curse and we do not want the Death Eaters to have someone with Slughorn's talents at their disposal," Remus added. "What else is happening at Hogwarts these days?"
Rachel glanced around at her friends and saw equally grim and worried expressions.
"Not much is happening at Hogwarts. We're all studying pretty heavily," Neville finally said.
"We've got the Gryffindor versus Hufflepuff game coming up in six weeks, but I'm not too worried. I can out fly Felix any day of the week," Ginny said, sounding less certain than her words.
"Classes are keeping us busy. Everyone is worried about the war, of course. And we're protecting each other within the castle," Theo said.
Sirius nodded. "Try to focus on what's happening in Hogwarts. There's nothing any of you can do about the war right now."
"Sirius is right. We know it's hard. Our last few years at Hogwarts were also embroiled in the war. But the best thing you can do for the war effort right now is preparing yourselves and studying. Tell me, what sort of things are you teaching in your Defense club?" Remus asked.
The rest of the meal passed quickly as they went over their curriculum for the DA, getting a few suggestions from Sirius and Remus.
"Can I speak with you for a moment, Rachel?" Sirius asked as everyone was standing up from their meals.
Rachel set aside her mostly full butterbeer and followed Sirius to the back of the room. She shivered as he cast a privacy ward around them. The sensations she felt from people casting magic at her had grown a little less strong these past few months, but they were still present.
"How are you? Really?" Sirius asked.
She shrugged. "Mostly okay. I'm pretty busy, but I'm mostly okay."
Sirius did not look convinced. "Are you sleeping alright?"
"Yes. I don't even dream anymore."
If anything, he looked even more worried. "Is Snape getting you the help you need?"
"Yes. I see my Mind Healer every week. I'm doing alright," she insisted.
Finally he nodded. "How is Draco? I feel a certain responsibility for him."
"He seems to be doing okay. He's joining our study group for Potions homework, and he's doing good at Quidditch practice and at our brewing practices."
"Good. Let me know if you need anything. Oh, Kreacher sent me with this," he said, fishing a folded piece of parchment out of his robe pocket. "You don't have to entertain him, you know. I can tell him to stop writing to you."
"Please don't, I like hearing from Kreacher. I'll send a letter back to him tomorrow," she said, slipping the note into her cloak pocket for later.
"If that's what you want, but tell me if he's saying anything weird."
She nodded, though she didn't know what would qualify as weird from Kreacher. All of his notes were a little strange.
"You're okay at Hogwarts?" Sirius asked.
"Yes, just busy. The Christmas holiday will be here soon and then I can take a break," she said, though she suspected her Christmas holiday was going to be spent deep in Potions reviews. She was okay with that. Better than sitting there thinking about things she shouldn't be thinking about.
"Good. If you need anything, just let me know," he said, still looking worried.
"I will," she promised. She didn't think she needed anything. Just time, maybe.
"Alright, let's deliver you back to Snape before he gets his knickers in a twist," Sirius said.
That was definitely a mental image that Rachel hadn't needed.
"Is there anywhere you want to go before we return to Hogwarts?" Severus asked once Sirius and Remus had departed.
"No," she said. She wanted to go back to the castle and hide in a book.
"I think we're all ready to go back, sir," Theo said.
"Let's go then," Severus said.
Rachel exhaled. That hadn't been terrible. She'd walked through Hogsmeade, stayed for a meal, and she was alright. Next time she would go with her friends.
"Before we start the lesson, does anything have anything they want to bring up to the group?" Hermione asked.
Astoria and Colin both raised their hands.
"Colin," Hermione called.
Colin raised his wand. "Expecto patronum." After a moment the mists of his Patronus coalesced into a small silvery Patronus.
"What is it?" Demelza asked.
"It's a mongoose," Hermione said. "They're supposed to be courageous and will fight to defend themselves. They're also intelligent and they tend to live, travel, and fight together. Well done, Colin."
Many of the Gryffindors gathered around to congratulate Colin and pat him on the back.
"My turn," Astoria said, stepping forward. "Expecto patronum."
A small silver bird appeared.
"A hummingbird," Theo said, smiling at her.
"A bird like my sister," Astoria said, smiling proudly.
"Hummingbirds symbolize joy, good luck, and healing," Luna told her.
Astoria's smile faltered a little bit. "I still like it."
"When are we learning the Patronus charm?" Maxine asked.
"We'll start around Christmas," Hermione said. "If there's no one else, let's begin. Today we're going to be doing something a little different. Most of the spell casting we've practiced has been relatively orderly. Someone casts a spell at you, you cast a spell back at them, and mostly people stay in one place. As all of you know, outside of professional dueling, that's not really the way it works. We're going to practice attacking and defending. Each person will be assigned a role. Attackers will be allowed to only use the Tickling charm or a shield. Defenders will be allowed to use shields, disarming, or combat interrupting spells that we've covered here in the DA. We're going to have three groups go at a time, with one person attacking and two defending. The goal for the defenders is to either disarm your attacker or get across that line," she said, pointing to a white line across the room.
"In the meantime, we'll have everyone gather over here. If you need a tutorial on the Tickling charm, see Rachel and Luna," Theo directed, pointing at the opposite end of the room. "Questions before we begin?"
"Why can't the attackers use the disarming charm?" Amy asked.
"We figured that makes it a little too easy. As people get better at this we'll add more spells to what's allowed," Millie explained. "As a suggestion, the two people who are being attacked should help each other. Work together, even though we're not going to give you time to discuss it beforehand."
"Alright, let's gather up, Hermione, Ginny, and I will be sending groups out, once you finish, either by disarming your attacker or by both defenders crossing the line, come see the person who sent you out so they can send another group," Theo instructed.
"If you want help learning the Tickling charm, come back here," Luna called, moving toward the back corner of the room.
Rachel joined her and a few minutes later they had Viola, Jimmy, Dennis, Maxine, and Anthony Ricket in front of them.
"Professor Flitwick will probably teach you this one later this year, but it's fairly simple to learn," Luna said. "Rachel, may I demonstrate on you?"
"Sure," Rachel said, though she did not relish the thought of being tickled. She moved a few steps back so that Luna could aim at her.
"The incantation needs to be said clearly. It's Rictusempre, with the emphasis on 'sem'. The wand movement is a very short horizontal back and forth." Luna aimed her wand at Rachel. "Rictusempra."
Rachel wrapped her arms around her middle, trying to make the sensation stop and unable to stop herself from giggling. "Okay, enough," she managed to say.
"Finite," Luna said. "If you can concentrate long enough, you can cast the counter-charm yourself, but it's easier to have someone else do it. Let's pair up and you can give it a try. I will volunteer to be practiced on since Rachel was already tickled today."
Rachel watched as the second and third years faced off. Jimmy seemed to be having a little trouble with it so she moved forward. "Say it again?"
"Rictasempre," he tried, aiming his wand at Dennis, who was waiting patiently.
"Rictusempra," Rachel carefully pronounced for him. "Uh as in umbrella. Try again now."
"Rictusempra!" Jimmy called.
Dennis started squirming and laughing. "Make it stop! I don't like it."
"Finite," Rachel said quickly, aiming her wand at Dennis.
Dennis stood up straight. "That's just a mean spell."
"It is a little bit, but if it's the first one that comes to mind when you're under attack, it's not a bad one, as long as you quickly follow it up with a Disarming charm or a Stunning spell," she said.
The younger students moved away to join the groups waiting to be sent out into the room.
They'd asked for a large room this time, with various places where people could take cover or hide for a moment. It was mostly upper years on the floor right now, so they were casting silently, but it was clear that even with the more versatile spells and the two person advantage, the attackers had the easier task.
Katie Bell leapt over an obstacle and was in pursuit of Terry, who had simply started running instead of casting back. Draco had separated his two defenders, leaving Susan on the floor giggling and trying to cast the counter-charm on herself, while he stalked Anthony. A moment later, Pansy disarmed Padma, putting an end to that attack.
"May I ask both of you a question?"
Rachel and Luna turned from where they'd been watching and found Professor Nash waiting for them.
"Yes, ma'am," Rachel said.
"I'm curious as to why you chose the Tickling charm for this exercise. Can you explain your reasoning?" Professor Nash asked.
Rachel swallowed, but Luna was looking at her. "We wanted something that you could counter with effort, but was easier for someone else to counter so that it would be an advantage for the defenders to work together. We also wanted something with a physical effect, but not something harmful, but something that would simulate being unable to cast for a period of time as if you were injured or under a harmful spell."
"And why is that?" Professor Nash asked.
Rachel looked at Luna, uncertain how to answer that question.
"Because that's how it works in real life, ma'am," Luna finally answered. "If you are attacked, you have to be prepared to fight while you are injured or are under a harmful spell."
Professor Nash looked particularly grave for a moment. "Would you say that the purpose of your club is to teach students to defend themselves while being attacked?"
"No," Luna answered easily. "The purpose of our club is a well rounded Defense practical experience. As you said to my class at the beginning of the year, many of our past professors have focused on very specific areas, when they taught Defense at all. For some of our lessons that includes things you might find in professional dueling, for some of our lessons it includes situations that are more real."
"We're not trying to teach people to fight Death Eaters," Rachel said, thinking that she knew where the problem was. "We don't want students to fight Death Eaters. We just want everyone to know how to best keep themselves safe in a variety of situations."
"I see." Professor Nash studied them for a moment, but she did look more at ease than she had before. "I am, understandably, I think, leery about the idea of teaching children to fight in a war."
Rachel shook her head. "Professor Dumbledore would never let that happen. Some students will undoubtedly go on to fight in the war after they finish at Hogwarts, but while we're here at Hogwarts it will never happen. The staff would evacuate the school if the war is brought here."
Professor Nash nodded, her shoulders relaxing. "That is good to hear."
They watched silently for another few minutes.
"Rachel, I want to take a turn. Will you go with me?" Luna asked.
"Alright," Rachel said, though she did not really want to take a turn. She was a little shaky after a long day, but she supposed she was going to have to get used to fighting that way. They went to join the group around Ginny.
"Neville, join our group," Luna called.
Neville walked over to them. "Who is the attacker?"
"We'll let Ginny pick," Luna said.
Rachel sized up Neville and Luna. Both of them were now proficient in non-verbal magic, as Luna and Ginny had decided to learn non-verbal magic while the rest of the study group was learning it. Neville was slower to cast, but he was accurate. He would be a good ally for holding a shield while she attacked. Luna was quicker, though a little less powerful, but that wouldn't matter for the spells they were using. If she was paired with Luna, she'd hold the shield and let Luna cast at Neville. If she was attacking them she'd disable Luna first and then Neville.
"I disarmed Timothy," Scarlett told Ginny as she and her team came back.
"You disarmed me because I was facing in the opposite direction, dealing with him," Timothy complained, looking at Martin.
Martin just smiled.
"Shouldn't have turned your back on me then," Scarlett said.
Rachel shook her head, hoping that it would stay good natured bickering and not spill out onto the pitch during practices.
"Alright, you three. This should be interesting," Ginny said, looking at Rachel, Neville, and Luna. "I'm feeling a little bit mean, so Rachel is the attacker. Go on, over the line, have fun."
"You two first," Rachel told them.
"You've got to catch us then," Luna said, taking off at a run.
Neville followed quickly and dove out of sight.
Rachel shielded and followed Luna across the room, carefully moving around other people who were mock fighting.
Luna sent a spell her way, but Rachel's shield held. Two more spells missed her as they moved and Rachel waited until Luna fired another one before sending the Tickling charm her way.
Luna dropped to her knees, laughing and clutching her sides.
Rachel nearly fell over Harper as they both backed up and Rachel looked around the room for Neville.
Finally Rachel saw him creeping up to use the counter-charm on Luna and sent a Tickling charm his way as well. He shielded, but Rachel sent charm after charm at him, causing him to back away.
Suddenly Rachel's wand was yanked from her hand by the Disarming charm. She felt sick for a moment as she remembered that same feeling just before she'd been stunned, her wand clattering uselessly on the floor, out of sight.
"You counter-charmed yourself, nice," Neville was saying.
"Rachel?" Luna asked.
Rachel turned and looked at her and saw that she was holding out her wand, handle first. "Thanks," she said, quickly tucking her wand back into her pocket. "You counter-charmed yourself pretty quickly."
"Not all that quickly. You were focused on Neville for nearly two minutes," Luna said as they made their way back to Ginny.
"I can't believe my shield held," Neville said. "I felt it tremble every time the charm hit it."
"The Tickling charm is not a very strong spell. If it had been a stunner it would have dropped your shield in two or three hits," she reminded him.
"Good thing we weren't using the stunners then," Neville said.
"Nice job, all of you," Ginny said as she sent another team out.
Rachel retreated to the back of the room. She needed to get used to that again. She had to start training again. It was more than necessary, it was essential.
It was essential, and at the same time it was hopeless. She wasn't going to be dueling the Dark Lord. If it came down to that, then things had gone very wrong.
But she did need to be ready to defend herself. The Dark Lord wasn't her only enemy.
She would start training again. Just as soon as she stopped shaking.
On Monday, the eleventh of November, Rachel received another message from Professor Dumbledore, asking her to meet him at seven o'clock that evening. As she sat in Defense, with Professor Nash going over various jinxes and how to counter them, she found herself wondering what Professor Dumbledore was going to show her next. The Dark Lord as a student, maybe? Maybe from the time where he was opening the Chamber of Secrets, though she knew he hadn't been caught.
She still wasn't entirely sure what she was supposed to be getting from these lessons. Was she supposed to feel sympathy for the Dark Lord? Was that supposed to help somehow?
Class was dismissed after they were set an essay on jinxes and they study group went to their usual room on the third floor. Homework passed the time quickly and they had just finished their Ancient Runes homework while Luna and Ginny sat separately doing an OWL review when it came time for dinner.
Rachel barely felt present in the Great Hall. It was like being at the center of a galaxy, with all the planets and stars moving around her, while she sat still. Pansy and Daphne were talking about something, she only caught the odd word here and there. Millie and Theo were discussing the Arithmancy assignment they'd finished earlier that day. Further down the table she saw the Carrow twins sitting together, their heads bowed as they quietly spoke. Tracey and Tristram were sitting across from each other and were chatting. On the opposite side of the table, a fair portion of the Quidditch team had gathered together, Scarlett, Harper, and Stephen seeming to be engaged in some type of mock argument.
It almost seemed as though if she concentrated hard enough, she would simply disappear, and not with the Disillusionment charm or apparition either. The sound of conversation became very dim, like she was listening to it through a funnel. If she closed her eyes, she was certain she could step out of her body entirely. She tried not to blink. If she stepped out of her body, she might not come back.
"Rachel. Rachel?"
A wave of sound hit her and Rachel turned to see Millie and Theo looking at her.
"Shall we make a start on our Defense essay before you have your lesson?" Theo asked.
She nodded and took a careful breath. "Yeah, we should." She got to her feet, half aware of Theo and Millie looking at each other with worried expressions.
Rachel wrote about a foot on jinxes in the time she had before she had to leave for her lesson. She tucked the scroll away, intending on finishing it when Professor Dumbledore was done with her.
"I'll walk you," Hermione offered.
"I'll come too," Luna said.
"Are these lessons helpful?" Hermione asked once they were in the hallway.
"I don't know yet. Professor Dumbledore seems to think they're important. I'm not learning spells or anything like that."
"Well, I'm sure he has his reasons," Hermione said.
"Professor Dumbledore strikes me as someone who is balancing many things. Have you noticed that he's been in the Great Hall less this year?" Luna asked.
Rachel hadn't noticed that. "I suppose he's very busy with the war."
"I wish I understood better what was happening in the war. Obviously the Daily Prophet is suspect. We can't trust anything that is written in there. Often they are very non-specific as well. I'm not sure I even trust them to report when attacks are happening," Hermione said.
"Theo says they're trying not to cause a panic," Rachel said.
"Is it better to know and be panicked, or to not know and feel safe and perhaps make poor decisions? I think I prefer to know, no matter how bad the news may be," Luna said.
"I feel the same way. I'd rather know," Hermione said, nodding.
"Even if it causes some people to think the situation is helpless and drives them to side with the Dark Lord for protection?" Rachel asked.
Luna and Hermione looked at each other.
"I don't know," Hermione finally said. "Would people really do that?"
"Severus said they did in the last war."
"I still think it's better that people know. The people who would join You-Know-Who for safety are probably not people who would fight against him," Luna said after a moment. "If that means less people dying, then maybe it's a good thing."
Rachel wasn't sure about that. The more people the Dark Lord had on his side, the harder this fight was going to become.
They reached the gargoyle at the end of the second floor corridor. "Licorice whip," Rachel told the gargoyle. It moved aside for her. "I should see you back in the study room in an hour or so."
"I hope it goes well," Hermione said.
"Say hello to Professor Dumbledore for us," Luna added.
Rachel nodded and stepped onto the moving staircase.
The doors to Professor Dumbledore's office were open, but she stopped in the doorway so that she didn't disturb him. Professor Dumbledore was at his desk with his head bowed down over a piece of parchment.
"Rachel, please come in and take a seat, I will be with you momentarily," Professor Dumbledore said after about thirty seconds.
She entered and sat down, watching as Professor Dumbledore pulled out a peacock feather quill, wrote a note, folded it, and stood.
"Fawkes, to Scrimgeour," he said, holding out the note.
Fawkes clutched the note in one foot and then disappeared in a flash of fire.
"How are you today, Rachel?" he asked as he sat back down.
"I'm alright," she said, not caring if he knew that she was lying. "Sir, how many muggles were killed on Halloween night?"
"Fifty three, that we know of," he said somberly.
Rachel fought to control her expression. "And they were family members of muggleborns?"
"Many of them were, yes."
She sat quietly for a long moment. "Is there nothing that can be done?" she finally asked.
"We are currently doing everything that we can do. We've reached out to all of the muggleborns we can locate and have urged them to move themselves and their families to safety. For those who aren't willing to leave, we've provided wards for those who would let us do so. We're coordinating with the Ministry and the MLE to respond to attacks as quickly as possible. We also captured three Death Eaters on Halloween night," Professor Dumbledore explained.
They'd done all this and yet fifty three people had died in one night. She bit her lip as she tried to think of something else they could do, something that would help make this stop, or at least slow it down. Nothing came to mind.
"I find myself in a situation where I must apologize to you again, Rachel. I know it cannot be easy to be forced to witness these atrocities first hand. I assure you, I have not stopped looking for a way to do something about the connection between you and Voldemort," he said, peering at her over his glasses.
Rachel shook her head. "It's not your fault. You didn't put the connection there. You're not making this happen."
"Perhaps not, though I still feel as though it is my responsibility to do something about it. I will continue to search. Would you like to discuss this more, or would you like to move onto our lesson for this evening?"
"Our lesson, please," she said. She definitely wasn't comfortable with Professor Dumbledore apologizing to her.
Professor Dumbledore nodded and moved his pensieve to the center of his desk. "I have two memories for you tonight, and then a task for you."
A task? That was new. What could she possibly do to help?
"The first memory is of Morfin Gaunt. I was particularly lucky to get this memory before Morfin died," Professor Dumbledore continued, pouring a memory into the pensieve. "This memory takes place in the summer of 1943. Tom Riddle is sixteen years old and has discovered his family. Tom was well liked within the school. A model student, top grades, handsome, and charming with his professors, though he never attempted to charm me. He had a group of students who followed him, who professed to be his friends, though as I have said before, I don't believe Voldemort has ever known true friendship. Some of this group would go on to be the first Death Eaters."
He paused and then looked at Rachel. "There are very few people who will speak of Tom Riddle as they knew him in school, despite the fact that only a handful know he went on to become Voldemort. There was a rash of violent incidents at Hogwarts while Tom was here, culminating in the opening of the Chamber of Secrets and the death of a girl, for which Hagrid was unfortunately blamed."
"But you were able to clear his name with what you found in Tom Riddle's diary?" Rachel asked, still uncertain as to how that had come about.
"Yes, fortunately. I was able to share what I had found with Amelia Bones and arrange an official pardon for Hagrid. However, at the time, there was never any evidence of wrongdoing on the part of Tom or his group. The only reason Tom stopped opening the Chamber was when he learned that Hogwarts would be closed if the culprit wasn't found," he explained. "Tom was said to be obsessive about learning who his family was. In the memory I have here, he meets his uncle, Morfin, who we saw as a young man in the first memory we viewed together. Shall we begin?"
Rachel rose and entered the pensieve. They were back in the Gaunt's shack and it looked much worse now than it had the first time. Morfin was extremely unkempt, almost unrecognizable, and Rachel wondered if this was a result of his time in Azkaban. Tom Riddle, now a tall teenager, entered. Tom and Morfin argued in Parseltongue, Morfin coming to understand that Tom was his nephew, and Tom learning about his father. Suddenly the memory went black.
"What happened?" Rachel asked.
"Morfin was memory charmed, he could not recall anything after that point. When he awoke the next day, the family ring he was wearing was gone. In the meantime, in the village, the Riddle family - Tom's father and grandparents - had been murdered," Professor Dumbledore said. "Take my hand and I will bring us out."
Rachel put her hand on Professor Dumbledore's uninjured hand and a moment later they were back in Professor Dumbledore's office.
"Tom Riddle killed his father and his grandparents, didn't he?" she asked as she sat back down.
"Yes, most certainly. They were found with no marks on them, a hallmark of the Killing Curse," he said, though he remained standing. "When the MLE investigated, Morfin was their first stop, as they knew that he had attacked muggles before. Morfin confessed to the murders, giving details, without even being questioned by Veritaserum."
"He memory charmed Morfin again, placing the details of the murder in his mind?" Rachel asked.
"Yes. And Morfin's own wand was used to commit the murders. Morfin was sentenced to Azkaban for life. Once I began my investigation of Tom Riddle's early life, I arranged an interview with Morfin, where I discovered this memory through legilimency. I began to work with the Ministry to attempt to secure a release for Morfin, but he died before a decision could be made."
"Can just anyone do memory charms?" It seemed, in their own way, memory charms were just as bad as love potions or the Imperius curse.
"No. They are considered a restricted form of magic and are only taught in certain professions, such as the obliviators squad in the Ministry. However, there are always resources to be found in unscrupulous places, and some old families will pass the knowledge on to their children. I imagine that Tom was either self taught or he had another student teach him. Professor Dippet, the headmaster before me, had all books that taught memory charms removed from the library at the beginning of his tenure, before Tom attended Hogwarts." Professor Dumbledore nodded, waited for a moment, and then used his wand to return the memory to its vial and poured another one in. "This is perhaps the most important memory in my collection. This takes place in perhaps January or February of 1943, approximately six months before the memory we just viewed. This one will only take a moment."
Rachel stood again and entered the memory. "Professor Slughorn," she said in surprise. He looked much younger than he did now, a fair amount slimmer, and with a head of thick blond hair instead of the white wisps he now sported.
Tom Riddle was gathered here with a number of what must have been his group, as Professor Dumbledore described them. Rachel remembered Sirius and Remus telling her about the Slug Club and thought it was a good assumption that these boys were all in it. At one point, Professor Slughorn's voice came loudly from around them, though it didn't seem as if Professor Slughorn had spoken at all. Professor Slughorn dismissed the boys, but Tom Riddle stayed behind to ask about something called horcruxes.
She startled slightly as Professor Slughorn's voice again came booming loudly, and not from his mouth. This time he denied knowledge of the horcruxes.
A moment later they were back in Professor Dumbledore's office. "Professor Slughorn was memory charmed too?"
"By his own doing, I'm afraid. This is the memory he gave me when I asked for his recollection of these events," Professor Dumbledore said as he sat back down.
"Why would he change his own memory?" Rachel asked.
"Shame, perhaps? Perhaps he feels as though the memory does not portray him in the best light and he wishes to hide that from me. Your task, a most important task, will be convincing him to part with the true memory. It is imperative to the war," he said.
Rachel frowned. "Why do you think I could do it if you couldn't?" Professor Dumbledore seemed to be able to do whatever he wanted.
"His relationship with me and his relationship with you are vastly different. The way he responds to you will be different. Horace will be here in the castle for the remainder of the school year, but I recommend that you convince him to part with the true memory as soon as is feasible. Use your strengths, Rachel."
Her strengths? She wasn't sure she had strengths beyond getting good grades. And maybe Quidditch, but that wouldn't help. "Can I talk about this with Severus?"
"Yes, of course. He may have some ideas as well, though I understand his relationship with Horace was somewhat turbulent," he said, nodding again.
From the way Severus described Professor Slughorn, she thought that was probably an understatement. "What is a horcrux?"
"It is what is roughly translated as a soul jar. A person's soul is split, and then part of it is stored in the object that then becomes the horcrux," Professor Dumbledore said. "Is there anything you wish to discuss tonight? Questions you may have?"
Rachel had a lot of questions, but she wanted to think about it more before she asked them. "No, not for now."
"I must ask that the only person you discuss horcruxes with is Severus, as he is already informed," he said, meeting her eyes.
"Yes, sir," she said. "Oh, Luna and my friends would like you to know that they say hello."
The corners of Professor Dumbledore's mouth moved up slightly. "Please give them my regards then. I hope you have a good evening, Rachel. Try to get some rest. As important as learning is, it is equally important to let your mind explore and rest."
"Yes, sir. Goodnight," she said.
She left Professor Dumbledore's office with her mind in a whirl and an odd feeling of resolve. She had a task that was important to the war and she was going to do it.
"Thank you for making time to see me, I know it's late," Severus said. The clock on Torey's wall said it was almost seven in the evening.
Torey shook her head. "I've been wanting to check in with you as well."
That didn't bode well, but perhaps it meant Torey had been seeing the same things he was. Severus sat in a chair near the door and waited until Torey was seated before he spoke. "As I'm sure you've surmised, I am concerned about Rachel. I am not the only one who is concerned. Her godfather has spoken to me as well, insisting that she needs help."
"Can you tell me more specifically about what is concerning you, or what sort of help her godfather indicated that she needed?" Torey asked, resting a notebook on her lap.
"She is withdrawn and distant, even with her friends. I had hoped returning to school and to her friends would help draw her out. She tells me that she is getting around nine or ten hours of sleep a night, but she looks exhausted. She's also told me that she's still not dreaming or having nightmares. She will eat if given simple foods, but I have yet to see her eat what I would consider a full meal since before the start of the summer. Some of her behavior is bizarre," he recounted.
"Bizarre in what way?" Torey prompted, her brow furrowing slightly.
"Rachel will spend time staring into the distance and seem unaware of what is around her. She startles very easily, even at the slightest sounds and movements. Her focus in class is good, the assignments she turns in are to her usual standard, but when I have dinner with her she seems distracted, or perhaps uncomfortable. At her Hogsmeade weekend, I insisted that she stay with me instead of going with her friends. She seemed distressed, left the room, and when she returned her hair was wet and she was shaking. She refused to discuss it further with me."
Torey tapped her pen against her notebook and then put it down. "Some of that can be explained by dissociation and post traumatic stress disorder. Rachel has indicated to me that she is experiencing symptoms of dissociation and we're working on determining what is triggering those episodes. It's not surprising that she's exhibiting symptoms of PTSD, she already met the diagnostic criteria for it before being abducted and tortured. That she's still distressed is something that I would consider normal for her situation."
Severus exhaled. "Usually she does not respond as if she were distressed. I think I would be less worried if she was upset or if she was reacting in some way to what has happened."
"Rachel has learned from her childhood not to show distress in some of the more typical ways. She doesn't seem to cry or to have verbal panic reactions. She also tends to try to deal with trauma by denying it, and that's something I'm working with her on as well. Her withdrawing and being distant is her reacting to what has happened. She's trying to isolate herself, likely because she is trying to control what is happening inside of her. The less she's interacting, the more control she feels that she has. This is something that is going to take a long time. We can get Rachel to the point where she is handling this more effectively, but she has to be ready for that first. I'm sure you've heard the saying 'you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink'. Same thing here. We can support Rachel, but she's not going to take steps toward recovery until she's ready to do so. We can encourage her, provide resources, provide support, provide a safe place, and those will help her reach out to us sooner. But it's going to take time." Torey met his eyes. "I know that it is not easy to see her suffering like this."
He nodded. "It doesn't help that the trauma is ongoing. She had another vision from the Dark Lord on Halloween night where she witnessed a family with children being tortured and murdered. She actually let me comfort her afterward, which is not usual for her."
Torey's mouth went flat. "In your opinion, is the Dark Lord sending these visions purposefully to mentally torture her? Rachel seems to believe that the Dark Lord isn't controlling them, but I'd like your perspective."
"As far as we can tell, the Dark Lord is not in control of the true visions that he sends to Rachel. He has sent visions that have allowed us to act more quickly to situations, including saving someone's life. He has no reason to wish Rachel to see some of these things. The one vision that was false was clearly sent by him in an attempt to lure Rachel beyond the wards. No additional false visions have been sent, though we're not certain as to why. The Dark Lord should be sending her false visions every night to torture her, but perhaps he is not able to do so," Severus explained.
"I've reached out to a number of my colleagues, all of whom are trained in mind magic, and none of them have heard of such a connection before. The only suggestion they had was to block the connection from the rest of the mental architecture, to perhaps limit what it can do or access. Under ordinary circumstances I would never suggest someone cut off a part of their mind from themselves, but these are not ordinary circumstances," Torey said, looking worried.
"We had the same thought, but we've discovered that nothing Rachel builds or changes in her mental architecture remains for more than an hour. Additionally, her manifestation is guarding the connection and we have not found a way to move her to access the site of the connection directly. Albus has also reached out to Masters in mind magic that he knows, but has not found anyone with suggestions as to how to stop the visions." If Albus could not find it, it could not be found.
She shook her head slightly. "I've never heard of anything like that before either. She can't build in her own mind? Her manifestation doesn't obey her?"
"It may be a side effect of her architecture and her manifestation being formed without her conscious intent, but we do not know for certain. Her mind magic is without precedent."
"Depending on how long she's had this connection, maybe her mind magic developed around it to protect her, like a mollusk making a pearl around an irritant," Torey suggested.
Severus pondered this. "Perhaps we can't move her manifestation because it is set on guarding her against the intrusion of the connection. There was a time after a vision that Rachel's manifestation became so distressed that she was affecting Rachel. Maybe this was her crude way of signaling that there had been an attempt at intrusion."
Torey shrugged. "It's the best theory I've heard so far and it makes more sense than some random person teaching her meditation or teaching her mind magic and then obliviating her of the memories."
He would have to run it by Albus, but it did make a certain amount of sense. "I suppose that brings us back to what I should be doing for Rachel. What can I do to help her?"
"The same things you have been doing. Keep an eye on her. Assure her that you're protecting her and that she can ask for help whenever she needs it. Make yourself available to her. Let her know she can discuss with you whatever she wants. Eventually, when she feels ready, she will take you up on that. In the meantime I will work with her here on trying to identify what is causing her dissociative episodes and how she can take care of herself to reduce them and identify when they're happening and encourage her to think about what her mind and body are doing and why," Torey said.
It was not a satisfying answer, but he had known coming in that Torey wouldn't tell him to do something and then Rachel would be better. He knew it didn't work like that. "I will do that."
"I know it's hard, but you're doing a good job with her. It will take time and not every day will be a step forward, but she will get there," she assured him.
Severus nodded and got to his feet. "I understand. Thank you for your time."
"I appreciate you coming to see me. Have a good evening," she said, standing to let him out.
"You as well," Severus said, ready to walk back to the apparition point. He knew Rachel had grown tired of him telling her that she would get better with time. In truth, he was tired of it too, but time was the only thing they had to work with right now.
"How was your week?" Torey asked once they were both seated.
Rachel shrugged. It hadn't been a particularly great week. "Alright, I guess. Nothing in particular happened." Other than Professor Dumbledore giving her the task to retrieve Professor Slughorn's memory, and she definitely couldn't talk to Torey about that.
"Has Severus had a chance to speak with you?" Torey asked.
"About what?"
"He came to see me a few days ago. He wanted to know what he could do to help support you better," Torey explained.
"What did you tell him?" She wasn't sure what sort of advice Torey would have for Severus.
"To let you know that he's there for you and that you can talk to him about anything. To assure you that he's protecting you. He also was concerned that you had another vision," Torey said.
Rachel frowned. "I don't really like that Severus goes behind my back to tell you things about me."
"I can understand why you'd want to be in control of what I know about you, and I have told Severus that it's better if he allows you to be the one to tell me things unless he thinks that it's urgent that I know. When you say that you don't like that he does that, can you be more specific? How it makes you feel maybe, or what specifically you don't like about it."
"It feels like he doesn't trust me." And maybe he didn't anymore, which was a troubling thought.
"Why?"
"Because it seems like he thinks I won't tell you important things. That he has to do it without me knowing about it." It was true that Rachel hadn't told Torey about the vision, and she hadn't really been planning to either. There wasn't really anything to be achieved by talking about it. "And it's like he's taking that choice away from me. Because he tells you stuff, and then you want me to talk about it."
"We don't have to talk about anything you don't want to talk about. All you have to tell me is that you don't want to talk about that topic at the moment and we'll talk about something else instead," Torey reminded her.
"But if I do that…"
"If you do that, then what?" Torey prompted when Rachel didn't continue.
Rachel sighed. "You will think that I'm hiding something. Or that I'm weak for not wanting to talk about it."
Torey shook her head. "I don't think that you're weak, Rachel. We've talked about this before, where you're worried that another person will think you're weak, and how it's more likely that you're projecting your own fears of being weak on their thoughts. And I won't think that you're hiding something. When someone tells me that they don't want to talk about something at that time, I generally think that they're not in the right place emotionally and mentally to discuss that topic at the moment, or that they're simply not ready to talk about it. And either of those things is reasonable and is okay. All the time I have people telling me they don't want to talk about specific things at that moment."
"People really say that? Even though people are supposed to talk about stuff to you?"
"Yes, all the time. People approach things in different ways and at different speeds. Some people prefer to talk about something soon after it happens because they're thinking about it a lot and they want another person's perspective or just someone to hear them and understand them. Some people prefer to wait until they've had some time to process what happened and then feel ready to talk about it. Some people prefer to tell all of what happened at once, some people prefer to talk about just a bit at a time. There is no wrong way to do this. You get to pick what we talk about. If you think it's important to talk about, then we'll talk about it. You get to decide when you're ready."
Rachel bit her lip. She knew Torey - and Severus - wanted her to talk about what had happened this summer, but she couldn't imagine herself doing so. It felt too real. It hurt to even think about it. "I'm just not ready yet," she finally said, hoping Torey would understand what she meant.
"That's okay. What would you like to talk about today?" Torey asked.
She shrugged. She wasn't sure what to say. Everything seemed a lot at the moment.
"We could talk a little more about Severus and trust. Or we could talk about if you've had any dissociative episodes this past week," Torey suggested.
Rachel wasn't sure there was anything more to say about Severus and trust. She had lost at least some of his trust by keeping the DA a secret and she wasn't sure how to earn it back. "In the Great Hall. I felt weird. I felt…like everything was coming through a funnel, or that there was something blocking me. I could hear people talking around me, and I could understand them, but it was like…" she trailed off, uncertain how to describe it.
"Like it was distant, maybe? Or like it was coming from further away than it was?" Torey asked.
"Maybe. It was almost like they were speaking a foreign language. I knew all the words, but I couldn't put them together into anything meaningful. I felt like I was going to disappear or that I was just going to step out of my body."
Torey nodded. "Those are common feelings associated with dissociation. How did the dissociation end?"
"Theo spoke to me, and it kind of startled me. And then we walked upstairs and by the time we reached our study room I felt more real again."
"Good. It sounds like physical activity and having something to draw your attention helped. What was happening right before you started dissociating?" she asked.
"We'd just finished studying, but I felt okay upstairs. It wasn't until we got to the Great Hall that it started happening. I felt like everything was pressing against me. There were too many people. It was too noisy. Maybe I was feeling a little claustrophobic, which is weird, because that doesn't usually happen in the Great Hall. But I didn't have chest pain and trouble breathing either. I just felt pressed. Watched, maybe." She closed her eyes as she remembered Monday evening.
"You were uncomfortable. Do you know if that feeling of being pressed or watched was reminding you of anything?"
Rachel swallowed hard. It had reminded her of the ballroom at Malfoy Manor. "I don't know."
"It sounds to me like you wanted to escape, and since you couldn't escape physically, your mind tried to relieve the stress by escaping mentally. You said it was too noisy, and then you told me that the sound became distant and impersonal to you. Your mind is trying to protect you. Next time you're overwhelmed in the Great Hall, do you think you can stand up and take yourself outside for a few minutes and do some grounding exercises?" Torey asked.
"Maybe. I'm supposed to keep my friends with me and it's sort of weird to ask them to leave the Great Hall with me." She hated being a burden on her friends, but she had been feeling a little better about them staying as a group in the school because now they needed protection too.
"It's possible this is something to ask one of them in advance then, so you're not springing it on them at the time. You could tell Theo or Millie that sometimes you need to take a break from the crowds in the Great Hall and maybe they could come with you for a few minutes when you need that break. You don't have to tell them why if you don't want to," Torey suggested.
"Maybe," Rachel said again. "I wish that they didn't have to stay with me, but it's kind of necessary. Did Severus tell you about the doe too?"
"No, he didn't. Do you want to tell me about it?"
Rachel sighed. "Yeah." She pulled her legs up onto the sofa with her. Maybe she needed to keep less things from Torey. She could start with this at least. "This was a few weeks ago," she began, her mouth twisting at the recollection.
Rachel finished brewing her Effervescent Elixir from memory and gently tapped the stirring rod against the inside rim of the cauldron to get the last of the droplets off of it before she set it aside and returned to watching her Buoyant Solution bubble. It had three more minutes at high heat, then she needed to turn down the heat and add the powdered antimony. The Buoyant Solution was not a very common or useful potion. It was used on boat hulls to make them unsinkable. Theoretically you could apply it to other things too, to make it so they couldn't sink, but she didn't see much of the point of that. If someone was at the point where things were sinking, they had much bigger problems on their hands.
However, the potion was complicated, and toxic, which made it a strong contender for being included in the Potions Championship. A quick glance to either side told her that Draco and Hermione were also on track. Most of the time their brewing sessions were done in near silence. Professor Slughorn said that they should be able to know what each other was doing at a glance and that after they strategized they should work quietly and with focus.
Rachel lowered the heat by half and then added the powdered antimony while being careful not to bump her shaking hand against the rim of the cauldron. She picked up the stirring rod she'd been using for this potion and began to silently count. Three clockwise strokes followed by seven counterclockwise strokes, repeated three times - arithmatically balanced. The potion slowly turned a translucent silver and Rachel finished stirring and shook off that stirring rod as well before conjuring a cloth and wiping it down before the potion could settle on it and make the stirring rod unsinkable.
She used a potions ladle to fill the vials sitting in the wooden rack while the potion was still hot. She'd already spelled the vials not to break and she braced her forearms against the counter so she could guide her hands and not spill. Finally the cauldron was mostly empty and she used her wand to vanish remains of the potion and then corked the vials before taking her cauldron and ladle and stirring rod to be washed.
Back at her workstation she bottled the Effervescent Elixir now that it'd had a chance to cool some. It was also a rather useless potion. It was supposed to make people feel light, happy, and carefree. But it also made people burp. And, according to their book, taking it regularly caused people to have severe mood swings and become dependent on the potion in order to feel happy at all. Far more trouble than it was worth. Rachel finished with those vials, washed that cauldron, stirring rod, and ladle, and then wiped down the workstation and the rest of the equipment.
Her watch told her she still had fifteen minutes to spare, which wasn't bad. She sat down on her stool, which Professor Slughorn had provided for her after learning that she had difficulty standing for long periods of time. The rest of the team stood, as Professor Slughorn felt that was more beneficial to brewing potions. Privately, Draco had called that ridiculous and said that it was no wonder that Professor Dumbledore had wanted Professor Snape for the Potions position if Professor Slughorn taught his classes like this.
Professor Slughorn approached and picked up a vial of the Buoyant Solution and held it up to examine it. He twisted it this way and that, letting the light catch the silvery potion. Finally he put it back and checked her Effervescent Elixir, which was a frothy sea green. He nodded. "Excellent, as always, Rachel. And timely as well."
"Thank you, sir," she told him, watching as he returned to the front of the classroom.
She was careful to make it look like she wasn't staring, but she sat and considered Professor Slughorn. She'd been thinking about him off and on all week, trying to come up with the best strategy to approach him. After a while she had decided that it was down to two things.
The first was that she needed to gain Professor Slughorn's trust. In order to have the conversation at all, he needed to feel like he could speak to her. She thought she was making good steps in that direction just by being a consistent potion brewer. He always complimented her brewing and she had explained to him what she did to counteract her shaking hands and he had seemed approving. More than approving, he had praised her for overcoming her hardships. Rachel thought that was a bit much. She was just making do with what she had. Even so, she needed to continue to foster that relationship. The more he liked her, the more he wanted to talk with her, and the better this would go.
The second was harder. Professor Slughorn had hid the memory from Professor Dumbledore because he felt ashamed at what he'd done. Somehow she needed to help him feel less ashamed, which was hard because she didn't know why he felt ashamed, because she didn't know what it was that he'd done. If she couldn't help him feel less ashamed, then maybe she could help outweigh that shame with something else. A sense that he was helping, maybe, or that he was important. She thought for all of Professor Slughorn's 'collecting' people, he wanted to be thought of as important. He wanted to be liked. He needed to know that not only would she still like him and respect him after he told her, but that his information would help her with something very important.
It was all well and good to know these things, but it was much harder to figure out how to go about them. She knew she wasn't the most socially competent person in the world. In general she only made friends when someone else initiated a friendship. Rachel glanced to her sides again. She had been very lucky that her friends had wanted to be friends with her, most of them even before she could speak to them.
Hermione finished bottling her potions and reflexively went to push her hair away from her face, though she was wearing it back. Professor Slughorn had been very insistent that she and Hermione wore their hair tied back while they brewed. Apparently magical human hair wasn't as potent as magical human blood, but with the wrong potion it could cause problems. Also, no one in their right mind would want to dip their hair in a potion that they were brewing.
Theo and Draco finished a moment later and they looked up from their cauldrons for the first time since they'd started.
"Very good, with a full seven minutes to spare. Let's take a look, shall we?" Professor Slughorn said, moving to examine the potions that they had brewed. He praised each of them, meeting their eyes and smiling at them as he gave the praise.
After he finished, he moved back to the front of the classroom. "This concludes our time spent brewing potions with recipes. You've brewed everything that has been in the standard for the Potions Championship in the past fifty years and I expect no surprises this year. Continue to make sure you have the potions memorized on your own time. I used to practice recitations in front of the mirror, but I'm sure you've come across your own methods by now."
Rachel fought to keep the corners of her mouth from twitching at the mental image of a young Professor Slughorn standing in front of the mirror and preening while he recited potions recipes.
"The third challenge, as we've discussed before, is complementary to the first. As long as you can identify your ingredients by sight, you'll have no trouble with it. Keep memorizing. Now, onto the most difficult challenge of the Championship, which we will spend the next two months on. Inventing," he said, nodding emphatically.
Hermione's hand went up. "They expect us to invent a potion during the challenge, sir?"
Professor Slughorn waved her hand down. "Not precisely. Your objective will be to brew a new potion, that is, one that does not have a recipe published, with a certain property. To attempt to brew a new potion from scratch is folly of the highest order, and anyone who attempts to do so will certainly fail. Someone tries every twenty or thirty years, but the results are always the same. No, what you must do is identify a potion that will contain the property and find a way to modify the recipe to enhance it to be its main property, while eliminating side properties. These potions aren't intended to be useful. Last time, the judges asked for a potion that would turn someone's fingernails another color. Not painted, mind you, but the fingernails themselves. Can anyone think of a potion that might have that as a secondary effect?"
The room was quiet as the four of them combed their memories.
Finally Theo raised his hand. "The Draught of Living Death will turn someone's fingernails white."
"Correct, very good, though I would also accept the Blood Thickening potion, which will turn them purple. Then the task becomes, how do you retain that property without, in the instance of the Draught of the Living Death, putting someone in a coma, or with the Blood Thickening potion, giving them a heart attack? Think on it and come back next week with ideas."
"May I ask a question, sir?" Hermione asked.
"Yes, always. I love questions as they are a sign of a working mind. What is your question, Hermione?" Professor Slughorn beamed at Hermione.
"How do they test these potions to see if they actually work?" she asked, sounding concerned.
"Fear not, these potions are not tested on living beings. You are expected to write down your recipe and the judges will examine your potion and make a determination from there as to whether or not they believe it will work. It is not the most exact method of judgment, but it is certainly better than testing a potion on people. For some potions in the past they have tested it on conjured animals, but that has rather fallen out of vogue. Now then, on with you, it is lunchtime and our stomachs will not wait. Farewell." He shooed them away with his hands.
Slightly bemused, though she was slowly getting used to Professor Slughorn, Rachel stood and began to leave with her friends. On impulse, she turned back. "Professor Slughorn, thank you. I really appreciate what you're teaching us."
Professor Slughorn shook his head, but he was smiling. "Of course, Rachel. Where else would I be? Go on then."
Rachel smiled back at him and left the room, feeling a little bit queasy. That had been kind of manipulative. But then, wasn't this whole getting the memory from him thing manipulative? Was being manipulative like this okay if it was for an important cause? She didn't think so, but she really had no other ideas as to how to get the memory from him.
"I didn't realize we'd get so much homework from this," Draco was saying as they made their way down the hall.
"It is more than I was expecting," Hermione agreed.
"Alright?" Theo asked, falling back to walk beside Rachel.
"Yeah, just thinking," she said.
"Me too. I think inventing a potion is a bit much to ask of students. We're just barely covering ingredient substitutions. I suppose this is one challenge where it might have been better for Professor Snape to choose seventh years," he said.
Rachel nodded, though her mind was far away from the Potions Championship challenges.
"I think we can manage it though. We have over two months before the Championship. We've already made a huge amount of progress on recipe memorization. I think we're good on ingredient identification. This is basically the last thing that we need to learn for this. And, after this, I doubt we have anything to worry about on our Potions NEWT." Theo looked cautiously optimistic.
Their NEWTs seemed a long way away, but she knew they would sneak up quickly. "Let's not worry about our NEWTs right now. Let's make that next year's problem."
"You're right. We've got plenty on our plates right now without adding NEWT reviews to it. Though I am putting my foot down. We are not having another year like last year," he said, raising his eyebrows at Rachel.
She nodded again. "I'm with you." The last thing she wanted to do was repeat last year in any way shape or form. Ever.
