The Department allowed her to arrive at the Morsius Pensieve today, though it took a full thirty minutes of navigation to get there. Rachel looked warily around the room. To say that she was tired of this was a vast understatement. These sessions had devolved into torture, rape, murder, and propaganda.
This was accompanied by the knowledge that nothing was being done about it. It was still the 1960s in the memories and she knew that the Ministry had not yet branded the Knights of Walpurgis as a threat. No one cared. No one fucking cared. As much as she hated the idea of war and all that came with it, she hated the idea of them doing this with impunity even worse.
Rachel was not a person who was overly inclined to kill, despite her history with doing exactly that. In general she believed that it was better to arrest people and hold them accountable for their crimes. But at the moment she found that she could envision herself killing every one of them in the circle. She'd raised her hands and the earth would follow. Lightning would strike. Fire would burn. Destruction.
She looked down at her hands. No one, not even Severus, seemed to understand how dangerous she was. If the Unspeakables wanted to study why Dark Lords and Ladies rose, they should focus on people with the type of power she had. Professor Dumbledore had nearly followed that path with Grindelwald. It had taken the accidental death of his younger sister to act as a wake up call. Rachel couldn't imagine what the world would look like if Professor Dumbledore and Grindelwald had continued to work together. It was unthinkable. Both of them held the type of power that she held.
And then there was Tom Riddle, of course. He'd been using his powers for harm since before he knew he was magical. She'd seen him at the Battle at Hogwarts. The ground had been churned up. The air had been heavy with electricity. She suspected that Professor Dumbledore had been containing the elemental battle to prevent it from reaching the other combatants.
Rachel had never been in a real elemental dual. Her mentor Louisa had told her it was incredibly dangerous and that the only time to do so was to prevent someone from using elemental magic on others. Louisa had estimated there were somewhere between fifty and a hundred people currently in the world who could do what they could do. Most of them had been recruited by their local governments, and the ones who weren't were monitored closely by them. Louisa had said she made the US magical government very nervous by training other elemental witches and wizards, but there was nothing they could legally do to stop her. She presented it to them as it was better for people with this ability to be able to control their gifts than it was to allow them to accidentally lash out with it without meaning to.
Louisa's group contained a number of people who had left their home countries because they likely would have been effectively imprisoned for what they could do. Rachel had pointed out that with their abilities they were difficult to effectively imprison. Lousia had agreed, but had said that it would also wind up with a lot of people dead in order for them to escape, and most people didn't want to do that.
There was part of Rachel that had been tempted to stay with Louisa's group. Louisa had made the offer, as she did with anyone she trained, but Rachel felt beholden to magical Britain. She had saved her country, she had killed for it, and it was now sort of her responsibility. Besides, there were too many things that needed to be done and apparently she was the one who was willing to do them. She had agreed to sacrifice part of herself for this, just as she'd willingly went to die to stop the war. At this point, she considered it leading by example.
She gave the pensieve another look. It was time to stop standing here mulling over things. She still had other things she wanted to do this morning, which meant getting this done and out of the way.
Pouring in the memory liquid, giving three drops of blood, and plunging into the pensieve was all routine by now. Rachel found herself on a dark moor and knew what would happen from here. She would get a look at the victims to see if the MLE could identify them. Then she'd turn her back and watch Tom Riddle until it was over.
The Death Eaters - currently still the Knights of Walpurgis - arrived and formed a circle. They were in dark cloaks with their hoods up, but still no masks. Rachel took a quick note of who was there and noted that there was a newcomer who she didn't know their name. Maybe at some point she'd discover why they had made the name change. As far as she knew, no one knew why they'd changed to Death Eaters in the seventies.
Two more arrived, bringing a bound couple with them. The couple was struggling against their restraints as they were shoved into the center of the circle. She took a look, trying to note facial features, hair, and anything else she could use to describe them. The MLE should have been notified of their disappearance, unless they were muggles.
She turned away as the torture began, all of her muscles tensing at the sound of screams. At first she'd tried to bear witness for these people, but she had found she wasn't strong enough to do that. Instead she watched Tom Riddle. He was rapt as the torture continued, though he wasn't participating.
Rachel had never understood this. She didn't understand what he got from this. It was clear he enjoyed torture and pain, but nothing she'd seen in his memories explained why. Were some people just like that? Was he ill? Rachel didn't like the idea that there was just something fundamentally wrong with him. That seemed callous, to write people off as being unfixable.
His gathering of like-minded people made sense. He wanted power and control. His persecution of muggles and muggleborns made sense. He was aligning himself with the already entrenched lines of power within their society. But the fascination with pain and torture was something else entirely. He enjoyed it.
It made Rachel feel ill at the idea that when she'd been tortured, when she'd been in a circle just like this one, Tom Riddle had been standing there enjoying it, and so had many of the people who had participated. She took a brief glance around the circle, flexing her hands. She believed in justice and trials and sentencing. But if she was really standing here instead of being in a memory, she wasn't sure she could control the urge to just kill them outright and be done with it. That made her feel ill too.
She half listened to Tom's propaganda. It was the same nonsense about reclaiming their society. The pensieve spit her back out again when it was done and she made her way over to the desk and sat. Some days this project felt like it was killing her.
"Do you really want to do this?" Booker asked.
The answer was no, Rachel did not want to do this. She knew this was a pointless exercise. "Yes, I need to do this."
"I don't see that it's necessary," Monty said. "You know what his answer will be."
"I do, but I should at least give him the opportunity," she said.
"I don't see why," Monty said unrepentantly.
"Because it's the polite and mature thing to do," Rachel answered.
"He tried to bribe the Wizengamot," Booker pointed out.
"If I ignored everyone who functioned on bribes and favors I wouldn't speak to half of the Wizengamot," she said. "I'm not doing this for Mason Fallon. I'm doing this to show the rest of the Wizengamot that I'm willing to work with anyone who will put aside political differences to get the job done."
Neither Monty nor Booker had an answer for that.
"May I accompany you?" Booker finally asked.
"No. I can handle Mason Fallon," she insisted. "If I can fry a Death Eater in my own back garden, a Wizengamot member certainly doesn't scare me."
Booker grimaced.
"Fallon may behave himself better if Booker is present," Monty suggested.
"I don't need him to behave himself, I need him to be honest with me."
"You're not concerned he will try to manipulate you?" Monty asked.
"No. I'm generally a difficult person to manipulate. What are you concerned he might try to manipulate me to do?" she asked, turning to look at her grandfather's portrait.
"I am less concerned about him attempting to manipulate you and more concerned that he may threaten you," Booker said.
Rachel shook her head. "He would have to be insane to threaten me."
"There are different kinds of threats. I doubt he intends you bodily harm, but he may attempt to lure some of your faction away from you," he said.
"If he has the ability to lure someone in my faction away from us, then I don't want them in my faction in the first place. They all know better than to take bribes." She checked her watch. It was time. "I will be back in about fifteen minutes. I can't imagine this will take longer than that."
"I will come looking for you if you're not back in thirty minutes," Booker said. "Please do not think you are invincible."
"I know. I'll be fine." Rachel left her office before either of them could have the chance to protest again. She could handle herself. There were a few people in the Wizengamot that she knew were potential threats to her. Mason Fallon wasn't one of them.
She walked down the slightly curved hallway, nodding to people as she passed them. It was just after lunch on a Wednesday, but most Wizengamot members were not in their offices every weekday. People came in to have meetings, catch up on things they needed to address, and to provide instructions to their clerks, but many Wizengamot members held their meetings in their homes or went to the people they were meeting with.
Rachel had not yet reopened her home to the Wizengamot since she had placed it under the Fidelius charm and she wasn't sure she was going to. Sirius, Draco, and Neville had access of course, but outside of her close friends and family, she hadn't shown anyone else the secret. Their wards would prevent anyone uninvited from showing up, but Rachel had less faith in wards than she used to. Maybe she should do a study in wards. Maybe when she was done with her potions project.
Arriving at Mason Fallon's office door, Rachel took a slow inhale and reminded herself she knew exactly what was going to happen here. All she had to do was offer to talk about her proposal in good faith, decline his offer for whatever idiocy he had up his sleeve, and then leave. No big deal.
She knocked on the door and waited, part of her hoping that he wasn't there despite the fact that they'd made an appointment.
No such luck. Mason opened the door a minute later and raised his eyebrows at her. "Wizengamot Snow. So nice to see you. I haven't had a chance to speak with you after everything that has happened. Are you quite alright?"
"I'm just fine, thank you," she said, entering his office as he stood back. She hoped that he kept in mind that she could zap people with her hands if they sufficiently bothered her. She wondered if she could call lightning inside a building. She had never tried before.
Following him back into his private office, she took a seat across from him while Mason settled behind his desk. "Have you had the opportunity to read my proposal?" she asked, not wanting to sit here and make small talk.
"I have. It's quite ambitious, don't you think?" he asked.
"It's necessary. This situation has gone on far too long with no oversight."
Mason shrugged. "Personally I don't see anything wrong with the situation, but the Ministry does like to have its hands in everything."
She took another steadying breath. "The goal is to prevent the maltreatment of House Elves. Anyone who is treating their House Elves well has nothing to worry about."
"So you say," he said. "Shall we cut to the chase?"
"Yes, I think that would be prudent," Rachel agreed.
"I have a proposal in the works. Nothing extreme, just measures to ensure that businesses continue to thrive in magical Britain. I know you still need votes for your proposal. I can help you get them if your faction will vote for my proposal."
That was exactly what she had been expecting. "No, thank you. I don't trade votes," she said firmly as she stood.
"Your proposal will never pass without my help," Mason said.
"I wouldn't be too sure about that if I was you. Good day," she said, turning and walking out.
She let herself out of his office, her heart hammering as she stalked down the hallway back to her own office. She didn't know why she was letting it bother her. That's exactly what she'd been expecting from him.
Feeling herself scowling, she let herself back into her office. "How do we go about seeing that someone isn't reelected?"
"What did he do?" Monty asked.
"Just the usual," she said, dropping into her chair.
Booker sat down opposite of her. "If you are serious about making sure he's not reelected, we can draft a statement closer to the elections. Is that a political game you want to play?"
Rachel frowned as she considered it. "We need him off the Wizengamot. I can't do anything about the pureblood supremacists with inherited seats, but I can do something about him."
"We may be able to coordinate with the Minister's office on this," Monty suggested. "If Fallon is corrupt-"
"He is," she said firmly.
"Then we should be able to give evidence of that to the public without it looking like a smear campaign," Monty finished.
"Alright. We'll figure it out closer to elections." She couldn't believe they were already worrying about elections. That was two years away.
"Did he have anything else to say for himself?" Booker asked.
"Just the usual. Let's move on, we have other things to do today," Rachel said. The best thing she could do was put Mason Fallon out of her mind. She had more important things to think about.
Rachel had been sitting in Greg's office for about five minutes, weighing what she wanted to say. "You're read in on all my projects?"
"I am," Greg agreed, his tone one of neutral interest.
"Are you read in on everyone's projects?" she asked.
"More or less. Some things I don't gain access to until I'm asked to work with someone specific, but I'm aware of pretty much everything that goes on in the department. I assume this question isn't about your potions research?"
"It's not," she agreed. Plenty of people knew about her potions research; she wasn't shy about talking about it and she'd been publishing in the field for ten years now.
"Then about your work with the Morsius Pensieve?" Greg asked.
"Yes. You know whose memories I'm viewing?"
"You-Know-Who's, I presume?"
"Yes." Rachel paused and inhaled and exhaled. She'd been having nightmares about Death Eater circles again.
"I imagine that's as daunting as it sounds on the surface," he offered when she didn't speak.
"Something like that. I…I might have the opportunity to do something." She'd been thinking about this for over a month now and still hadn't decided what the right thing was to do.
"What's that?"
Biting down on her lip, she wondered if Greg was going to give this information to Patrick. "I killed Barty Crouch Junior. I should be able to watch his memories with the Morsius Pensieve."
"Is there a particular reason you'd want to do that?" Greg asked.
"I don't really want to do it, but maybe I should. I might learn how he was taking down wards. I could see if he was working alone. I could find out what he was up to this past decade. Maybe he knows where Augustus Rookwood is hiding," she reasoned.
"Maybe. Is it worth what it's doing to you to find out?"
That was the question she'd been trying to answer herself. "His memories can't possibly be as bad as Tom Riddle's, could they?"
"Who knows? Who knows why Crouch Junior turned out the way he did. No one expected it of him, that's for sure," Greg said, shaking his head.
"Did you know him?" Rachel asked.
"Only by reputation and through his father. Do you know about Barty Crouch Senior?"
"The only times I met him were when he was being impersonated by his son. I…I couldn't tell."
"No one could. No one suspected Crouch Senior had been replaced." Greg shook his head again. "This was quite a long time ago now. Crouch Senior was head of the MLE and poised to take the Minister's position at the next election. He was hard on the Death Eaters. He was ramping up the war effort when the Ministry had let it linger for far too long."
"This was before Amelia was head of the MLE, obviously," Rachel said.
"She was the one chosen to replace him when this all came out," he said, nodding once. "Crouch had a son and a wife, but rumor says he didn't see much of them. He was ruthless. He was bringing the fight to the Death Eaters. He's the one who pushed for giving suspected Death Eaters veritaserum without consent and allowing the MLE to use Unforgivable Curses in the field. He got his way too, but it was too little, too late."
"What happened then?" she asked.
"Barty Crouch Junior was brought in as a suspected Death Eater. He was convicted of using the Cruciatus Curse. Absolutely ruined Crouch Senior. His own son a Death Eater, after everything he'd done to hunt down and kill and prosecute Death Eaters. His son's trial was the last he sat on. He lost his seat on the Wizengamot in the emergency elections in '82. Running for Minister was out of the question after that. He was shunted out of the MLE and over to the Department of International Cooperation, where he resided quietly in disgrace until he died."
"If I watched his memories, maybe I could find out why his son became a Death Eater."
"What good does that do us now?" Greg asked bluntly.
"You don't want to know?" she asked.
Greg shrugged. "A Death Eater is a Death Eater as far as I'm concerned. They made the decisions that brought them to that point. Whatever the reason, Barty Crouch Junior decided to torture and kill."
She couldn't help but think of Severus. He had done those things too.
"What do you know about the Morius Pensieve?" he asked.
"Nothing, beyond its basic function," she admitted. "I assume there's more to know."
"There is, and I think you should learn about it before making the decision to spend more time with the Morsius Pensieve. There's a book titled Pensieve: Life, Death, and Memory. You can find it in the section on Death in the Department Archives. I suggest you read it."
"I can do that," she agreed.
"Would you like to talk about the effect the pensieve has had on you? If I'm not mistaken, you've been using it for ten months now," Greg offered.
"I have. I don't really know that it's the pensieve itself. Tom Riddle's memories are a little depressing."
"Read the book and we'll discuss it more," he said.
Rachel nodded. She was always interested in reading books and it sounded like Greg thought this book had something important to teach her.
Technically, Rachel should be finishing up in the Department and heading up to the Wizengamot to get some work done, but she had the burning desire to know what Greg wouldn't tell her. She figured she could locate the book and get started before she had to leave. She still had another hour before Booker expected her and she didn't have any appointments today.
Even after nearly a year of being in the Unspeakables, she still loved entering the Department Archives. The idea that she had all of this knowledge at her fingertips was nearly intoxicating. She could see herself spending years reading and researching in here. Decades even. She'd been reading about the Department and compiling her own research on it, but there were still shelves and shelves and shelves to go.
That wasn't even touching on the potions section. She'd read a great deal about sleeping potions, but she'd barely looked at the rest of the potions section. The wealth of knowledge here easily outstretched what was in the Potions Guild's library. She wished Severus could see it, but she knew he'd never agree to become an Unspeakable.
When Hermione was finished with treating patients, she'd encourage her to come join the Unspeakables as well. Hermione would die from happiness on the spot if she saw the Department Archives. Knowing Hermione, that could be another half century, but she was happy that Hermione was happy with her chosen field. Hermione had traveled around the world to treat people and to work with other curse specialists.
While she enjoyed spending time wandering the Archives just to see what there was, she forced herself to focus and walk directly to the section on Death. She still had other things she needed to do today. She'd never entered the Death section before and wasn't entirely sure what people researched here. It seemed like a grim subject to focus on.
Rachel had always felt she had a certain connection with death from growing up knowing that her parents were dead. She'd spent a lot of time as a child wondering about them and imagining them and thinking about where they were and if they were watching her. Her aunt and uncle had told her horrible things about her parents. They'd told her she'd been an unwanted accident. They'd told her that her parents were drunks who'd been killed in a car accident that was their fault. They'd told her that her parents had been destitute and had relied on handouts to survive.
Obviously she knew now that none of those things were true, but even as a child, she'd still had a secret part of her that had imagined that they'd loved her and cared for her. She'd also had the opportunity to do something very few people had done. She'd died. She'd met her parents. She knew for a fact that they loved her and that they were watching over her. Maybe she could find accounts of other people who had died and returned here, but that wasn't what she was looking for right now.
She came to a stop at the directory at the Death section and read down the different topics. The afterlife had its own section, and she made a mental note to come back later and see what other people had to say about it. There was a section specifically for memory, which seemed like where she needed to go, so she headed in that direction and started browsing the titles on the spines of the books.
'Pensieve: Life, Death, and Memory' was a thick and rather battered volume. Rachel took it from the shelf and considered her surroundings. Usually when she was browsing the shelves, she just simply sat down on the floor in the aisle and peered through books. When she wanted to do a deep dive into the research, she brought the books back to her desk and worked there. Neither of those felt like the right thing to do. She didn't want anyone to know she was reading this book. It felt private.
Finally she decided to go to one of the reading rooms in the archive. On the far wall there was a series of tiny rooms. They only held a desk and chair and were meant for very temporary work. Liesel was firm that no one was to leave their research or projects here and cleaned out the rooms every evening. Rachel had never used one before, she'd never had research that she felt she needed to hide from Cyril, who was always poking his nose over to see what she was up to. Mirabel checked on her regularly as well. This was private.
Finding an empty reading room, Rachel went inside and shut the door. She was glad she'd worked on her claustrophobia enough that this didn't bother her. She sat down at the desk and opened the book. There was no table of contents and when she flipped to the back she found there was no index either. The only solution was to start reading from the beginning.
The first chapter was on the history of the Morsius Pensieve itself. No one knew who had created it. It predated the Ministry of Magic and had been in the custody of the Wizard's Council. The chapter spoke of the construction of the pensieve and the runes etched it and how it compared to a normal pensieve. It also gave the formulation for the memory fluid that Rachel had been using to view Tom Riddle's memories.
She conjured a piece of parchment and wrote out the recipe. She was curious about brewing it for herself. Up until now she'd relied on Liesel to supply it for her.
The next chapter was about how the MLE had used the Morsius Pensieve as a punishment. Murderers were forced to watch the memories of the people who they'd killed. The book noted that the people were kept prisoner during this time, but then released once they'd finished with the memories. The MLE had considered their sentence served.
Rachel was on the fence about that. Would it be helpful for murderers to understand the lives of the people they'd killed? Maybe. She could see why they felt it was an appropriate punishment. Someone who truly felt regret after that certainly wouldn't kill again. At the same time, after her own experiences with the Morsius Pensieve, she didn't know that she felt that its use was ethical. She couldn't deny that it had an effect on her.
The next few chapters were case studies of prisoners who had used the Morsius Pensieve, the circumstances of their crimes and what they had experienced when using the pensieve. They all recounted the childhood of their victims, starting from birth and moving a memory to two per year of their lives. That was more or less what Rachel had experienced with Tom Riddle.
She glanced at her watch and discovered it was past noon. Holding out her hand, she cast the Patronus charm. "To Booker Richmond. I'm currently in the middle of a project and I'm not sure when I'll be done. Let me know if there's something I'm needed for and I'll come up."
Booker's Patronus flew into the room about two minutes later. "There's nothing here you are urgently needed for. I'll let you know if someone is requesting a meeting that can't wait."
Satisfied that she wasn't neglecting her duties, Rachel went back to reading. She read through several chapters of people's experiences with the Morsius Pensieve before coming to a chapter that summed up the pensieve's use with the MLE.
The MLE used the Morsius Pensieve as a sentence for one hundred and sixty three years. During that time two hundred and eighty seven prisoners were subject to the pensieve. It took an average of a year for each prisoner to watch the memories of their victim. Within five years of their release, one hundred and fifty six of those prisoners committed suicide.
Rachel set down the book as she considered that. More than half of the people who had used the Morsius Pensieve had killed themselves. That was more than statistically significant. That was huge.
She sat for a long moment and continued reading. The MLE had moved to other punishments, including life imprisonment. The Morsius Pensieve had been given to the Unspeakables for further study. There was some information about experiments that the Unspeakables had performed on the pensieve, including putting living memories into it and adjusting the memory liquid formulation. In the end, they decided the only use of the Morsius Pensieve was viewing the memories of the dead.
The next chapters were different Unspeakables' recounting of using the Morsius Pensieve, including the circumstances in which they had killed and what they'd gleaned from the memories. Most of them were like her. Most of them had killed someone important in a war and the Ministry had decided they needed to know more about their enemies.
At the end of these chapters was another summation chapter. Three of the Unspeakables had killed themselves after using the Morsius Pensieve in the past two hundred years, one of them by walking through the Veil.
Rachel swallowed and set the book down again. Why had Patrick not told her this? Was this some sort of sick game?
Taking a slow breath, she assessed herself. Was she a suicide risk?
The Veil was tempting. She had felt the draw of it. She didn't know if that draw was just inherent to the Veil or if it was because she'd been using the Morsius Pensieve. Would she be feeling the temptation to walk through into the afterlife if she wasn't carrying around Tom Riddle's memories?
She didn't know the answer to that question and she wasn't going back into the Department until she made some sort of decision on how to fix this. There was space in the book for other people to add their experiences of the Morsius Pensieve. She closed it, not ready to make a decision as to whether or not she wanted to share her experience, and took the book back to the shelves.
Standing in the peace and quiet of the Department Archives, she tried to sort herself out a little bit. She was in no shape to go to her Wizengamot office and she didn't particularly want to talk to anyone either. She wanted some time by herself in a safe place to try and figure out what she was going to do. She was going to go home. Booker would let her know if he needed her.
The first thing she did upon arriving home was stretch out her hands and go through the wards. She had gotten used to the new wards and it was comforting to feel them exactly where they should be.
"Kreacher?" she asked.
A moment later Kreacher appeared before her. "Yes, Miss? It be early for Miss to be home. Did something happen?"
Rachel paused for a moment. "Not really. Nothing happened specifically. I just needed to come home."
Kreacher looked doubtful. "Miss is well?"
She didn't know how to answer that question truthfully either. "Well enough. Who is home?"
"Dobby be cleaning upstairs. Tomsi be cooking in the kitchen. The owls be sleeping on their perch. Feverfew be sleeping in the window. Dingbat be under the sofa," Kreacher recited.
That was what Rachel had expected. Theo wouldn't be home for another two hours at the earliest.
"What be wrong, Miss?" Kreacher asked.
She exhaled, moved to the sofa, and eased herself onto the cushions. She heard a meow a moment later and Dingbat surfaced and hopped up to be pet. Gently stroking Dingbat's back, she considered the question. "A lot of things are wrong, and at the same time, nothing at all."
Kreacher frowned up at her. "That be sounding like something be wrong."
"Yeah." She sank into the sofa, resting her hands on where Dingbat had climbed onto her lap.
"Kreacher brings Miss tea," he said, popping away.
Rachel couldn't help but smile to herself. Kreacher's solution to every problem was a cup of hot tea. She couldn't actually argue with him. She wanted to sit and try to settle her mind and a cup of tea sometimes helped with that.
While feeling Dingbat purr, she allowed her to approach the problem just a little bit. The crux of the problem was she needed to make a decision. Was she going to continue to use the Morsius Pensieve?
The obvious answer should be no. It was clear the Morsius Pensieve had a hand in driving people to suicide. She suspected the longer she used it, the more susceptible she would be. Not to mention her nightmares and the sleepless nights and the restless feeling she carried as she remembered being tortured in circumstances exactly like the memories she was viewing.
Hadn't she done her job? Patrick had said they wanted to understand why Tom Riddle became the Dark Lord. She didn't feel like she'd answered that question, but she also didn't expect anything particularly new from Tom Riddle's memories from this point out. Most of the memories were of torture or of meeting with his Death Eaters.
And she had to admit, there was a significant portion of her that did not want to come across Severus in these memories. She just didn't want to see him like that.
Was there more they could learn from Tom Riddle's memories? Undoubtedly. No one knew what had become of Tom Riddle during the years he didn't have a body. Would he even have memories from that time period? She didn't know. She wasn't sure she cared enough to find out.
And then there were Barty Crouch Junior's memories to consider. It was possible she could learn from him or from Tom Riddle about how the wards were being taken down. That was important. Was it so important that she should risk her own life?
Kreacher appeared with a cup of tea and passed it to her. Rachel had to move it so that Dingbat couldn't immediately stick her nose into it. For some reason, her cat liked tea. Theo said it was the milk in the tea that Dingbat liked, but Rachel had also seen that Dingbat would eat just about anything given the opportunity. At least Feverfew was a properly behaved cat.
"Does Miss wish for company?" Kreacher offered.
"Not at the moment, thank you though. Are you well?" Rachel checked. "How are your joints?"
"Kreacher be well. Do not worry about Kreacher," he said before disappearing again.
Taking a slow breath, Rachel attempted to assess herself. Yes, she's had more thoughts about death and dying lately, particularly when she was confronted with the Veil. No, she didn't feel like she was going to hurt herself. Her sleep and nightmares had been getting worse over the past ten months, though she couldn't blame all of that on the Morsius Pensieve. She knew her anxiety had been worse as well, because she'd felt herself clenching her teeth and her shoulders were tight.
The real question was if she was willing to leave the Unspeakables in order to stop using the Morsius Pensieve. She loved being in the Unspeakables. She wanted to continue to explore the Department and discover a way to communicate with her. She had a lifetime of potions research ahead of her. Could she simply tell Patrick she didn't want to use the Morsius Pensieve any longer?
Before now, she'd generally thought well of Patrick. He was more than a little scatterbrained, but he seemed like an impassioned researcher and he'd taken time to make sure that she was well and was settled with the Unspeakables and in the Department. Then again, he'd also assigned her a project that had caused people to commit suicide with no warning whatsoever. Surely he knew? He had to know. She hoped he knew.
She sipped at her tea now that it was a little cooler, Dingbat sticking her nose up hopefully. "You can have the dregs when I'm done," Rachel told her.
Slowly she felt her muscles relaxing a little as she sat in a safe and familiar place. She didn't want to leave the Unspeakables. But she couldn't keep doing this project either. If she told Patrick that she felt that the Morsius Pensieve was putting her in danger, she thought he'd let her stop. And if he didn't, then that was something she needed to know as well.
It wasn't perfect. It wasn't exactly what she wanted. But she thought it was the right thing to do. At the very least, it was the safest thing for her to do, and she knew Severus would approve of the decision.
She would tell Patrick on Monday and see how it went. Everything else could come from there. She finished her tea and set the cup down on her lap, absently petting Dingbat's back while Dingbat lapped at the bottom of the cup.