Rachel joined her team in the meeting area of the stadium on Monday afternoon, dressed in her reserve uniform and carrying her broom. She was hoping that by now Seren would have said something if they didn't want her on the team.
"Is it true?" Cadie asked when Rachel sat down next to her.
"Is what true?" Rachel asked.
"What they said in the newspaper about the Death Eater who attacked you? At this point I don't take anything printed in the Daily Prophet at face value," Cadie said, some of the rest of the team paying attention now.
"It's true," she said. The front page article on Sunday morning had been surprisingly factual and only somewhat sensationalist. "The Death Eater who attacked us is Thorfinn Rowle. He was the one writing the threatening letters."
"Why did he attack you? This wasn't a normal Death Eater attack," Alwene asked.
"It's like he didn't care if he was caught," Meredith said.
"I don't think he cared if was caught. Based on his letters, he wasn't well. He wasn't acting rationally. He said it was because he blamed me for his son being sent to Azkaban," Rachel explained, grateful that part hadn't made the paper.
There was quiet for a few moments and they had everyone's attention now.
"The newspaper said they were charging him under the Unforgivable Curses Act and the Death Eater Activities Act. I assume that's true?" Gwendolyn asked.
"Yes, he's going to prison for life," Rachel said. After hearing the things he'd done, she had no doubts that the Wizengamot was going to find him guilty. She was actually relieved that she hadn't known about the things he'd done until he'd been caught. If she'd known a serial killer was after her from the start, she probably would have been more afraid.
Seren entered the room and looked around. "I'm glad you're all here. We have a rematch with the Falcons on Saturday. Glynnis will be taking the Seeker position for that game. We'll continue our training regime as we have been. Rachel, you indicated that you would be giving us a tutorial on casting the Patronus charm. Is that still alright?"
Rachel stood. "That's fine. It's a somewhat difficult charm to learn. It seemed to take the people I've taught around four to six months to be able to cast a corporeal Patronus."
"That long? For one spell?" Teagan asked.
"I'm afraid so. There's a good reason that it's an uncommon spell for people to know. Up until recently, it was only being taught over a three week period in the NEWT Charms class, which isn't really enough time for people to learn it. Now it's being taught over a longer period in OWL level Defense, so hopefully that will allow more people to be able to cast it successfully," she explained. It felt a little odd that she'd spent the last four years teaching this spell. Having it taught over a long period in Defense helped students, but the vast majority of the population was adults who had never mastered it. Maybe she needed to do something about that too.
"What do we need to know?" Gwenog asked.
Rachel gave a quick run down on the Patronus charm, its uses, and how to select memories and how they needed to really feel that remembered happiness and pour it into the charm. "I suggest practicing about ten minutes a day. Try different memories and see what is stronger for you. It might help you to sit down and make a list of memories to try. Let's give it a quick try now. Focus on that memory of happiness, then hold the incantation then direct the happiness to your spell," she instructed.
Everyone stood or sat with their wands out, some of them closing their eyes as they worked. Rachel wondered how many people on the Wizengamot could cast this spell if they needed to call for help. She knew most of the aurors could, and the few people on the team who couldn't were working on it. Was there anyone else that she knew who needed this instruction?
"Nothing, not even the mist you described," Valmai said, lowering her wand.
"That's alright. It's going to take time. It takes most people a few weeks before they get the mist," Rachel assured her.
"Let's take ten minutes at the beginning of every practice to work on this. Work on it on your own as well," Seren said. "Let's get out there. I want to see Chaser drills. Rachel, stay behind for a moment."
Rachel remained, as did Gwenog and Gwendolyn, but the rest of the team left.
"Have the aurors talked to you about your situation?" Seren asked.
"I spoke with Madam Bones today. Now that the person who is writing threatening letters has been captured, she believes the threat to me has been reduced significantly. For the time being I'm retaining my auror guard while we see if there is any backlash to Rowle being arrested," Rachel explained.
"Where do things stand on the Death Eaters in general?" Seren asked.
"We think most of them who are willing to attack have been captured or have fled. Attacks have been getting further and further apart. We're not getting Death Eater sightings any more. Madam Bones and Head Auror Robards think it's unlikely that there will be another public attack. They don't have the people to manage it anymore, not without casualties they can't afford."
"Sounds safe enough to me, assuming you're willing to take the risk, Rachel," Gwendolyn said.
"I am," Rachel said. She felt confident that any attack was going to be aimed at her and not at the people around her. That she could deal with.
"That seems reasonable to me as well," Gwenog said, looking at Seren.
Seren nodded. "I still want Glynnis to play on Saturday. It's too soon. But I think the next possible place for you to play will be against Portree in July."
"That would be a good one for Rachel to try. That's a good Seeker for Rachel to go against," Gwendolyn said.
"I think that will work," Gwenog said.
"Alright then. Go practice. Rachel, find Glynnis and work with her," Seren said.
Relieved that it was that easy, Rachel left with the Quidditch team to go fly. She would know soon enough if she'd made the wrong decision.
"How are you after what happened on Saturday?" Torey asked once they were both settled.
Rachel sighed. "That's a strangely complicated question."
Torey nodded. "Would you like to talk about what makes it complicated?"
Rachel knew that she needed to. It was just a matter of putting it into the correct words. "Well, first, the actual attack part didn't really faze me. It was a poor attack on a number of levels."
"The newspaper said that the Killing Curse came quite close to hitting you and that it was cast multiple times. Are they still being less than factual about what they're reporting about you?"
"I mean, that's accurate, but it's not the whole story either," she said. "Hitting someone from a distance like that, especially someone who is moving is not easy. He didn't even wait until my back was turned for a sustained period. While the Killing Curse did come relatively close to my physically, it was easy enough to dodge. I've had much closer calls during my time with the aurors. This was a poor attempt on my life and Rowle clearly wasn't rational at the time."
"Alright. I can understand how a single Death Eater from a distance might feel less threatening to you than facing several up close," Torey said.
Rachel fidgeted with her fingernails because that wasn't really it either. "I found myself having the thought that I wouldn't care if the Death Eaters killed me."
"Was this while the attack was happening or was this later on?" As usual, Torey didn't seem particularly alarmed by what Rachel had to say.
"During the attack, Gwenog made me fly again. I was trying to stay so they could find the person attacking. But I wasn't really thinking about dying during the attack, I wanted the Death Eater to focus on me so he wasn't focusing on anyone else."
"Because you could handle the attack as an auror, or for another reason?"
"I mean, I could handle the attack. I was not in that much danger. But I wasn't really thinking about it that way either, I was thinking that I wanted the person to be caught because I didn't want them to hurt anyone," she explained, struggling to reconstruct her thought process nearly a week later.
"That seems reasonable to me. You've had a lot of Defense training and auror training. If anyone is prepared to face off against Death Eaters, it's the aurors. When did the thoughts about dying start?" Torey asked, bringing them back to the important part.
Rachel sat as she tried to pinpoint the exact moment. "I don't know. Later that day, when I was dropping by to reassure everyone that I was alright. I knew they'd be worried about me, but I didn't want them to worry."
"Was it just a passing thought, or was it more than that?"
"Both, I suppose," she said. "There's a difference between not being afraid to die and not caring if I die."
"There is," Torey agreed, looking entirely serious. "Do you want to talk about that some more?"
"I'm not afraid of dying. I know what happens after I die and I'm looking forward to seeing my parents again even if I don't want to leave just yet," Rachel explained. She thought that was perfectly reasonable. "I want to live my life. I'm doing important things. I care about my family and friends."
Torey nodded. "All of those things can be true, while you can have different thoughts and emotions about it at the same time. How did it feel to think that you didn't care if you died?"
"Surprising. But true. It feels true and I don't know why."
"I think you perhaps have a more complicated relationship with death than most people," Torey began. "Having certainty about what happens when you die gives you a security that a lot of people don't have. One possibility is that death provides an escape for you. All of these problems that you are experiencing suddenly wouldn't be problems any longer. I can see that being tempting. I think another possibility is that you are under more stress than you are allowing yourself to feel. How is your sleep?"
"Bad," Rachel admitted.
"How many nights a week are you having nightmares and sleep disturbances?"
"Every night I'm not taking the modified Dreamless Sleep potion."
"How long has it been that way?"
Rachel bowed her head as she tried to remember the last time she'd slept through the night without the help of a potion. "No idea. Months at least."
"What about your mood?" Torey prompted.
"Anxiety isn't too bad. It's been quite a while since I've had an anxiety attack. Sometimes I feel…not sad, not exactly. Not tired either. Blank, maybe. Absent. I don't think it's quite dissociation. I…"
Torey waited patiently.
"When we held the hearing on Rita Skeeter's mark of censure, there were a bunch of articles about me laid out as evidence that she'd been harassing me for years now. And while a lot of what she wrote was an exaggeration, some of it was true. And seeing it all like that…"
"What emotion does that bring up for you?" she asked when it became clear Rachel wasn't going to finish.
"Fear," she answered, both surprised and not. "There are some things that I think I've managed to deal with. They don't bother me as much anymore. But there are a lot of things that I don't know how to deal with, or how to even approach dealing with. And I don't know how to be ready for that."
Torey nodded again. "That's complex trauma. It's difficult for anyone to approach, and in these past eight years you haven't really had a quiet time to sit down and work on any of it without another threat or trauma needing to be dealt with."
"This year has been better. Not perfect. But compared to the war, this year has been better."
"It has and yet you've faced a number of difficult things just since the end of the war. The Death Eater trials. Dealing with Alfred Selwyn. The threatening letters. Killing Bellatrix. The Daily Prophet and Rita Skeeter. And now this most recent attack. Not only that, but you've made the transition into adulthood. You've been working multiple jobs, preparing a Wizengamot proposal, and you moved away from home. None of this is ideal circumstances for you to be working on other traumas," Torey said.
Rachel rested her hand against her mouth. She hadn't really thought of it that way. "I'm not sure I know how to make my life less stressful."
"Some of that is beyond your control. The Death Eater trials will end. Your time with the aurors will end, assuming that's what you're still planning?"
"It is. I want to start my Mastery."
"Good. You have had time to adjust to your new living situation, even though you're still adjusting to your change in relationship with Theo. You still have support from Severus. I suspect there will always be an element of stress to the Wizengamot, but likely it will be less stressful when you are not in the middle of a proposal. While we can't control if people are threatening you, there seems to be effective protections in place. Once you are under less stress, I think it's likely that you'll find yourself to be more capable of approaching some of your traumatic experiences."
She considered that, but she could feel her body reacting with fear. "Do you think that I'm having thoughts about dying because I've experienced trauma?"
"I don't think it's that straightforward. I think one factor in people thinking about dying is the amount of stress that they're under. As we've just talked about, you have a lot of stressors in your life. But trauma that is still plaguing you, your nightmares are also a source of stress, as is having poor sleep. Sleeping and eating are fundamental to our physical and mental health. How has your eating been?" Torey asked.
"Not perfect, but not bad. I seem to have small upsets, and then I skip a meal or two, but I always force myself to eat again the next day," Rachel admitted, feeling that was pretty good.
"I want you to keep track of how often that happens. Skipping a meal once in a while isn't going to hurt you, but we need to know if it's becoming a pattern and what triggers are causing you to feel as though you can't eat."
Rachel nodded, well versed in tracking thoughts and events that made it more difficult for her to eat from when she was doing food focused therapy over the previous years. "I guess I'm not sure I believe that anything can make my sleep better."
"A few years ago when you were struggling more with eating, did you believe that it could get better?" Torey asked.
"No. But I've struggled with sleep for longer than I've struggled with eating."
"And before you started speaking, you wrote to me that you believed you couldn't speak," Torey reminded her.
"True, but I can't control having nightmares. They just happen," Rachel said.
"But there are things we can do to both help you take better control of the nightmares and to not be as affected after them. But that's something you have to decide whether or not you want to work on."
Rachel had been resistant to that in the past because she found it difficult to speak about her nightmares or even to write them down. "How long am I going to be able to see you? I am an adult now."
"I'm not worried about it for right now, Rachel. When the time comes, and when you are ready to transition, I know a few Mind Healers who have an emphasis in complex trauma that you can transition to seeing," Torey said, accepting the change in subject.
The thought of sharing all of this with someone else was daunting. She definitely wasn't ready for that yet. "Okay."
"There's something I want you to consider doing. Notice when you're having thoughts about death. Identify what is happening when that occurs or what thoughts you just had that might have prompted those thoughts. Notice if it happens on days when you were awoken by nightmares or on days when you're more well rested," Torey instructed.
"I can do that," Rachel said. She'd been in therapy long enough that she understood the purpose. If she could find out what was prompting her to think about dying then maybe she could figure out the reason it was happening. That would work for now.
Rachel glanced at Theo as they arrived at the back entrance to The Leaky Cauldron. It was strange to see him in disguise, but they had agreed that for now at least it was necessary that if they were going somewhere in public in the magical world together they should be in disguise. Rachel still did not trust that her dating activities would not become fodder for the Daily Prophet, nor did she wish to be approached by people.
The Leaky Cauldron wasn't too busy on a late Saturday afternoon. They'd agreed to come before dinner so that Hannah could still work the dinner shift. They spotted Neville and Hannah sitting together and made their way over to them.
"Is that you?" Hannah asked, looking up at them.
"It's us," Theo said. "I can't believe Fred and George gave me red hair and freckles. I look like I could be their cousin."
"Well, no one would ever believe it's you, which is the point," Neville said.
"Let's go back. I have a room for us," Hannah said as she stood.
Rachel and Theo followed Neville and Hannah to one of the private dining rooms at the back of The Leaky Cauldron. She removed her cloak once they were inside the room and found Theo doing the same and was strangely glad to see his normal features. Going around in disguise took some getting used to.
"Just let me know what you want, and I'll run the order back to the cooks," Hannah said as they sat.
"Thank you," Rachel said, looking over the menu and deciding on a slice of shepherd's pie since she hadn't eaten that in a while. Hannah took their selections back to the cook. She returned about ten minutes later, their dishes trailing behind her as she sent their meals to each of them with her wand.
"How are you liking The Leaky Cauldron?" Theo asked once Hannah had joined them.
"I do like it," Hannah said, brushing her blond hair away from her eyes. "After my parents refused to allow me to come home, I came here, just for a place to be. My brother and sister wouldn't take me in, they thought I shouldn't have dissolved the marriage contract. Tom, he's the owner, heard that I was looking for a job and offered for me to try it out for a week and see how I did. I know you're all doing Masteries, but I really didn't want to do more school after Hogwarts. I'm happy here."
"If you're happy here, then it's the right place for you," Rachel said, frustrated that Hannah's family had rejected her like this.
Neville took Hannah's hand. "If this is what you want to be doing, then that's fine. If it's not, we'll find something else."
Hannah nodded and looked at Neville and then back at Rachel and Theo. "It's strange, but I don't think Neville and I would have started dating without the marriage contract forcing us to get to know each other. I don't agree with what our families did, but I am glad I got to know Neville."
"I'm glad too," Neville said.
Rachel smiled. "Sometimes life works that way, I think. It's never a straightforward path."
"How long have you and Theo been dating?" Hannah asked.
"Nearly two months," Theo said. "We're sort of taking things slowly. Between the aurors, the Wizengamot, and the Harpies, Rachel is incredibly busy."
Had it been two months already? Rachel hadn't even noticed the time passing. She supposed that she needed to make more time for Theo. They hadn't done many dating things outside of him accompanying her to Ministry events.
"I can't imagine," Hannah said. "Neville has told me about how busy your group was at Hogwarts. It's no wonder your group was always at the top of the year with the way that you studied."
"It's a lot less stressful now," Neville agreed.
"My Mastery has been less stressful as well. We're not pushing ourselves quite as hard now, except for Hermione, who still is, and Rachel, who seems to want to do every possible thing she can fit into her schedule," Theo said with a smile at Rachel.
"I'm honestly not that busy. I have at least part of the weekends off and I rarely have to go places in the evenings," Rachel protested, to the gentle laughter of the group.
"Susan is like that too. I know she and Hermione are pushing very hard in the Healers Training Program. Susan has wanted to be a Healer since our second year," Hannah said.
"I think Susan will make an excellent Healer," Rachel said. Susan was intelligent, kind, and gentle, all of which were important attributes in someone who was helping people as their job.
"How is Susan?" Theo asked.
"Sad sometimes. She misses her parents. She's very angry with my parents. Susan says it isn't right that her parents are dead and she can't see them, while my parents are alive but won't speak to me. She wanted her aunt to go talk to my parents and tell them how lucky it was that my family survived the war, but I talked her down. I don't think it would have helped anything."
Rachel thought that Susan had the right idea, but she also understood that once a family had made a decision to abandon a child, things were so complicated that just talking to them wasn't likely to resolve things. She knew too many people whose families had been torn apart by the war; it was a shame that Hannah's parents had rejected her over something as simple as a marriage contract that never should have been made.
"Families are complicated," Theo said after a moment, getting nods from everyone at the table.
"How is the Wizengamot, Rachel? Neville has been telling me that you're quite popular."
"I don't know about popular," Rachel said, grateful for the change in subject.
"You're invited to all of the dinners," Neville pointed out.
"Because they want to use her," Theo said. "Rachel will have her own faction in time, but I think it's going to take Professor Dumbledore stepping down before she holds significant sway over the Wizengamot."
"If he steps down," Rachel said. She wasn't entirely convinced that he would, though she still had no idea what it was that he wanted now that the war was over.
"Well, he'll have to step down eventually, but it may be another twenty years," Neville said.
Rachel knew that with the Philosopher's Stone that Professor Dumbledore could live much longer than that, but she wasn't going to share that information with people.
"The Minister is setting Rachel up to lead a faction. I kind of get the impression that Scrimgeour isn't comfortable with Professor Dumbledore holding the amount of power that he has. Rachel will have the opportunity to take the Chief Warlock position in seven years, and that might be a good time for her to do so," Theo said.
"I don't think I actually want the Chief Warlock position. Also, shouldn't it be called something else if I'm a witch?" Rachel asked.
"Actually, in this context, Warlock is gender neutral, just like the Supreme Mugwump in the ICW. If it went by wizard, they'd use witch, if they went by lord, they'd use lady," Theo explained.
"I can see why you don't want the position, Rachel. It's a lot of pressure," Neville said.
"It does seem that way," Hannah agreed.
"Then Rachel needs to install a proxy in her faction, if she doesn't want to do it herself," Theo said.
Rachel shook her head. "Let's just get my proposal through voting and committee and worry about that much later."
"Do you think it will pass, from the people you've spoken with?" Neville asked.
She waved her hand back and forth. "Hard to say. I've had some people tell me that Azkaban is a necessary institution and they don't agree with changing it. I've had some people say that my proposal goes too far in the other direction. But a number of people have said that they're willing to see what a committee does with my proposal and that if evidence supports the idea that we can have a safe and secure prison without Dementors, then they will support my proposal."
"That sounds reasonable. I hope it passes, Rachel," Hannah said. "Neville said you're still planning to do a Mastery?"
"Yes, once I'm done with the aurors, which should be soon now. The attacks have slowed enough that the MLE should be able to handle them without the dedicated teams."
"Thank Merlin," Hannah said, closing her eyes for a moment and reaching for Neville's hand again. "I'm glad it's over. For a while, especially in the summer, it felt like it never would be."
"It did," Neville agreed, taking her hand. "I'm glad the MLE was prepared for the attacks after the war this time."
Rachel nodded, knowing he was thinking of what happened to his parents.
"Well, tell us all of the good gossip from the MLE. I already get all the news about the Wizengamot from Neville. Oh, and about your Quidditch team too," Hannah said.
Rachel smiled. "I don't know how much gossip I know, but I'll try."
Theo grinned at her and took her hand. "You know more than you think you do. Tell them about what Miles said the other day about the MLE Patrol."
"Okay," Rachel said, settling into gossip with friends. This dating thing wasn't so bad.
Severus looked up at the sound of footsteps. "Rachel?" he called, glancing at his office clock and found himself surprised that it was nearing dinner already.
"Just me," she said, peering inside his office door. "You look busy. Do you want me to come back another time?"
"No, not at all. Just let me finish this thought," he said. He was holding his quill mid-sentence.
"Of course," she said, entering his office and then moving to look at the titles on his bookshelves.
He returned to his work, which was more theoretical than invention at the moment. It was difficult to prove why potions did the things that they did and it had been speculated on for more than a millennia. While many of the old theories had been disproven, and they could of course identify specific ingredients that reacted in specific ways under specific circumstances, the why was still a mystery. Severus didn't expect to solve that mystery - he didn't think anyone could - but while he was working on environmental potions he was able to see how they sometimes reacted the way that a spell would and sometimes did not. He was making a few experiments, trying to see if he could replicate the effects of spells with potions and vice versa, and discern what commonalities the magic between the potions and the spells had on an arithmantic level.
Severus finished his paragraph, making a few side notes about research he needed to perform, and then set down his quill and turned to watch Rachel. She was standing at one of his bookshelves, a book open and her gaze focused on whatever she was reading. Her curls hung loose down her back and around her shoulders and she was in nice daytime robes over a tidy outfit. When had she started wearing robes casually or leaving her hair down? He had missed it somewhere along the way.
Even though she still had a short and slender stature, it was clear to see that she had grown over the past year. She had fought with the aurors. She was introducing her own proposal to the Wizengamot. She was preparing to begin her Mastery. She was dating a young man. At some point in all of this she had become an adult and he had somehow missed it happening.
"May I borrow this?" she asked without looking up.
"Yes, of course," he said, feeling the corners of his mouth lift. Some things had remained the same.
"I worry about you, a little bit," she said, closing the book and coming to stand by his desk. "I don't come to see you enough and you're all alone here."
"You are welcome to be here as much as you want to be here," he told her, fully meaning it, but knowing how busy she was. He was grateful that he saw her as often as he did. "You do not need to worry about me. I have hardly had a private moment in my life for going on thirty years now. The quiet and the calm is good for me. And I do seek the company of members of the Potions Guild on a fairly regular basis while I reintegrate myself with them."
She nodded. "I always appreciated the times we came home over the summers. It helped to have a quiet place, so I fully understand that. I just don't wish for you to be lonely."
"I'm not lonely," he promised. And he wasn't. He did still worry about Rachel, but having the weight of the war and of Hogwarts off of him had helped a great deal. He was beginning to be able to sleep through the night with minimal interruptions. The end of the Dark Lord and the Death Eaters had released something inside of him, and that was only beginning to make itself known. He still had regrets and he would always bear the guilt of the things he had done, but he no longer was waiting for the other shoe to drop, so to speak. That time in his life was fully in the past, and he could begin to look toward his future.
"If you're sure," she finally said. "How was your week?"
"Good. Productive. I am exploring many options in research now that I have the time to immerse myself fully. I might take another five years at least before I interrupt that time with caring for an apprentice. Have you spoken with Emlyn recently?"
"I wrote her a letter letting her knowing that my time with the aurors is coming to an end and checking that she still is willing to apprentice me. She wrote back saying that she was and to let her know when I'm ready to start and we'll meet to arrange a schedule. She also suggested that I allow myself a break between when I finish with the aurors and when I begin my apprenticeship."
"That would not be a bad idea. You've been working on many projects these past several months. There's nothing wrong with giving yourself a few weeks off, especially while you are finishing meeting with people about your proposal. Have the aurors said when the teams will disband?" Severus asked. It would be a huge relief not to have her with the aurors any longer, even if he would not say as much to her.
"Assuming nothing disastrous happens, end of this month. And you're right, maybe I'll give myself June off so I'm available for more meetings and then start my apprenticeship in July after I've presented my proposal. You know what the worst part of this is?" she asked, raising her eyebrows.
"What's that?" he asked.
"Not knowing how people are going to vote and not knowing if I can trust them to be honest with me about how they feel about my proposal." Her mouth went flat for a moment. "No one is enthusiastic about it, which I suppose I should have expected, but a lot of them were surprised and horrified about the death statistics. I'd like them to be horrified about the suffering in Azkaban, but at this point I will take what I can get."
"They already know about the suffering in Azkaban, they won't be surprised or horrified by that if they are not already horrified by it. The death toll on the other hand is new information to them and it is rightly horrifying."
"It shouldn't be new information. They're sentencing people to Azkaban, they should know what happens there," she insisted.
"I don't disagree with you, but you are working to correct old wrongs. Sometimes it takes a fresh perspective for that to happen." He thought that Rachel was in for an uphill battle with the Wizengamot if she expected them to have sympathy for prisoners, House Elves, muggleborn and muggles, werewolves, and whoever else she collected as people who needed someone to stand up for them. But at the same time, if anyone could lead the movement, it was Rachel. Killing the Dark Lord would give her a lot of sway and as she drew people to her side she would find it easier to get votes for her causes.
"I just keep wondering what else I might find if I dig deeper into the Ministry archives. There has to be more there that we don't know about," she said, looking distant as she stared into the back garden.
"I recommend that you focus on the problems that you do want to solve before you go searching for more," he said, feeling a twinge of foreknowledge that eventually he was going to lose her to the Unspeakables if she spoke of archives with such intensity. While he still firmly believed that she was better off with the Unspeakables than with the aurors, he really would have preferred that she remained apart from the Ministry. They had a way of consuming people, especially those who were unusually gifted the way that Rachel was.
"That's probably true. I still have a lot of problems to solve that I don't know how to solve," she said, turning back to him.
"Like what?"
"Getting magical people to see muggles and muggleborns just as people with a different cultural heritage," she said, frowning and looking distant again.
"That is a problem that will take more than one person to solve." And likely wouldn't be solved in his own lifetime, nor Rachel's. "Let's go fix dinner."
She nodded. "What are you researching these days?"
"I will tell you while we cook," he said, knowing that if they stopped to talk it would take until past seven before they actually sat down to eat.
"How are you?" Daphne asked once they were settled in her tiny office at Witch Weekly.
"Pretty good, overall," Rachel said. It wasn't quite a lie. Overall things were alright. "How about you? How is your internship?"
"Not quite what I'd hoped it would be, but that's okay," Daphne said.
"When do you finish?"
"August, which is when they'll decide if they want to hire me or not. I'm hoping they will, despite what my parents think," she said.
"Your parents don't want you to write articles?" Rachel asked, thinking that was an odd thing to object to. She understood why Severus had been uncomfortable with her joining the aurors, but she couldn't see the harm in working at Witch Weekly.
"They were hoping that I would have met someone by now. I've been on a few dates, but with no one that I would actually consider marrying. I heard you and Theo are finally together. What took so long?" Daphne asked, grinning at her.
"I needed time. I needed to be away from the stress of the war, and I needed some time to make some decisions." This was also technically true without really going into the details of what had happened.
Daphne nodded sympathetically. "That makes sense. I'm sure it was hard to really think about anything while You-Know-Who wanted to kill you. I was scared and I wasn't even being targeted."
"How is Pansy?" Rachel asked, wanting to check while she had the opportunity.
"She's seeing a Mind Healer now, which I think has helped a little. She's started leaving her room again. She's talking about going to France."
"France?"
"She has some distant cousins there. She says she feels she can't stay here much longer. That it hurts too much to be here, and she thinks it will help to be away from everything. She wants to talk to you before she goes, but she's worried that she hurt you," Daphne said, also looking worried.
"She didn't hurt me," Rachel said. "I could see how much pain she was in, she didn't hurt me."
"Good. It might help if you write to her first, if you're willing to do that. She's been nervous about writing to you."
"I can do that," she agreed.
"So, you said you had some things that you wanted Witch Weekly to print about you?" Daphne asked, apparently ready for a change in subject.
"I do. There's actually two things I want to run by you." She had about six weeks before she presented her proposal. She'd spoken to every Wizengamot member who would agree to speak to her. Now it was time for the public to hear about her proposal.
"Okay." Daphne picked up her quill and prepared to take notes.
"The first is I'd like you to interview me about the proposal that I'm going to present to the Wizengamot in July. I want people to know about it. I think people should know about it," Rachel explained.
"We can do that, though we're going to have to work it into the context of a larger interview about you. Witch Weekly isn't going to want to publish a dry facts piece about Wizengamot proposals, they're more into human interest," Daphne explained.
"I can work with that," Rachel said. She'd been expecting as much anyway.
"Do you want to tell people about your relationship with Theo? I think this would be a good opportunity to balance what the Daily Prophet has said about him. Maybe give people a chance to hear about why you're dating him," she suggested.
"I think I can do that, but I want Theo to actually approve of whatever we're going to say before it's printed." She wasn't willing to bend on that.
"I can send you the pre-print article and you can show it to Theo. I'll make sure they know that's a condition of the article being published. We could also use pictures of you, Rachel. Would you be willing to sit for a photoshoot?"
Rachel hesitated. She really didn't want to, but if that was the price of doing this, she was willing to make concessions. "Maybe, there's another project I want to propose to you, and maybe the photoshoot could go along with that."
"What's that?"
"What would you think about a once a month column that I would write that would talk about muggles? I'd make sure it was things that Witch Weekly would be interested in, like muggle shopping, fashion, and entertainment," Rachel asked.
Daphne's eyes were wide. "I don't know about that."
"Why not?" Rachel asked.
"Muggle issues are a little divisive. Witch Weekly really tries not to take a political stance," she said.
"I don't see how showing people what muggles think is fashionable is political," Rachel said, intentionally downplaying the issue. "If people really want to know what I'm like, then this is part of me. I grew up in the muggle world. Muggle issues are important to me."
"I always thought your experience in the muggle world wasn't a very good one. You almost never talk about it," Daphne said, looking worried again.
"My specific experiences with my muggle relatives were difficult, I don't deny that." Nor did she want to talk about that. "But culturally I grew up in the muggle world. I will always stand by the fact that muggles and magical people are not as different as we make them out to be. But we can learn from them too. What is the harm in us knowing about their culture and being able to navigate it when we need or want to?"
"I suppose there isn't any harm. I just don't know that you can convince people to do it. I would have to talk to people, and I don't know what they're going to say. Actually, I have a pretty good idea what they're going to say, they're going to want more from you. That's how it works, you want something and they want something," Daphne said.
Rachel nodded. "I'm willing to negotiate. Exclusive interviews, photos, letting them have a final say on the topics included in the columns, that sort of thing."
"Alright. You're probably going to have to negotiate with the editors instead of me."
"I can do that too," Rachel said. Spending so much of her time sitting down and talking with Wizengamot members had helped her learn how to talk to people she didn't know a little bit better. She still wasn't comfortable doing it, but she could do it.
"Okay. Let's do this interview. Can we start with how Quidditch is going, then Theo, and then your proposal?" Daphne asked, picking up her quill again.
"Sure," Rachel said, bracing herself to talk about herself. It was awkward, but she was willing to trade to get what she wanted.
Rachel sat quietly in Courtroom Ten in the lowest level of the Ministry while the transcripts of Thorfinn Rowle's interrogation was read. Over the course of his life he had killed over a hundred people, most of them muggles or muggleborns. Rowle would stalk homeless people and kill them in back alleys when they were alone.
Her stomach had been churning throughout the trial. None of this sat well with her. She fully agreed and understood that Rowle should not go free. For one thing, he was very dangerous and would probably kill more people. For another, something should be done about the lives he had taken. While she was uncomfortable with life sentences in general, she found that she could agree at some point, when a person couldn't be trusted to be free, their freedom was forfeit.
On the other hand, something was wrong with Thorfinn Rowle. Even the answers he gave under Veritaserum didn't seem right. His language was stilted and sometimes the answers were confusing. She supposed the real trouble with Veritaserum was that it wasn't exactly a truth serum, it forced the person to say what they believed was true, which wasn't necessarily the same thing at all.
"Thorfinn Rowle, you may speak in your own defense," Madam Bones said once Stella had finished reading the transcript.
Rowle tipped his head back, seeming to look up at the Wizengamot. "I did what I had to do. I did what was necessary. I cleaned the filth from the streets. I did what all of you were too afraid to do."
The courtroom sat in silence for a moment, and from the people she could see, they found this just as disturbing as she did.
"To find Thorfinn Rowle guilty of violating the Unforgivable Curses Act in one hundred and twenty three counts and of violating the Death Eater Activities Act, please raise your hand. To find him not guilty, leave your hand unraised," Madam Bones directed, her voice ringing in the silence.
Rachel reluctantly raised her hand, seeing the people around her do so as well. She couldn't find him not guilty. If her only choices were guilty and not guilty, then she had to find him guilty. But this was wrong and she felt that deep in her gut. It wasn't just Azkaban that was the problem, this was wrong as well. There was something wrong with Rowle and he needed a Mind Healer and possibly other help that she didn't even know about. He shouldn't be free. But sending him to prison wasn't right either.
"Thorfinn Rowle has been found guilty and he is sentenced to life in Azkaban. This court is dismissed," Madam Bones said after Stella returned with the count.
Rowle did not fight as the MLE guards led him away, he walked with his head high.
"Alright?" Neville asked quietly from where he was sitting next to Rachel.
She shook her head. "Not really."
Draco looked at her. "He tried to kill you."
"I know," Rachel said as she stood and made her way to the exit, aware they were trailing after her.
Tonks joined them and they started up the staircases.
"Don't you want him to be in prison? You heard the things that he did," Draco pressed.
"I don't want him to be in prison. He needs help. This was wrong," Rachel insisted.
"What would you do instead?" Neville asked.
"Doesn't your proposal account for this?" Tonks asked when Rachel didn't answer. "You had healers and Mind Healers listed as staff. What more would you want done?"
"My proposal doesn't stop him from being sent to Azkaban right now," Rachel insisted. "It's not just Azkaban. It's the way we sentence people. There's no nuance. There's no accounting for circumstances."
"Isn't that a good thing?" Neville asked. "If someone commits a crime, then there is a certain penalty that goes with it."
"It prevents things from happening like the Wizengamot voting someone guilty and then giving someone a fine for murder instead of prison time," Tonks said. "That's what used to happen before specific penalties were set. Peer pressure among the Wizengamot ensures that most of them will vote by the evidence and testimony."
"I killed someone," Rachel said. "In fact, I've killed two people. I used an Unforgivable Curse. Why am I not being sentenced to Azkaban?"
"Because you didn't break the law," Tonks said. "Before you killed them there were specific provisions in place dealing with Death Eaters in combat situations. You killing them, even with an Unforgivable Curse, was not against the law. If you killed someone else in cold blood, you would be on trial. And that's what Rowle did. He killed people by hunting them down and slaughtering them."
"You heard him though. Did he sound lucid to you? Did he sound like someone who was rational?" Rachel asked.
The others looked between each other uneasily.
"I don't know," Neville said. "He did all of those things without being caught for years and years. Doesn't that suggest that he knew what he was doing was wrong and was hiding it purposefully?"
"I would say that if he was hiding it, he knew it was wrong, whatever he claims about doing the right thing," Draco agreed.
Rachel thought about that. "But couldn't you still hide something that you thought was the right thing, if you thought other people would stop you from doing it?"
"Obviously this is not straightforward," Tonks said. "It's clear that he wasn't rational from the letters he was writing and from the attack at the Quidditch match. But if he knew what he was doing was wrong and did it anyway, that makes him guilty. Either way, letting him go free was not an option, and right at this moment, our options were letting him go free or sending him to Akzaban."
"Then we need more options," Rachel said firmly.
"Well, before your prison proposal, I would have said that's impossible. Now, I would say that it's unlikely, but maybe doable if you can figure something out," Tonks said. "But these things take time. You can't fix problems overnight. Even with the war, the problem wasn't fixed just by killing You-Know-Who."
Rachel nodded. While she was uncomfortable with being party to the sentences being handed out by the Wizengamot, she couldn't resign. The best place for her to make changes in the system was by being part of the system. Even if that meant she had to live with the guilt of sending Thorfinn Rowle and Ambrosia Parkinson to Azkaban.
For now she needed to focus on getting her prison proposal passed and put into committee. Then she could begin research about sentencing, laws, crime, and the history of all of that and how it was done in other countries. Maybe she could find a better system that worked with the one they currently had.
Back in the Wizengamot chambers they split up to go to their offices. By the time they climbed seven flights of stairs most of the rest of the Wizengamot had dispersed. Tonks came with Rachel, still acting as her guard until Madam Bones and Head Auror Robards had decided the threat had fully passed.
Rachel went into the back of her office, changed her robes, and then sank down at her desk with a sigh. She rested her forehead in her hands and tried to clear her mind.
"This is really bothering you, isn't it?" Tonks asked, sitting across from Rachel.
"I don't like doing things that I think are morally wrong," she said.
"Well, I don't think anyone likes that." Tonks sat quietly for a moment. "My take on it is that you're doing the most morally correct thing you can do with the options you currently have. A lot of the time in life there isn't a perfect solution or answer. You have to make do with what you have. That doesn't mean that your options will always be the same."
"Sometimes I feel like I'm too young to do this," Rachel admitted. She didn't have the experience and knowledge that most of the Wizengamot or even the MLE had, and that was frustrating at times.
"It's a lot to ask of an eighteen year old," Tonks agreed. "Back when the Wizengamot was formed, families used to be much bigger. They didn't have to put conditions for people to be of a certain age until the 1800s, simply because it had never come up before that there was no one of age in the family line to take the seat. They simply didn't foresee that there would come a day when we'd have multiple Wizengamot children being the last in their family. But, if you want my opinion, you're doing a good job."
"You really think so?" Rachel asked.
Tonks nodded. "You're putting more into this than a lot of people do, not just for the power and social connections, but because you're interested in making things better for people. That's what the Wizengamot should be doing; passing legislation that improves the lives of the people in Britain."
Rachel could agree with that much at least. "It just seems so much sometimes. Sometimes it feels impossible."
"I think you need to try to find some middle ground. You push yourself to do everything, but you're going to burn yourself out if you keep going like this. Pick the things that you can have an influence on and trust that someone else is taking care of the rest."
The problem was that it didn't seem like someone else was taking care of the rest. It felt like she had to do everything personally or it wouldn't get done. She could also recognize that was irrational. She couldn't fix every problem in magical Britain, no matter how much she wanted to. What the Wizengamot was doing and how people were treated was very important to Rachel. She had no idea how far her influence could extend, but she suspected it was time for her to start finding out. She'd start with her prison proposal and go from there. One step at a time.