"Uncle Theo! Auntie Rachel!" Sarah shouted as she came running into the room, Neville following at a more sedate pace.
Theo scooped her up, lifting her up above his head as she shrieked and giggled.
"How are you?" Rachel asked, first hugging Neville and then winding up with Sarah in her arms.
"Not bad, all things considered. How about both of you?" Neville asked.
"We're managing," Theo said.
Rachel nodded in agreement as she moved to rest Sarah against her hip. "I think everywhere is a little wild right now." The newspaper had spent the last several days urging people not to panic. Rufus had made a speech. Amelia had made a speech. Rachel had written a statement of support, saying that the MLE was investigating and that she had full confidence that they would handle the situation.
"Hopefully things will calm down with time," Neville said as Hannah came into the room with Lisander in her arms.
"I thought I heard you come in. Dinner is almost ready," Hannah said, looking drawn and tired.
"I want to show them my picture," Sarah said, squirming in Rachel's arms until Rachel set her down.
"Can you show Uncle Theo your picture while I take Auntie Rachel to the greenhouses for a minute?" Neville asked.
"Yes," Sarah said, latching onto Theo's hand.
Rachel followed Neville down the hallway and out the back door into his garden. There were three greenhouses on the grounds now and Neville kept a wide variety of plants there, in addition to the plant nursery he managed.
"Did you actually want to show me something in the greenhouses or was that just an excuse?" she asked once they were outside.
"Both," he said. "I've got a new hybrid that I'm growing that I want you to see. I think it will speed healing when it's replacing comfrey in Healing Salve, and might have more applications than that."
"If it's a substitute for comfrey it could have a lot of applications," Rachel said. Comfrey was used in a number of healing potions, both traditional and non-traditional. "Are you selling yet?"
"Not yet. Depends on what the properties wind up being. I was hoping you wouldn't mind doing a preliminary analysis once I have some mature plants," he checked.
"I don't mind. I can do that." Playing with new ingredients was fun. They went inside the smallest greenhouse, Neville casting a light orb so that they could see better as the sun was in the process of setting.
He led her over to a bed of plants. They had thick green leaves and developing buds of yellow.
"May I touch?" she asked.
"Yes, skin contact is fine. They're easy enough to grow, but I'm not sure how hardy they'll be outside of a greenhouse," Neville said.
Rachel bent down and carefully examined the leaves. They were thick and rigid, with veins beneath the smoother surface. The buds were fairly large, which should mean they could get a reasonable amount to brew from them, and there were three to four buds per plant. The buds were soft and damp to her touch. "I think we're going to want to dry and powder these if we're substituting for comfrey," she said. "Do you have a name for it yet?"
"I'm going to wait and see its properties and final appearance before I name it."
"Any idea what the roots look like?"
"I'll check when I start harvesting the mature plants," he said. "Once I find out if it's useful I'll fully document the lifecycle."
Rachel nodded and stood up straight. "Well, I'm excited. I think it has a lot of potential."
Neville gave her a small smile. "Always nice to get a second opinion. At the rate they're growing, I should have samples within the next month or two."
"I'll clear my calendar." She could temporarily pause her work with the hyssop and calendula.
"Hannah and I spoke with Amelia about Justin and Emily yesterday," Neville said.
"Does she have any further ideas why they were targeted?" she asked, hoping that they'd found something that would give them a clue as to who needed the most protection.
"Not yet. I don't think…I don't think they're going to know until we see who they attack next."
She had expected as much, but it still wasn't what she wanted to hear. "How is Hannah holding up?"
"Sad. Scared. We've had Susan here with us a fair bit. It reminded them a lot of Ernie being murdered, and I'm sure Susan is thinking about her parents," Neville said.
"I'm glad Susan is able to be with you then. We could ask Hermione to reach out to her as well, they became good friends in the Healers Training Program," Rachel suggested.
"Susan mentioned seeing Hermione, so I think she already has," he said.
"Good." Rachel wondered if she and Theo should invite Susan over for dinner, just so she had some company.
"Has Amelia said anything to you about what they're doing?"
"She's pretty convinced it's a Death Eater or someone who was recruited by Death Eaters. She checked to make sure everyone else who they know can cast the Dark Mark is accounted for. I just wish we knew why now. I keep thinking…"
"What?" Neville asked.
"We just passed the Muggleborn Employment Equality proposal. Do you think that spurred them to action?" she asked. This thought had occurred to her late one night and she hadn't been able to let it go.
Neville frowned as he thought. "Maybe. But wouldn't they have acted before it passed, to scare people away from voting for it? It wasn't a secret we were voting on that."
She pressed her lips together. That made a fair amount of sense. The Wizengamot was certainly unsettled right now, and if this had happened before the vote, Rachel almost certainly would have delayed a vote on that proposal until things had calmed down and she could be sure of how people were going to vote. "I think you're right. I just can't think of anything else big that has happened in the past year that might have caused this."
"They might not have needed a cause. This might not be that sort of a statement. Maybe they just felt like killing some muggleborns," he suggested, reaching over and patting Rachel's arm. "Even if this was because of employment equality, we were going to pass that proposal one way or another. This wouldn't have stopped us; it's just a reminder of why it's necessary and why it's one step in the right direction."
"You're right." Over the years she'd discovered that there was no one fix for the situation between purebloods and muggleborns. It was a bunch of smaller but related problems, and the only real way to tackle it was one piece at a time. She didn't think her generation, or even Sarah and Scorpius' generation, was going to see a comfortable culture for muggleborns, but maybe their children would grow up in a magical Britain where blood status was simply an attribute that described their family circumstances rather than something that determined their future.
Theo's shark swam up to them. "If you want to eat warm food, you should get in here before the kids get to everything."
Neville smiled. "You would not believe how much they can eat," he said as they moved to leave the greenhouse.
"After seeing Scorpius and Cygnus eat, yes I can," Rachel said, and they both laughed. "Just wait until they become teenagers."
"I think we have some time before that day comes," Neville said.
They did, but Rachel also knew that sometimes it felt like time moved by in huge gallops and if she didn't stop to pay attention she could miss all the little things that amounted to the kids growing up.
For once in Tom Riddle's memories, Rachel knew the exact date. It was the first of September, 1938, and Tom Riddle had just been Sorted into Slytherin House.
It felt very strange to be back in the Great Hall for a Sorting Ceremony, and stranger still to see Professor Dumbledore leading it in his role of Deputy Headmaster. Rachel felt a little out of place not in a Hogwarts uniform, even though no one could see her. She also couldn't help but note how young all of the students seemed, even the upper years. Time and perspective, she supposed. She was still young as far as the Wizengamot was concerned, but she was far too old for Hogwarts.
She stayed close to Tom, curious about what he was going to do. He had sat with the other Slytherin first years and she had seen the amazement on his features when the feast appeared, though he had quickly schooled his expression when he saw that the other children took this as a matter of due course.
Identifying Draco's grandfather had been very simple, not just because he looked almost exactly how Draco had looked at eleven years old. Abraxus Malfoy held his chin high and his eyes were sharp as he looked over the other first years. Theo's grandfather, Trajan Nott, was slightly less obvious, though he had Theo's dark eyes and dark hair, though both Abraxus and Trajan wore their hair long and tied back.
Rachel had taken a quick moment to guess at her grandparents' birth years - she had never thought to ask Monty - and wondered if he or Effie were here in the school right now. Neither of them had been Sorted tonight. She was tempted to go take a peek at the Gryffindor table to see if she recognized either of them, but she dutifully stayed put and watched as Tom took in his new situation.
The conversation had turned to families, as it so often did for new first years, and Abraxus proudly reminded them that his father was a very important member of the Wizengamot. Trajan revealed that he had an older brother who was a fourth year Slytherin, which caused Rachel to wonder if Theo had more distant family that he didn't know about, family that might still be alive. The next boy was Caius Mulciber, another last name Rachel recognized from the wanted Death Eaters, though given the time period, she suspected this Mulciber was retired or long deceased. The final boy in their group was Faustus Lestrange - apparently latin baby names were all the rage for magical people of this era.
The boys looked at Tom expectantly, and for the first time since she'd seen him today, Tom spoke. "I am an orphan, and I do not know my parentage, but given where I am, I hope I can learn more about them here at Hogwarts."
It was clear that Tom had already sussed out the value of having magical parentage.
"Has no one told you about them?" Abraxus asked, looking surprised.
"No, I have nothing to go on other than my name," Tom said. Rachel knew that wasn't true, she knew that Tom knew his mother had died at the orphanage.
"We could help you find them," Trajan said after a moment.
"Of course we could. How hard can it be?" Caius asked.
Not long after this, Headmaster Dippet sent the students to bed after a brief admonishment to behave themselves in the corridors.
Rachel followed the boys out, aware that she was witnessing the first gathering of Death Eaters, even though they were nothing more than eleven year old boys at this point in time. How did they go from this - innocent kids offering to help their less fortunate school mate - to Death Eaters?
Before long they wound up in the hallway leading to the Slytherin common room and Rachel took a brief look at Curbin's portrait as they passed through. She'd never thought to ask him about what he'd seen of Tom Riddle while he'd been at school and now she regretted that. She knew that Curbin saw a great deal of what happened in Slytherin House.
In the common room one of the male prefects directed the boys to their dormitory, and Rachel found herself surprised that Professor Slughorn wasn't in here as Head of House setting things in order the way that Severus always had at the beginning of the term. She paused in the hallway leading to the boys' dorms. "I'm not going in the boys' dorms with them. I'm not watching them undress," Rachel told the pensieve, though thus far it hadn't tried to show her any such thing.
She was beginning to suspect that the Morsius Pensieve had some sort of understanding or instructions or something that dictated what memories she saw. Certainly she saw a lot of random small moments, but the pensieve seemed to understand that there were important moments that made up a person's life. Or maybe she was missing important moments, and she just didn't know it.
It was a little daunting to consider what the Morsius Pensieve might select for her. She had a lot of memories that she never wanted anyone to see, for a number of reasons. She wondered if Tom Riddle felt that way. She knew people could watch from the afterlife, but she had no idea what sort of limitations were on that. What if he was watching her right, watching her watch his memories?
The pensieve released her and Rachel went to the desk and considered the book in front of her. She didn't want to do this project any longer. She'd never wanted to do it in the first place. Whatever Patrick was hoping to find from it, she just didn't see it. Sitting, she quickly wrote out what she'd seen, noting in particular Tom's lie about not knowing anything about his parents and how he had implied that his parents must be magical.
With that taken care of she shut the book and made her way back out of the Department, pausing to sign herself out so no one would think that she was lost again. Ten minutes later she was knocking on the door frame to Patrick's office door.
Patrick looked up from his work. "Ah, Rachel. I'm not missing an appointment, am I?"
"No. Would you like me to make an appointment and come back another time?" she offered.
"No, no need, come in. Are you finding everything alright? Liesel and Mirabel are taking good care of you?" he asked.
Rachel entered his office and pulled his door shut. "Yes, everything is fine. Everyone has been very helpful and kind." There was no empty chair to sit on, so she remained standing. "I was hoping I could talk to you about my project with the Morsius Pensieve."
"Yes, of course. What about it?"
"I'm not sure I'm discovering anything of use," she said, reaching for the best way to form her argument.
"I wouldn't say that at all. The accounting has been very enlightening thus far," Patrick said.
"You've been reading it?" She wasn't sure whether or not she should be surprised by that.
"Yes, every time there's an update, though I haven't seen your entry for today just yet. Absolutely fascinating."
Rachel thought about that for a moment. She didn't find it fascinating. She found it unfortunate and uncomfortable. "I don't understand how this is helping us prevent another dark lord or lady," she finally said, since that had been their reason for doing this.
"Truly, you don't?" Patrick asked, arching his eyebrows at her.
"No. I don't think you can look at an eleven year old, or a child, and know what they're going to become. Tom's childhood was similar to mine in some respects, and I'm certainly no dark lady." Rachel couldn't even imagine herself as a dark lady. The minute she hurt someone she'd be rushing over to them apologizing and healing them.
"Perhaps. You and Tom Riddle both suffered childhoods of deprivation and abuse," Patrick cautiously agreed. "But I seriously doubt that you sought other children out to injure them or get them into trouble."
"No, I didn't. But I don't think that destined Tom to become the Dark Lord either. What he did to those children was awful, there's no denying that, but there's a big difference between a child hurting other children and a man choosing to lead a crusade to kill thousands of people. I just watched Tom at Hogwarts for the first time, and the children in his dormitory were undoubtedly the first Death Eaters. But they were just eleven years old. There wasn't anything there saying what they'd become. I don't think there's a moment where someone becomes like that, I think it's a choice that people make, and that they keep making that choice every time they hurt someone."
He nodded slowly. "It's not about identifying an eleven year old who will become a dark lord, it is about warning signs, and about us recognizing those warning signs sooner, and perhaps acting on those signs."
"So targeting children who are coming from abusive backgrounds?" she asked, because she definitely didn't want that.
"Targeting them to receive help, perhaps. You yourself in your notes have theorized that perhaps if Tom Riddle had been given an appropriate guardian that he may never have followed the path that he did. Here, come with me," Patrick said, standing and closing his files.
Rachel followed him into the Department Archives and they went left, toward the arrow marked 'Citizens'. This was a separate cavern and it stretched further than Rachel could see. Cabinets upon cabinets, rows upon rows. In the distance she could see where they had switched from scrolls to files. "Files on everyone in magical Britain?" she asked.
"Yes."
"Why?"
"Safety. Security. What can be known can be controlled," Patrick said as they walked.
"Did you know certain people were Death Eaters?" she asked.
"Yes. For some we knew. For others we suspected. We gave the names to the MLE, so they could investigate further."
"But some you didn't know. Like Augustus Rookwood?" She knew Rookwood had been an Unspeakable during the first war.
Patrick winced. "That was an unfortunate oversight. His family wasn't aligned with the Death Eaters, nor were his acquaintances. Rookwood played a very long game. The only reason we knew at all was because another Death Eater accused him in order to get leniency. Leniency that never should have been offered." He paused and looked at her. "I don't mean to speak ill of the MLE. I know you are former MLE and so are a number of Unspeakables. But mistakes were made."
"No offense taken. Many mistakes were made in both of the wars, both by the Ministry and the MLE," she said.
"We tried. The Unspeakables perhaps see more clearly than other Departments, perhaps because we have access to so much information, but Fudge would not listen to us," Patrick said, moving again.
Rachel paused and then decided that she could offer him this much. "Fudge was working with the Dark Lord."
"Yes. We know. It is a well kept secret how close the Ministry came to mutiny and assassination in '96. If You-Know-Who had not killed Fudge, we would have had to do it."
"Do we know why the Dark Lord did kill Fudge, if he was working with him?" she asked.
"Fudge wasn't skilled enough to play the game. He couldn't give You-Know-Who what he wanted without a call for a vote of no confidence in the Wizengamot. You-Know-Who killed him and sacrificed his chance to control the Wizengamot that year in favor of killing anyone on the Wizengamot who disagreed with him with the intent of forcing an early election. If he had succeeded… Well, it's entirely possible the war would have been lost at that election." Patrick stopped as they came to a door, which he laid his hand against and tapped his wand. "Locked. These files are restricted."
This room was much smaller. "Whose files have to be kept restricted?" she asked.
"We keep the files for the current Wizengamot in here, along with files of the Department Heads of the Ministry, the Minister, the ICW Seat, and anyone else who has a significant amount of power in magical Britain. Your file is in here, and has been since you were an infant," Patrick explained, moving to another case and pulling out a thin file. "Tom Riddle's file. As you can see, we are missing a great deal of information."
"May I?" she asked as he set the file down.
"Please," Patrick said, stepping back.
Inside she found a cover sheet. The word 'muggleborn' had been crossed out and 'half-blood' written next to it. His father's name was listed, but not his mother's. "You don't know who his mother is?"
"Not until you wrote it down in your notes. I'm waiting for the full story before I update his file," Patrick said.
There was a list of addresses, but that stopped in 1952. The same year as his end of employment at Borgin and Burkes. There was a sheet with Tom Riddle's school grades every year. Tom Riddle's grades were every bit as good as Rachel's. He had taken Arithmancy and Ancient Runes as his electives. He had taken seven NEWT exams, just like Rachel, and eerily, received the same overall scores, if not in the same classes. There was a financial statement, showing the salary he was making at Borgin and Burkes and that his taxes were paid. And that was it for the file. "Where's the rest?"
"There's nothing else. We have another file that lists suspected activities and sightings of You-Know-Who, but everything we have on him from 1952 on is hearsay. You can understand why we're interested in this project."
She turned to look at him. "So this is just to satisfy your curiosity?"
"No, not at all. We can see the building blocks of who Tom Riddle will become now. The scheming and manipulation. His burgeoning powers. But as you have said to me, he is eleven, and those things do not a dark lord make. We need to know how he is transformed, how he gained power over the people around him, so we can stop it from happening again," Patrick said.
Rachel nodded, still uncertain. She supposed she understood why it was important to know those things. "I'll see what I can find out."
"That's all I ask," he said, closing the file and putting it away.
Rachel went home early, her mind too occupied to really focus on anything in her Wizengamot office. She had Alwen coming in to talk about the tax proposal tomorrow. Hopefully he could shed further light on the matter, because she couldn't make the damn thing make sense to her.
She wandered through the entire house, checking on the cats, the House Elves, and the owls. She went into the cellar and checked on her cauldrons, then went in the back garden and checked her plant beds. She checked the wards, which were just as she'd left them that morning. She went up to her bedroom and checked her pocket watch, seeing that her friends and family were all out busy with their day's work.
Having checked everything she could possibly think to check, Rachel went back into the sitting room and sat in the quiet. The house felt vast around her, even though when she had Theo had been looking for a home they had agreed they didn't want something unwieldy. They had three bedrooms - one for each of them and a guest room - two bathrooms, a library, an office for each of them, the sitting room, dining room, and kitchen - with a room off the kitchen with private spaces for each of the House Elves - and then a larger work space in the cellar. Most of the time that didn't seem like too much since they regularly used all of those spaces.
Right now though she felt oddly vulnerable and alone.
Her mind kept coming back to Tom Riddle and the children she'd seen that morning. They had all seemed like ordinary children. At that point in their lives, they had been ordinary children.
She supposed when it came down to it, she fundamentally didn't understand how people became who they became. What in her aunt's life had influenced her so that she thought it had been alright to hurt a child? What in her uncle's life had convinced him that providing his niece to pedophiles for money was a reasonable thing to do? Could just anyone make those decisions?
Rachel felt that she knew herself and she knew what she believed in. She knew she wasn't always right, even though she desperately wanted to be. But, even then, she had done things that other people could condemn. She had killed two people. She knew there were people who felt that it was never right to take a life, no matter what the circumstances.
The only real defense she had was that she had done the best she could under the circumstances that she'd been in. But couldn't everyone say that?
Didn't the Death Eaters believe that they were doing the right thing? She couldn't imagine them going into that telling themselves 'this is morally wrong and I'm going to do it anyway'. She didn't think anyone worked like that. She just didn't know how someone convinced themselves it was morally right to torture someone.
She thought that Patrick was wrong. She didn't think they were going to find a moment where Tom Riddle turned into the Dark Lord. It was just like anything else she supposed; one small creeping change at a time, hours and days trickling away, and then one day you woke up and didn't recognize your life anymore.
Under other circumstances, Rachel wondered if she might have wound up with the Death Eaters. If Severus hadn't adopted her. If she'd had different friends. If she hadn't known that the Dark Lord was responsible for her parents' deaths. She looked down at her hands and flexed them. She was incredibly powerful, more so than she really liked to think about. The Dark Lord and Death Eaters would have welcomed her with open arms if they'd realized how powerful she was.
The problem was that she didn't want to hurt anyone. And she remembered herself well enough at eleven years old to know that she hadn't wanted to hurt anyone then. She wasn't sure if wanting to hurt people was something that could be taught or was something that was innate in a person.
Tom Riddle, even at eleven, seemed to have no qualms about hurting people, manipulating them, or lying to them. Rachel wasn't sure what the difference was, or why it was that he felt that way and she didn't. She didn't like the idea that people were just born a certain way. She'd watched Scorpius and Sarah from the time they were infants, and she'd seen them grow and change and develop personalities. Even at four years old, they were small people with wants and desires and thoughts and ideas.
Upbringing obviously played a role. Rachel wouldn't be the person she was today if she hadn't had the childhood and adolescence that she'd had. But she thought that it was also clear that upbringing wasn't everything. If it was, Draco and Theo never would have stepped away from their families. So that left this nebulous space of genetics and inborn personality and whatever else that formed to make a person.
Maybe Tom Riddle wasn't destined to have become the Dark Lord - Rachel took a dim view on the idea of destiny anyway - but things in his life had aligned so that he did become the Dark Lord. It was like brewing a potion. Take away one of the base ingredients and you wound up with an entirely different potion.
"Rachel?"
She looked up and found Theo in the doorway. "Hi."
"How long have you been here?" he asked, coming into the room and sitting down next to her.
"Oh, a little while. Is it past five already?" she asked, tugging back her sleeve to answer her own question. It was nearly six.
"It is. What's wrong? Did something happen at the Ministry?"
Rachel shook her head. "Nothing happened. I'm just thinking about things."
Theo waited for a moment. "Want to talk about it?"
"What do you think causes a person to do the things that they do?" she asked, figuring she might as well get someone else's opinion.
"I don't know," he said after seeming to consider the question. "I think it probably depends on the circumstances and on the person. Are we talking about someone specifically?"
"The Dark Lord and the Death Eaters," she admitted, wishing she could tell him about her project. "Not everyone who is set on the path to become a Death Eater becomes a Death Eater. You didn't. Draco didn't. But we know other people we went to school with did."
His mouth went flat. "I had my mother telling me not to listen to everything my father said. By the time I reached Hogwarts, I was ready for other points of view. I had been alone with my father for three years, except for the tutors and sometimes seeing the other kids in our little group, and I desperately wanted my mother to be right and that there was more to the world than what I'd seen. I actually watched you, Hermione, Millie, and Neville for a few months our first year, trying to figure out how to approach you because I did not want to spend all my time with the kids I already knew."
Rachel couldn't help but smile. "If I recall correctly, you were eavesdropping on us."
"Yes, I was," Theo said, the corners of his mouth lifting. "I wanted to know what was so important that all of you talked about."
"I don't think we were really talking about anything all that important."
"Just the hiding place of the Philosopher's Stone and that the Dark Lord was plotting to get it," he said, raising his eyebrows but clearly amused.
Rachel winced but laughed. "We got into so many things at Hogwarts we shouldn't have been involved with."
"We really did. Looking back, it's really not a surprise that Severus left Hogwarts after our seventh year. He must have been so stressed."
"I think he was, though I really didn't see it at the time." She could recognize that while she was at Hogwarts, especially the last few years, she'd been so wrapped up in her own problems that she'd barely noticed anyone else.
"As for Draco, I think you'd have to ask him. I know your friendship with him played a role in why he walked away from his family. I think for both me and Draco, knowing that we had Severus' support when we made the decision to leave helped too," Theo said.
"I know Severus was trying with a lot of the kids of Death Eaters. Pansy was never suited for the Death Eaters, even her parents saw that. And Avery fled rather than joining," Rachel said. They'd never heard of what had happened to Avery Acker after he'd fled Britain. He'd never turned up again and no one knew if he was hiding in another country or if he had been found by the Death Eaters and killed.
"And then there's people like Hestia and Flora and Jacob," Theo said, nodding. "They had the opportunity to get help from Severus, but they didn't take it. Again, I think only they can tell you why."
Jacob and Flora weren't telling anyone anything, they had both died. Hestia had been released from prison two years ago, but Rachel hadn't sought her out. She wasn't even sure what she'd say to her.
"Why is this worrying you?" Theo asked, putting his hand on Rachel's knee and squeezing gently.
"I just…I sometimes wonder if I could have wound up a Death Eater under other circumstances. If anyone could."
"I think those would have been some pretty extreme circumstances." He raised his eyebrows at her. "I'm not saying you're not skilled or lethal, because you are, especially after auror training and training with elemental magic. The Death Eaters probably would have accepted you if you weren't who you are, but I honestly have a hard time imagining you wanting to be a Death Eater. You don't even like using living slugs or leeches in potions. Is this about Severus?"
"In a way. He joined the people who were giving him help and support. Wouldn't anyone do that?" she asked.
Theo sat for a long moment and then shook his head. "I can't speak for Severus. I don't know how much he knew before he got involved. Being involved with the Death Eaters as a student at Hogwarts is a very different thing than being a Death Eater for real. If I hadn't had support, if I hadn't known that I wanted something else, maybe I would have wound up as a reluctant Death Eater, or maybe I would have fled like Avery did. I don't know. I think that might just be how life works; we don't know what we would have done under other circumstances, because we would have been different people in those circumstances."
"Pieces get added to each other, and if you remove one of them, the whole thing comes tumbling down," she said. It was easy to see how many diverging paths her life might have taken, starting from when she was an infant. Before she was an infant, really. The prophecy had shaped the course of her entire life. Without that, who knew who she would have become.
"I think we all changed each other's lives by becoming friends. My time at Hogwarts would have been very different without you, and I think we can all say that for each other."
Rachel nodded. They had all supported each other through some very difficult times, and had celebrated with each other during the good times. In a very real way, the person she was today didn't exist without them.
She wondered if that was going to be the same for the children she had seen today. The lives of the people around her had been deeply impacted by her involvement in the war. If Tom Riddle hadn't been those boys' dormmate, was it possible that they would have become entirely different people as well? She supposed there was no real way of knowing.
"Do you want dinner?" Theo asked.
"Yeah, we should eat," Rachel said, though she knew the topic was going to weigh heavily on her for a while until she found some sort of conclusion.
Her mind was still on Tom Riddle and the Death Eaters when Rachel apparated to Severus' home on Sunday for dinner. She'd watched several more memories of Tom Riddle at Hogwarts this week. He had made burgeoning friendships with his dormmates and Rachel had watched one evening as Tom had sat in the Slytherin common room and listened intently to the chatter of those around him.
Tom didn't at all seem daunted by Hogwarts. Not the castle, not his classmates, not the magic, and not the school work. Rachel privately thought that was very impressive. Tom was fiercely independent. She remembered being completely overwhelmed when she'd first come to Hogwarts. Every time she'd turned around it had felt like someone was telling her something new or that she was discovering unicorns or giants existed. Tom seemed to take this all in stride and never revealed to his dormmates if anything surprised him.
Severus' house was nearly completely quiet, but if Rachel listened carefully she could hear a quill scratching as Severus wrote. She paused in the doorway to his office, watching him work. With his head bowed down over his desk, his hair falling forward concealed his expression. Rachel knew that he knew she was there, so she waited for him to finish whatever thought he was working on.
"Come in, please. I'm nearly finished," he said, glancing up about a minute later.
Rachel went inside his office and took the seat opposite his desk, pondering what she was going to ask him. She didn't want to pry into his past as a Death Eater. She fully understood why he didn't like talking about that. But she wanted someone else's opinion and Severus usually knew what he was talking about.
He set down his quill, apparently finished writing, and took a minute to look over his work before setting it aside. "How was your week?" he asked, looking at her.
"Not bad," she said. It hadn't been a bad week, just one where she was up at night a lot thinking. "How about you?"
"Busy, but that is ever the case. I'm brewing with Andrea, which is slowly becoming a less harrowing experience over time."
Rachel felt herself smile. "I'm glad to hear that. If she likes blowing things up, she might have a place in the Unspeakables."
"If that is what the Unspeakables are up to, I truly do not wish to know," Severus said flatly.
"Then you'll be glad to know that I personally have not blown anything up." Those were Cyril's projects, not hers. "I'm still on sleeping potions."
"Do you believe you will be able to make more progress on them with the research materials found there?" he asked, looking curious.
"I don't know yet, but I've found some things I haven't tried before, so I think it's at least worth trying."
"The Unspeakables do not mind you spending your time on sleeping potions? I would have expected they would have other things for you to do."
"I have multiple projects that I'm working on. I spend a few hours here and there on sleeping potions, but at least half of my time is in the Department itself." Rachel hesitated for a moment and then decided she wasn't going to get a better opening to ask. "Can I ask you about a subject you probably don't want to talk about?"
"Rachel, in the years that we have known each other I am not sure there is a subject we have not discussed. Ask," Severus said, raising an eyebrow at her.
She still hesitated, trying to think of the best way to frame her question. "How do you think people become who they become? Like, when you were Head of House, did you know some of your students would go on to become Death Eaters, even when they were still children?"
"For some of them, I knew that it was likely, even from the time they were young. I tried to reach out to each student who I thought might be susceptible to the Death Eaters' machinations, and failed more often than I succeeded, and there were surely some I missed," Severus said, looking grim at the reminder.
"Because of their upbringing, or because of something else?" she asked.
"Part of it is upbringing and what they are taught to believe. As I know you saw yourself, some of your classmates gained a broader perspective while they were at Hogwarts and away from their parents' purview, but some decided that they believed what their family and community had taught them."
"But what determines that?" she pressed.
"If I knew the answer to that I could perhaps solve the strife in our society," he said with a shake of his head. "Why does anyone believe the things that they believe? Part is what they are taught, part is their own observations of the world around them. Many times people choose to only pick out the things they observe with what they already believe."
Rachel frowned down at her hands as she thought. What Severus was saying rang true for her, but it didn't really answer the bigger question. People were clearly more than what they were raised to be, but how?
"Why is this troubling you?" Severus asked.
"I've just been thinking about it. Why people wind up in different places in their lives, and how they could have wound up somewhere else if something small had changed," she said, which was true, if not the whole truth.
"Are you unhappy with where circumstances have brought you?"
"No. Not at all. My life is very good," she quickly assured him. "Most days I want to strangle half of the Wizengamot, but I'm reliably told that is a healthy feeling when it comes to politics."
Severus nodded. "That is my understanding as well. But you do not have to remain on the Wizengamot."
"I choose to," she agreed. There was more to it than that, it was her duty to Britain and there were still many things that needed to be improved upon, but she was choosing to do her duty.
"And you can continue to make that choice. You have your full life in front of you. It does not always have to be as it is now."
"I know. I think I'm just trying to understand people. And the world. I feel like if I could understand these things, I would know how to approach things better." And that was true. If she could understand, maybe she could make more headway into muggle and muggleborn equality.
"You have your task cut out for you then. As far as I know, anyone claiming to understand human nature is either lying or is deluding themselves and others," he said, standing. "Shall we eat?"
"Yes, please," she said, standing as well. "When is your paper coming out? I know Ethan and Miranda are eager to see it."
"November's issue of Modern Potions," he said. "I got the confirmation this week and they have my final proofs."
"I'm looking forward to reading it as well," she said. "Do you want to tell me about it, or do you want to wait until I've read it?"
"I'll let you see the proofs after dinner, if you'd like," he offered as they went into the kitchen.
"I'd like that very much." Potions were much easier to deal with than people.