On Monday morning the Department of Mysteries was surprisingly cooperative and Rachel made it to the room with the Morsius Pensieve in four rooms. "Thank you," she said, tilting her head up to consider the Department. She felt a shift in her mind, which she thought meant the Department was at least paying attention to her, even if it maybe couldn't understand her words.
She'd had some ideas about trying to communicate with the Department, such as giving commands for the Department to do different things in her mind, to see if she could understand what Rachel was directing her to do. There were several problems with that - she expected it had been done before, as it was a very simple idea, she wasn't sure how likely the Department was to respond to being told what to do even if she could follow instructions, and she wasn't entirely sure how to describe what was happening in her mind in a way that was simple and clearly understandable.
For her it mostly felt like some sort of pressure. She'd been interpreting a stronger presence in her mind as the Department paying more attention to her, but maybe that was a false equivalency. When she spoke to the Department - whether in her mind or out loud - she often felt shifts in that pressure. She was describing it as shifts, because she wasn't sure how else to characterize it. The pressure either backed off some, or it moved from one place in her mind to another, or occasionally it increased. Rachel had tried going into her mind, both in the main area of the cathedral and the more nebulous place outside of her shields, but hadn't seen anything to indicate the Department's presence, nor did she actually feel the Department's presence when she was in her mind.
When she got a moment - which at the rate things were going, might be a little while - she planned on reading about what other people had discovered with the Department and how their own Mind Magic reacted to her. She also wanted to do some more research on Mind Magic while she was here, and maybe talk with someone on the Mind Magic team. In all of her research on Mind Magic, she'd never found anything about other people whose mental architecture formed without their own direction. She'd like to know if someone else had experienced that, and maybe had the same problems building and directing in their own minds, or if she was some kind of anomaly.
There was more research she wanted to do, but she wasn't sure how to go about finding it and she didn't want to ask anyone. She wanted accounts of other people who had been living horcruxes. If anyone was going to have Mind Magic like hers, it would likely be someone else who had that sort of invasion into their own mind. Besides, as far as she knew, everyone in the Department was an occlumens, so maybe she'd find more personal experiences in occlumency here. She'd examined the Archive directory in more detail, but wasn't sure where she'd find horcruxes. Life and Death seemed like a good possibility. So did the more nebulous category of Magic. For all she knew, horcruxes were considered a classified subject and she wouldn't even find research materials out in the open. The only way to find out was to either spend hours in the Archive going subject by subject, or to ask someone, and she certainly wasn't going to bring up the subject of horcruxes with anyone.
That, however, was a problem for later, when she found some time on her hands. She wasn't sure when exactly she was planning to find this sudden time on her hands, but it could hypothetically happen. Maybe when her proposal was finished she'd treat herself to a few days in the Archives.
She approached the Morsius Pensieve a little hesitantly. "Alright. Try to be concise, please. I don't want to be in here all day." She felt it was even less likely that the Morsius Pensieve could understand her than the Department could, but it never hurt to ask politely.
Rachel dumped the contents of one of the vials into the pensieve, noting that she still had at least fifty vials left. They'd apparently planned on her doing this for a while. There was a part of her that wanted to know if they actually killed prisoners who were about to die in order to gain access to their memories, but there was also a very significant part of her that did not want to know that because that would mean she was honor bound to do something about it and she had no idea what it was that she could do about it.
Conjuring a silver needle, she pricked herself and carefully dripped three drops of blood into the silvery memory mixture. She was also very careful to just do three drops, and to heal the pinprick before going into the pensieve, just in case more magical blood made something unexpected happen. Magical blood was a powerful substance and research and use of it was tightly controlled for a myriad of good reasons. Now Rachel was curious if the Unspeakables had a blood magic research group. It seemed to be the kind of thing they'd be interested in.
Resigning herself to viewing more dismal memories of Tom Riddle's childhood, Rachel leaned forward and touched the memory substance. She braced herself through the whirling sensation and landed soon after. She was in the small garden attached to the orphanage and the children were playing.
She took a moment to look around, looking at the foliage, the sun, the clothing, and anything else that might give her an approximate date. It seemed to be summer, so that would make Tom Riddle about five and a half years old, she would guess, given the last memory of him she'd seen had been a few months prior in early spring, and he was only slightly bigger.
There were children passing rubber bouncing balls, girls with skipping ropes, boys running foot races along the fence, and a small group of slightly older children gathered around dirt circles playing with marbles. If it wasn't for the clothing styles, both of the children and the adults, it was easily a scene that Rachel could have found in the yard at the primary school she'd attended. She supposed that some things about childhood were simply eternal. She could imagine a hundred years ago, or even two hundred, that she could have found a garden of children playing just like this, simply with different clothing and hairstyles.
She walked through the children, avoiding thrown balls and skipping ropes, even though she didn't actually need to, and found Tom Riddle in the dirt by the hedges. He was still a loner, even as he grew a little, and he had shown himself to have a temper. There were other boys his age nearby, passing a ball to each other and laughing, but Tom's focus was on the bottom of the hedge. She knelt down next to him, curious to see what he was hiding, and found his hands cupped around a brown garden snake.
Tom's expression was rapt as he engaged in conversation, his eyes wide as he concentrated all of his focus onto the small snake in his hands.
"How do you talk?" Tom asked. It was undoubtedly in parseltongue, but to Rachel it simply sounded like English.
"How do you talk?" the snake countered.
Tom seemed stymied by this for a moment. "Everyone talks. Of course I talk. Animals aren't supposed to talk!"
"All animals talk, if you speak the language," the snake replied. "How is it that you speak my tongue?"
Now Rachel was curious. She'd asked before if other animals had languages, but no one had seemed to know. She had basic communication with Feverfew while she was in her cat form, but it wasn't all that different from conversing with her in English. She couldn't get answers from Feverfew the way she could from a snake. The only thing Ring-A-Ding wanted to do when Rachel was a cat was sit on her and groom her. Feverfew seemed to make the connection that Rachel's cat form was still Rachel. With Ring-A-Ding…well, it was hard to tell what she understood.
"You're speaking the King's English," Tom loftily informed the snake.
"I am speaking parseltongue, as are you," the snake said.
This was a very informed snake. Rachel had never asked the snakes if they knew what their own language was called before. Maybe she needed to go out in the garden more often and see who she could find. She had been to the London Zoo once, but it had hurt too much to see all of those intelligent creatures caged up. She'd had an interesting chat with a boa constrictor, but she hadn't had the heart to go back.
"I'll show you. I'll show everyone," Tom said, grabbing a hold of the snake and jumping to his feet. "This snake talks!"
Rachel winced as she realized what was about to happen. She didn't want to be here for this. Reluctantly she followed Tom across the garden to where he was insisting to one of the caretakers that the snake had spoken to him.
The caretaker, a matronly woman appearing to be in her forties or fifties, wrapped her hand around Tom Riddle's upper arm and yanked him, causing him to drop the snake. "Devil child!" she hissed as the garden snake fled. "Lies and foolishness will not be tolerated."
"I wasn't lying!" Tom shouted. "The snake talked to me!"
"Have you learned nothing in your lessons, you wicked boy?" the caretaker asked, now dragging Tom back into the orphanage.
"I have! I'm not lying!" Tom shouted, still angry rather than scared.
The loud strike of her hand on Tom's face reverberated in the hallway, Tom giving a wordless yell in response.
Rachel reluctantly followed them into the orphanage, knowing what she was about to witness. The Dark Lord had actually told her about this incident, though Severus had cautioned her that perhaps he'd been lying in an attempt to connect to her and gain her sympathy. Rachel had never thought the Dark Lord was lying about this; she couldn't imagine anyone lying about being beaten as a child, it simply didn't make sense.
The caretaker dragged a resisting Tom Riddle into her office, retrieved a leather strap from where it was hooked on the wall, and pushed him down and began to strap him.
She folded her arms and watched as Tom howled and struggled. He was young, too young to have learned not to struggle. Rachel couldn't remember how old she was when she'd learned not to struggle while being punished - it only made things worse - but eventually she had. The thing was, she could imagine that this would have been Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia's exact response if she had gone running into the house to tell them that snakes were talking to her. By the time she was talking to snakes, she knew better than to tell anyone, and she had also learned to dismiss the conversations as her being particularly bored and imaginative in the garden.
The thing that was really bothering her - apart from the fact that she was standing here witnessing child abuse and there was nothing she could do about it - was that the Dark Lord had told her that they were very similar, and she had always denied it firmly, insisting that there was nothing in her that was similar to the Dark Lord. Now she was discovering that wasn't the case at all.
She hadn't grown up in an orphanage - she wasn't even sure there were orphanages in Britain any longer; as far as she knew children without families went to group homes or were fostered with other families. But she had grown up in a situation where her emotional and physical needs weren't being met. She'd seen Tom sent away without meals a number of times now. And clearly there was physical abuse, and even physical abuse in a manner that related to magic - even if neither she nor Tom had known they were magical at the time.
They were both parselmouths. They were both Slytherins. They were both magically powerful - perhaps more powerful than anyone should be. One of the reasons it had taken her so long to become comfortable with her wandless magic and to seek training in elemental magic was because she didn't want to be like the Dark Lord or Professor Dumbledore.
And she wasn't. She had turned down the position in the ICW. She had declined the Chief Warlock nomination. Yes, she had a faction in the Wizengamot, but that had been necessary. Yes, she had an agenda, but her agenda was fairness and saving lives and preventing another war. She had never learned legilimency, because she did not like the way that both the Dark Lord and Professor Dumbledore had used it.
The beating finished. Sobbing, Tom Riddle glared at the caretaker, and beyond his pain it was easy to see that he was enraged. Rachel wondered if he had come back to kill the people here at the orphanage once he was old enough to do so. It certainly seemed like the type of thing that he would do.
"Go to your bed and sit in quiet contemplation about what you did wrong," the caretaker instructed, still holding the strap.
Tom left the room, his small shoulders squared, and Rachel followed him back to his bed in the room that housed the male children his age. He stood next to his bed, wiping his face with harsh movements. "I didn't lie," he said firmly to himself.
"No, you didn't," Rachel said quietly, wishing she could say that to him.
She had been directed to watch for things that led to Tom Riddle becoming a dark lord, but it wasn't as simple as that. Maybe this was a step along the path to him becoming a dark lord, a seed of his hatred for muggles, but maybe not. Rachel had been beaten in a very similar manner, but her response to it had been entirely different. She had never found herself angry after being beaten, not that she could remember at least. Instead she tried to figure out where she'd gone wrong so she could try to control it.
Rachel didn't like the idea that there was something innate in someone's personality that caused them to be a dark lord or lady. That didn't seem right to her - she'd seen many people step away from the paths that they'd been set on by their families and upbringing. But what she could see here, even with Tom Riddle being five years old, was that for all the similarities of their situations and upbringings, something had caused them to have different responses.
Her surroundings whirled around her and Rachel found herself back in the room, the Morsius Pensieve now empty. She went to the desk and sat down, wondering about how to write her observations without providing a direct comparison to herself. She would figure it out.
Tapping her forefinger restlessly on the side of the pile of parchment that made up her proposal draft, Rachel frowned as she tried to figure out the solution to this loophole. In her proposal was the requirement that employed House Elves were paid for their work, along with a minimum wage. She was absolutely positive this was the correct thing to do, but it came with a number of problems.
Many House Elves wouldn't take payment of any sorts. Even Kreacher and Tomsi, who had lived with them for years now, wouldn't accept coin from her unless it was for household expenses. Gringotts had allowed her to set up child accounts for each of the House Elves and schedule deposits into them. From what she could tell from the yearly accounting, neither Kreacher or Tomsi had ever touched their accounts. This was going to take a cultural shift among the House Elves and that would take decades and a lot of work that she wasn't sure how to accomplish.
But that wasn't the problem she was trying to solve right now. The problem she was trying to solve right now was that the accounts were in the purview of the family the House Elves worked for, and when the House Elves died, the account would simply revert back to the family. What was stopping people from simply killing their House Elves if they didn't want to pay them? Yes, there were laws against people killing their House Elves, as there was against anyone killing any being, but it wasn't like people were watching.
From her research, she couldn't find that there was any census within Britain to account for the House Elves - something that was also included in her proposal - and there were no laws about attending a House Elf's death. Someone could simply say that their House Elf died of old age and they were properly interred and that would be the end of it.
Dobby had promised Rachel that House Elves were difficult to kill, but Rachel very well remembered seeing the heads of dead House Elves on the walls of Grimmauld Place before they had done the renovation. It didn't seem that hard to her - cutting off the head would kill almost anything, even in the magical world. And she suspected that many House Elves would not act against their families if they tried to kill them.
Her proposal put forth creating a Ministry department overseeing the welfare of House Elves. As it currently was, they were looked after under the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures, which was obviously problematic in a number of ways. Theoretically she could push the problem forward and say that this department she was creating had to put provisions in place to make sure House Elves were actually paid, but that left the opportunity for something to go wrong. Staffing the department was going to be its own problem, considering the way she'd seen most people respond to House Elves. This wasn't going to work unless the people who were watching over them actually saw them as people and were invested in their welfare.
She flipped a page in her proposal and continued frowning. There was a part of her - a part she was trying to resist - that wanted to simply scrap the whole document and start fresh. She'd done that with the House Elf proposal twice before at different times in her career, and came back a few years later with new ideas and a better understanding of the way the world worked. But there were House Elves suffering. She couldn't keep putting this off because she couldn't fix every problem. She needed to fix the big problems and then see the fallout and come back for the smaller ones.
It was easy to say that until she read her proposal and found a million ways for a wealthy pureblood family who did not want to obey the spirit of the law to get around her provisions.
She looked up at a knock on her door and then checked her watch. It was past six.
Booker entered and then came into her private office.
"You can go, I'm almost done here. I didn't mean to keep you so late," she said, rubbing her eyes beneath her glasses.
"If it's time for me to go, it's time for you to go," Booker told her.
She sighed. Booker routinely kicked her out of her office when it got late, and she knew he was right and he meant well, but it was still aggravating. "Do you believe that every problem has a solution?"
Booker took a seat, his hand settling on his chin. "No, I don't," he said after a long moment.
That hadn't been the answer Rachel was hoping for. "Just no?" she checked.
"I think sometimes things are done that can't be fixed, no matter how much we'd like them to be fixed. We always start in an imperfect world. I also think that there is no perfect solution that fits everyone. What will work for one person, or even for a majority of people, will not work for everyone."
Rachel nodded slowly. She'd seen that with her own House Elves. Kreacher mostly just needed a calm and steady home and someone to talk to and for things to get easier for him as he aged. He wasn't interested in clothing or money; he just wanted what he was familiar and comfortable with. Dobby was excited about being paid, had his own wardrobe with a variety of clothing, but was also very eager about serving Rachel and making sure everything she needed was taken care of. Tomsi was a little more distant. He ignored the fact that he was being paid, dressed neatly in a tea towel, and arranged things with Dobby so that they were taking a fair amount of work in the house and that Kreacher wasn't being pushed to do things that were growing too difficult for him.
"You wouldn't think it would be this hard to get people to treat each other well," she said.
Booker chuckled. "What in human history has suggested to you that treating each other well is a natural human inclination, particularly when it comes to those in power? We've always been divided in one way or another and people try to make sure they are taking care of themselves and their loved ones, even to the detriment of others."
She supposed that was true, but still. "You must think I'm very naive."
"Not naive. I've seen you grow a great deal while we've worked together. But I think you have a tendency to want to believe the best of people and to believe that people can be brought around to your way of thinking, when that's not always the case. We could use more idealists in the Wizengamot, but you have to have a certain measure of practicality to get anything done."
"This proposal isn't going to pass, is it?"
"I wouldn't say that," he said, looking at her very seriously.
"Why not?"
"Because I have seen you get other proposals passed that I would have said were impossible. We currently have a pliable Wizengamot who is mostly in your favor. Even then it will be a tough sell, but if we are going to try to pass something like this, now is the time before people start thinking of re-election."
Rachel nodded. Better to do this now while she had people she could work with. There was no saying what the make up of the Wizengamot would look like in three years. "I just look at this proposal and I see so many problems. Things we aren't addressing. Ways people can take advantage. Loopholes."
"We will fix the problems that we can, target the biggest problems, and then allow the department to figure out the smaller problems and the loopholes. Your job is not to fix every problem, your job is to set it up so that people are in place to address the issues that arise," he said, catching her eyes and nodding at her.
She kept herself from sulking, even though she wanted to. She wanted to fix all of the problems, she wanted her proposal to be perfect. But Booker was right. Nothing in this world was perfect, that was just how the world worked. She couldn't plan for every possible contingency, she couldn't close every loophole. She had to do the best she could and hope that the people around her would keep her from making any mistakes that could cause wide scale problems.
"Enough for tonight. We'll look at the draft again tomorrow, see if there is anything we can possibly patch, and then you can make a decision as to whether or not we're proceeding," Booker said, though he didn't stand.
"Alright," she said reluctantly. Maybe some magical solution would come to her while she was trying to get to sleep tonight.
A knock on the door caught them both off guard and Booker rose to answer it.
"Wizengamot Member Black," Booker said.
"How did I know you'd both still be here?" Sirius asked.
"We were just wrapping up for the night," Rachel said, moving into her main office and motioning for Booker to let Sirius in. "What is it?"
"Just wanted to check in with you about a few things, timing and all that. Would you and Theo like to come by for dinner over the weekend?" he asked.
Rachel thought about her calendar. "I'll have to double check with Theo, but will Saturday work for you and Remus?"
"Should do," Sirius said. "We'll talk more then. Go home before Theo thinks you're wandering off on him."
"Theo knows exactly where I am. It's where I always am," she pointed out, rolling her eyes.
"Fine, then go home before your dinner gets cold."
"You can talk, you're still here," she pointed out.
"I'm not here every day. Let me know about Saturday," he said, backing away.
"I will," she promised. She went back into her own office and decided to bring her proposal with her in case she did get any ideas tonight. "We're done, Booker. I'll see you tomorrow. I'm downstairs first thing, but I'll be up here after lunch and we can go through the proposal again."
"I'll be here. Goodnight," Booker said.
"Goodnight," Rachel called back, looking around her office to make sure she had everything. If she left now, she should be on time to eat with Theo.
Rachel flooed home and was immediately ambushed by Dingbat. "I will pick you up as soon as I'm not wearing nice robes," she told her, knowing exactly what Dingbat's claws would do to her nice robes.
Dingbat meowed plaintively and came around to continue to rub on her ankles, nearly tripping Rachel in the process.
"I know, I was gone all day. I'm sorry," she said, dancing around the cat and heading to her home office. She dropped her proposal and her notes on her desk along with the quill she kept in her pocket and then took a moment to pull her robes over her head. "There. Better?" she asked, bending and scooping up Dingbat.
She meowed again and started purring as she rubbed her face against Rachel's.
"That's right. Just me." She managed to cradle Dingbat in one arm and pick up her shed robes with the other hand before heading out of her office and starting upstairs.
Feverfew was waiting on the landing and gave a short, commanding meow.
"Yes, I know. I'll get to you too," Rachel promised, heading into her bedroom. She dropped Dingbat on her bed and hung her robes back in her wardrobe since they were still clean and shrugged into a casual set of robes that were open in the front. Since she wasn't planning on brewing anything tonight, she didn't bother to change her clothes underneath her robes.
She sat down on the end of her bed, Dingbat immediately pushing back onto her lap and Feverfew jumping up next to Rachel and stretching her neck out for Rachel to scratch her. With one hand per cat, Rachel decided that there was no possible way she could manage a third cat in the house. She loved cats and wanted to take them all, but there was only so much of her. One hand per cat seemed like the ideal ratio.
"Dobby?" she asked.
Dobby appeared before her with a pop. Today he was wearing muggle children's clothing with an open robe over the top. "Yes, Miss?"
"How is everything here? Is Theo back?" she asked, her left hand cradling Dingbat and her right hand scratching Feverfew's neck.
"Master Theo is not home. He left ten minutes after you did this morning and has not returned since. The household is as you left it. The owls are on their perch, Miss has the cats, Tomsi cooked dinner, and Kreacher is resting," Dobby told her.
Huh. Usually Theo was home before she was, sometimes by an hour or more. If it reached seven and he wasn't home, she'd send a Patronus. In fact, she could do better than that. She deposited Dingbat on the bed and moved to her bedside table and checked her pocket watch. Several of the hands representing her friends were still pointing to 'work', including Theo, so at least she knew where he was and he wasn't in mortal peril.
"Alright, thank you," Rachel said. "How are you, Dobby?"
"Dobby is well, Miss. Is Miss Rachel well?"
"Yeah, for the most part." She could do with some more sleep, which was usually the case, and she could do without watching Tom Riddle's memories. If she had childhood nightmares tonight, she knew what to blame.
She jolted slightly at hearing footsteps on the staircase.
"Master Theo is home, Miss," Dobby said.
Rachel touched the wards, a simple matter of stretching her awareness to envelop the wards that were attached to her, and found everything in place. "Theo?"
"Sorry I'm late. Just give me a minute," he called.
"I think we'll be having dinner in a few minutes," Rachel said to Dobby.
"Dobby will let Tomsi know," Dobby said before disappearing.
Even Dobby wouldn't break House Elf traditions enough to sit down and eat a meal with them.
It was a difficult balance, accepting that what she thought was right for the House Elves and what her own morality said was right was at odds with what House Elves believed the right thing for themselves was. In her mind, sitting down to a meal together made them a family, and she certainly considered their House Elves to be family. But it was clear that the House Elves didn't feel that way, and she knew she shouldn't impose what she thought was right onto them. They would eat with them at the dining table if she ordered it, but she didn't give orders to the House Elves unless it was something about safety, like staying away from her cauldrons and being careful in public in case someone wanted to kidnap one of her House Elves while they were shopping.
House Elves weren't children and she couldn't act like she knew better than they did about their own affairs. There was a difference between making sure they were being treated fairly as magical beings, such as putting provisions in place to make sure the House Elves could care for themselves if they needed to and to make sure they weren't being hurt, and telling House Elves what to do with their lives and culture. Why was that so difficult for people?
She didn't know anyone who outright said that 'beating House Elves is good', so why was it so hard to put laws in place saying that House Elves had the right to safety?
Rachel suspected that the answer was that people liked cheap labor and didn't feel like they were doing anything wrong and didn't like someone saying that they were doing something wrong. She had to find a way to approach this that wasn't condemning people, because she wouldn't get anywhere if people were automatically reacting defensively.
Downstairs she paused and then decided to check her cauldrons while Theo was getting ready for dinner. In the cellar she peeked into each of her cauldrons and made notes. She wanted at least another two weeks on the essence of calendula and hyssop. She had test vials at several stages and she wanted to know the reactions of each. She'd start a second cauldron of it once she finished with the first cauldron so she could repeat the study. The antimony was still bubbling away. She wasn't sure what she was going to do with it. At this point she was just waiting to see if anything happened.
Back on the ground level she went into the dining room and found Theo entering with damp hair. "Rough day?" she asked, raising her eyebrows.
"Markham blew up an experiment lab. I had to shower, I smelled like smoke," Theo said, shaking his head.
"Are you alright? Was anyone hurt?" Rachel asked, resisting the urge to go to him and check for herself.
"Markham was a little singed; we sent him to St. Mungo's to get looked over. No one else was injured. I now have about a hundred reports and forms to deal with, and the investigation of course to see what exactly he was doing and how it exploded, and hopefully this will mean I can transfer him off of my team and be done with it." Theo ran a hand through his hair and looked around the dining room, seeming a little dazed.
"That's a lot. I'm glad no one else was hurt. Do you have to go back tonight?"
"No, Meyers sent everyone home, said we'd get a better look at it tomorrow. Markham should be out of St. Mungo's by then, so we can hear directly from him what he was doing. I just want a quiet night."
"We can do that," Rachel promised. "Let's eat, then we can sit in the sitting room for a bit."
Theo nodded and they moved toward the table. A few moments later each of them had a plate of roast and potatoes. "How was your day? Better than mine, I hope."
"Pretty much the usual. Spent some time researching, then worked on my proposal. Booker kicked me out of my office when it got late. Oh, Sirius wants to know if we can do dinner this weekend. Would Saturday work for you?"
"I think so. Hermione dropped by. She wanted to know about dinner this week too. I told her I'd check with you, but I think we're open right now unless I'm missing something?" Theo asked.
Rachel thought for a moment. "I don't have anything with the Ministry or the Wizengamot in the next two weeks that I'm aware of. So we can do dinner with Hermione any night but the nights we're with Sirius or Severus."
"I'll let Hermione know then," Theo said, pausing to stretch. "It's been a really long day."
"I'll bet," she said sympathetically. "It's always a long day when something unexpected blows up."
Her desk in the office space of the Department of Mysteries was actually kind of nice. She was used to being shut into an office and working by herself, and she'd worried a little bit that she'd be distracted or uneasy working in an open area, but she found the backdrop of quiet voices and movements to be sort of soothing. People were typically courteous and moved larger conversations to one of the meeting rooms, but it wasn't uncommon for two or three people to bend their heads over a desk as they discussed someone's project.
She liked overhearing bits of these conversations, especially since she was sitting with the potions group and she was curious about what they were doing. A few people from the potions group had introduced themselves to her over the past few weeks, but she hadn't had any in depth conversations with them since she'd mostly either been passing through or pausing to take a few notes. She hoped that as time went on and people got used to her that she could have more conversations with them about potions and projects. The specific focus potions groups met once a week to discuss what they were doing, but the general potions group mostly seemed to be a collection of people who were pursuing odd topics that weren't really encompassed in one area, or people who hopped from topic to topic.
One thing that she had really liked was that for the most part people seemed to be very uninterested in the fact that she was the Girl-Who-Lived, or even that she was a Wizengamot member. When people talked to her about projects, they knew that she'd done a lot of work in sleeping potions, and generally had follow up questions about her research. It was exactly how she wanted people to treat her as a potions brewer, and while she hadn't found it in the Guild, it seemed that she would here.
Today she was reading about potions and memory, specifically seeking ingredients or combinations of ingredients that could cause memory loss. She already knew how to direct the memory loss to the appropriate time period, for most potions at least, she just needed something that wasn't addictive or otherwise harmful. She felt that stopping people from dreaming was a last resort. All of the research she could find on dreaming and how it functioned suggested that humans actually needed to dream and that was an important part of how brains worked. She figured that didn't mean people had to remember what they dreamed about, and apparently, for a significant number of people, it already worked that way.
She'd read some research studies in muggle psychology, because the magical world did not have a lot of research on dreaming, and learned that pretty much no one remembered everything they dreamed. That made sense, because even though people generally spent only around two hours dreaming every night, a lot happened during that time. Over a third of people rarely or never remembered dreaming, and another approximate third could remember bits and pieces with that mostly being the last dream they had before they woke up. And the last third to fourth of the population was like Rachel and vividly remembered segments of their dreams upon waking most of the time.
The real trick, the holy grail of a Dreamless Sleep potion, would be to have only the memories of the dreams erased, but Rachel suspected that was out of reach given their current understanding of the brain, sleeping cycles, and potions ingredients. Maybe what she was doing now would lay the groundwork for some distant researcher. For now, she would settle for a safe, non-addictive potion that people could take every night, ideally with two variants - one that would cause people to go to sleep for those who struggled with falling asleep, and one that allowed people to ease into a natural sleep, for those who struggled with sleeping potions in general. If she figured that one out, maybe she could even get the full, seven nights a week, safe, non-addictive regular sleeping potion as well.
Through all her research, it made sense to her why this was just being done now. She hated seeming self-important, but this was a difficult problem. If it wasn't difficult, someone would have solved it already. Besides, not that many researchers were interested in sleeping potions. It was a very niche field of study. Healing potions were big, people were always trying to make improvements on those - and for good reason; the more lives they could save and the more people who could live without pain, the better. And then many brewers really loved the flashy complicated potions like Wolfsbane and Felix Felicis and Polyjuice Potion. There were three Unspeakables in the Polyjuice group, all of them looking for formulations that would last for longer than an hour at a time.
From some of the more personal potions accounts Rachel had found in the sleeping potions section, she suspected that many other sleeping potion specialists were like her - they had trouble sleeping for one reason or another. As far as she was concerned, that was as good of a reason as any to advance the field. Everyone was invested in the things that would help them personally.
Rachel looked up in time to see Cyril ambling toward her on his long legs, his gaze already focused on the top book in his stack. Cyril was in his forties, wore his black hair long and tied back, had tan skin that didn't seem to come from being outside in the sun - she suspected that most Unspeakables rarely saw the sun - and for a potions brewer, he was a bit of a scatterbrain.
"Oh, hello," he said, stopping next to his desk and looking at her. "I'm not sure we've been introduced. I'm Cyril. General potions group. I don't join specific groups."
"Rachel," she said, though she and Cyril had introduced themselves before. It was strangely nice to be so forgettable that someone forgot entirely that they'd met her. Very refreshing.
"You don't have a background in alchemy, do you?" he asked, setting down his books and sitting with a sigh.
"I'm afraid I don't, I only did a Potions Mastery," she said. The very little experience she had with alchemy she didn't share with anyone, and for good reason.
"That's usually the way it is around here, either Spell Crafting or Potions," Cyril said, slowly looking around.
Rachel looked too, wondering what Cyril was looking for.
"Has anyone taken you into the labs?" he asked, returning his attention to her.
"Not yet, I need to do some research before I try to brew anything, and I have a separate project that's taking up a fair bit of my time." Some days it took a full two hours to traverse the Department, view the memory, and then write it all out.
"Potions project?"
"Uh, no. Something else. In the Department," she said, not sure how many details she was allowed to give.
"Long term project, or…?"
"How long is considered long term?" she asked.
"Around here, years. I've known some people who have been working on the same project since I got here, and that was two decades ago," Cyril said, seeming entirely serious.
"Oh. Well. Not that long, that's for sure." She was absolutely not spending the next decade watching Tom Riddle's memories; she was putting her foot down if it came to that.
"That's good. Want to see the labs?"
"Yes, I do." She'd brewed in a number of laboratories throughout her life. Severus' private lab, the lab deeper in the dungeons at Hogwarts, Emlyn's private lab, the labs at the Guild, and her own personal lab in the cellar. Each had advantages and disadvantages, but she was curious to see what the Unspeakables thought was an appropriate environment for brewing.
"Come on then," Cyril said, standing again and motioning at her.
Rachel followed him to a door to the side of the potions group and they wound up in a smaller hallway.
"If the door is closed, that means it is in use or undergoing repairs. There's sign-up sheets for reserving lab space by each room, and we have a larger room for cauldrons that need to sit for more than a month. If you want to blow something up, you use one of these three rooms," Cyril said, coming to a stop next to a thick, reinforced door.
Rachel peered inside and couldn't help but grin. There was a space for a single cauldron without anything in the vicinity, an empty stone counter along a side wall, a transparent wall alongside the cauldron, and scorch marks everywhere. "Do people blow things up a lot?"
"Depends on the day and the project. The general idea is that you don't want to blow up anything you're not trying to blow up, but it happens. They told you the rules about not brewing alone, even when you don't think it's going to blow up?" he checked.
"Yes, I know. I'm not actually planning to blow anything up." There were already plenty of potions for blowing things up, she didn't see the need to invent one.
"What are you planning to brew?"
Rachel turned to look at him. "Sleeping potions and memory erasing potions, for right now. What about you?"
"Well, right now I'm blowing things up. We'll see where it takes me," he said, the corners of his mouth curling up.
She smiled back and tried not to be surprised at how much easier - and more comfortable - this was than the Potions Guild.
"Hey!" Rachel said, grinning as Hermione flooed into their sitting room.
"Hey," Hermione said, grinning back and reaching over to give Rachel a hug.
"How is everything here?" Hermione asked when they released each other.
"Oh, good. Busy. Always busy," Rachel said. "Let's sit while we wait for Theo."
"I know the feeling entirely," Hermione said as they moved toward the sofa. "So, the Unspeakables?"
"I'm pretty sure they want you too."
"Well, they're going to have to wait. Probably until I'm old enough that I don't feel up to traveling as much, and then I can settle comfortably into research," Hermione said, but there was a hint of longing to her expression.
Rachel smiled. "I know what you do is important. It's a good thing that you're doing it. But you would love the Department of Mysteries. Remember all that time we spent playing with the Room of Requirement and figuring out what it can do? It's like that."
Hermione sighed and tipped her head back. "I can only imagine. And the research?"
"So much research. Everyone I've met in the Unspeakables is obsessed with their research. Most people barely seem to be aware what day it is. And the Department Archives. Hermione, I have never ever been in anywhere that had so many scrolls and books and journals. It would take me ages just to take a walk around the room."
"That sounds amazing. It's something to look forward to at least, though I half wonder if they might let me liaise with them in order to better develop treatments," Hermione said, her gaze distant for a moment as she thought.
"Probably not. They don't let anything out of the Department without it being reviewed. Anything I want to publish has to go through a board to be reviewed, and I imagine any treatments you came up with would have to go through the same process," Rachel said.
"Most people I help don't have that kind of time," Hermione said. "I mean, some do, which is why it would be nice to work on longer term projects to help them, but a lot of the time I have to be quick. Is what is in the Department really as dangerous as all that?"
"I feel like I can't say at this point. I've barely seen anything. There's so many things to see and do that it's hard to focus on just one project. I'm sure some of it is dangerous. I can see why for some things that it just isn't a good idea for the public at large to know."
Hermione's eyebrows went up. "Really? I mean obviously you can't tell me what, but it's not like they're making weapons down there."
"I haven't seen anything that I would say was a weapon," Rachel said, not counting Cyril's continuing quest to blow things up.
"Well, that's a relief. And I understand why some things are restricted. We don't want everyone running around being able to do memory charms or blood magic or other things like that, but I feel that in general that we're better off with more people knowing more things. It seems like the Unspeakables are trying to keep everything a secret."
"In general, I agree with you, but I haven't done the process to release any information yet, so I don't know how much they really hold back. I wouldn't say that any of the materials I've looked at couldn't have been found somewhere in the world, it's just that having them gathered all in one place makes the research much easier," she said with a shrug. She hoped she wasn't going to have a problem with publishing. She didn't feel like any of her potions research needed to be classified.
"The modern magical Library of Alexandria, I suppose. Hopefully this one suffers a better fate. One day I will see it," Hermione said with a firm nod.
"I'm sure you will. Whenever you're ready. Any ideas about what your current plan is?" Rachel asked.
"Now that I have more experiences with blood curses, I'm going to try to help Celeste Zabini again. I'm also going to take another look at Astoria and see what I can do," Hermione said. "I have a few other clients with curse damage who are asking to see what I can do. I'll probably be in England through March, but not sure about after that."
Rachel nodded and pressed her lips together. "Any idea how old Cygnus is going to have to be before we can tell if he has it?" She was grateful that the curse seemed to have skipped Scorpius, but she still worried about Cygnus.
"Another year, at least. I took a look at him shortly after I returned to England, but right now I can't tell. By four years old at the latest, we should be able to tell by then. And Astoria and Draco both know what to watch for, and I'll drop everything and portkey back if they see any signs," Hermione said. "There's a possibility that their curse only affects women, some of the blood curses work like that, where they're only passed on by chromosomal sex, but it's only been three generations, so it's really too soon to tell. I've advised Astoria that I'm not sure we can get her through another pregnancy and childbirth, which I know is not what she wanted to hear, but I wanted her to make an informed choice."
"Better to know and to decide from there," Rachel agreed, though she knew that Draco and Astoria had been hoping to have another child.
"I assume I do not have to worry about pregnancy and childbirth with you?" Hermione asked.
Rachel laughed. "No. I'm good. Where would I find the time to raise a child? If I'm not in the Department, I'm at the Wizengamot. I don't know how Draco does it."
"Draco has a wife who stays home and a hoard of House Elves to take care of the clean up," Hermione said, both smiling and shaking her head. "How are you managing the balance between the Unspeakables and the Wizengamot."
"Well, it's been less than a month and I sure like the Unspeakables more than I do the Wizengamot," Rachel said, getting Hermione to laugh. "Mostly I spend my mornings down in the Department and my afternoons and early evening with the Wizengamot. Theo and I get home within an hour or two of each other, so it works pretty well."
"As long as you're not trying to do too much," Hermione said.
"You're one to talk. You did concurrent Masteries," Rachel pointed out.
"Fair," Hermione said. "I tend to work in spurts though. I have periods of time when I'm working twelve or fourteen hour days while I solve something, and then I take some time off and deal with other things. For you it's pretty much constant. Tell me you don't work weekends."
"Only when the Wizegnamot is meeting. I do some work here at home, but it's mostly work I want to be doing. Oh, I should show you my cauldrons. We still have time before dinner," Rachel said, checking her watch.
"Yes, let's go see. I want to know what you've been doing," Hermione said.
They stood and Rachel led Hermione to the cellar, eager to share what she could of her work.