"It's good to see you," Rachel said, hugging Luna while Rolf finished coming through the floo.
"I'm glad to see you too," Luna said, returning the hug and then stepping to Theo to give him a hug.
"Thanks for having us," Rolf said, hugging Rachel as soon as he finished dusting himself off.
"Of course," she said. "We always want to see you. We don't see enough of you."
"Do you want to eat straight away or a drink first?" Theo asked.
"Oh, either. We're easy," Luna said.
"Though I wouldn't say no to food," Rolf said with a smile.
"Dinner it is," Rachel said, leading the way into the dining room. It took less than five minutes for everyone to get settled and for their plates of roast to appear.
"You have no idea how nice it is to have a sit down meal," Rolf said, digging in immediately.
"Do you not have sit down meals?" Theo asked, smiling at them.
"We do when we're back in England," Luna said. "But for the most part when we're tracking something or moving with a herd we eat wherever we find a place."
"By which she means, mostly camping and sitting on the ground. Living out of a tent isn't terrible, I've done worse, but there's something about waking up in the same place every day," Rolf said.
"It's nice in small amounts. I'm not ready to stay put in one place," Luna said. "Speaking of which, we've signed up for an expedition in Morocco. We're going to do an examination and study on the life cycle and habits of the Triapings."
"Dare I ask what a Triaping is?" Rachel asked. Luna and Rolf knew more about magical creatures than anyone she'd ever met. Luna and Rolf had written three books together over the years and they contained both Luna's drawings of the creatures and actual photographs of the creatures as well.
"A primate that can do some rudimentary magic. They're about a meter tall when they stand, they have long tails and reddish fur and are primarily arboreal. We're going to watch them in their native habitat for a while, and then see if we can teach them some spells," Luna said, looking excited.
"Monkeys using wandless magic, I have no idea if that's a good idea or not," Theo said, still smiling even though he was shaking his head.
"Well, so far their abilities are just rumored. We'll see for ourselves what they can actually do," Rolf said.
"When are you going?" Rachel asked.
"After Christmas, the expedition doesn't start until mid-January. We'll be portkeying back to England for Millie and Natalie's wedding. Hopefully they'll have a date for us soon," Luna said.
"I'm sure they're working on it," she said. After the other weddings in their group, Rachel knew what a challenge it was to actually put something like that together. "I know they'd like a spring wedding, so they have some time."
"They do," Rolf agreed. "We're going to take a portkey to visit my dad at the start of January and go from there to join the expedition."
"How is your dad these days?" Theo asked.
"Good. Writing another book. I think he's settling into the idea that he's not well enough to go on expeditions any longer. I've talked to him about coming back to England, but he likes New York," Rolf said, nodding as he paused in his meal to take a drink.
"I'm afraid I'm a little less fond of New York," Luna said. "There's really not much to do there."
"There's plenty to do there, they're just things you don't want to do," Rolf said, not seeming bothered.
Rachel had been to the United States but New York had not been on their itinerary. She thought she might like to visit one day, but she didn't currently have any plans for traveling. Most of the time she was too busy to travel. "How is your father, Luna?"
"Good. Still busy with The Quibbler. I send him photos and articles every now and then. How is Severus?" Luna asked.
"Good. About to publish a new paper. I think people will really like it," Rachel said. At the very least, Severus would be making a name for himself in a new field of potions that had a lot of potential applications. "His new apprentice is a little bit wild, but maybe that's good for him."
They laughed. "I have a hard time seeing Severus managing a wild apprentice. What is she doing?" Luna asked.
"Let's just say she's very enthusiastic about exploding things and less enthusiastic about taking precautions when working with volatile substances. Severus is slowly getting it through her head that if she doesn't want to blow herself up, those precautions are necessary."
"It's never a bad idea to take precautions," Rolf agreed. "What about you, Theo? Anything new?"
"Well I finally got Markham out of my department, so that's a relief for everyone involved. I'm working on a paper at the moment. Nothing too big, but it's a step in the right direction," Theo said.
"Tell us about your paper," Luna said.
Rachel smiled as they settled into talking about their research projects. With their friends, talking about research could easily go on for hours.
Tom's first two years at Hogwarts had gone by quickly. Thankfully the Morsius Pensieve didn't seem to think it was important for Rachel to relive Tom's school days, and mostly she had seen memories of him being social within Slytherin House. Tom had played up the story that he was a magical child who had been orphaned without any idea who his magical parents were, and surprisingly, most of the other students seemed to take this at face value. It helped that he had Abraxus Malfoy and Trajan Nott vouching for him, and the three of them were moderately popular within the House.
Professor Slughorn had taken a liking to Tom, praising his grades and his abilities in the classroom, and the other professors seemed fond of him too. At thirteen years old, and just into his third year at Hogwarts, Tom was growing taller and Rachel could see that he was attracting the attention of other students in a way that suggested they thought he was becoming handsome.
When Tom wasn't with his friends, he could be found wandering Hogwarts alone. Today they were on the second floor and Tom was peeking in rooms and talking to the portraits. Rachel remembered doing this as well, though usually only during the Christmas holiday when she had time to herself. After listening to Tom's conversations with the portraits, she found herself wishing she had paid more attention to them while she'd been at Hogwarts. The only portrait she'd really gotten to know was Curbin. Interestingly, Tom seemed to avoid Curbin almost entirely.
Tom came to a stop in front of an older portrait. "Hello."
The man in the portrait peered down at him, but it was the snake hanging down from the man's neck who spoke. "Hello, human. It has been a long time since someone has spoken to me."
"Why is that?" Tom asked.
Rachel already knew the answer.
"Because you are speaking parseltongue, human. Not many do," the snake replied.
"Parseltongue?"
"The language of snakes. You are gifted. You are called a parselmouth, someone who can speak to snakes."
Tom's eyes went wide. "I can speak to snakes! I remember, I spoke to snakes in the garden!"
"Did your parents not teach you? Being a parselmouth is a gift that is passed from parent to child," the snake asked.
"My parents are dead. I'm an orphan," Tom said. "But that means my father must have been a parselmouth as well!"
"Or your mother. The gift of parseltongue does not discriminate along gender."
"No. My mother died. She died giving birth to me. She couldn't have been magical," he insisted.
"All things die, child. Even those with magic. All except perhaps the Great Mother."
Tom immediately looked intrigued. "Who is the Great Mother?"
"The guardian that Salazar Slytherin left behind in the school. Have you not heard her waking?" the snake asked.
"Salazar Slytherin was a parselmouth, wasn't he?" Tom asked, his eyes wider now. "Maybe I'm related to him. Who is this guardian? How can I speak with her?"
"She is far below in the chamber. She rests for long periods of time, but she will wake to speak with a parselmouth."
In the Chamber of Secrets, Rachel realized. This snake portrait was directing Tom Riddle to the Chamber of Secrets.
"In the dungeons?" Tom asked eagerly.
"No, far beneath the dungeons. You must go through the passage. It is locked so only a parselmouth can access it. Go to the girls' lavatory on this level and seek the sign of the snake connected to the pipes. Tell it open and call for the stairs in parseltongue, and then you can descend to speak with the Great Mother," the snake instructed.
Rachel felt like an idiot. That was the bathroom where she'd found the diary. Of course that's where the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets was as well.
"Thank you," Tom said. "Can I speak with you again?"
"Please do. I'm always looking for someone to converse with. But a word of warning."
"Are you going to tell me not to speak with the Great Mother?" Tom asked, immediately sounding defensive.
"No, she will welcome you. My warning is thus: many hate and fear the language of snakes and those who speak it. Take care not to speak it in front of someone unless you trust them to keep your secret."
Rachel wished she'd received that warning before speaking parseltongue in front of the entire school. Sure would have saved her some hassle.
"Thank you. I'll keep it a secret. I won't tell anyone," Tom swore.
"Is there no one you trust with your secrets, child?" the snake asked.
"No," he said after a moment. "No one."
Tom walked away and Rachel followed him, more than a little eager to see the Chamber of Secrets for herself, especially because she couldn't be killed by the basilisk in a memory. He arrived at the bathrooms and took a look around the vacant hallway before poking his head in and looking around. "Hello?"
When no girls yelped about a boy coming into the girls' bathroom, he went inside and used his wand to lock the door.
Rachel looked around the bathroom while Tom did, trying to figure out what the snake had meant by pipes and the sign of the snake. She didn't see any obvious snakes.
Tom looked in at the toilets before seeming to disregard them and then went to the sinks along the back wall. Rachel followed, watching him examine under the sinks and then finally the taps themselves. "There," he said, turning the handles and nodding when no water came out.
Rachel managed to get a closer look and saw that there was a small engraving of a snake on the silver tap.
"Open," Tom commanded, jumping back as the sink suddenly retreated into the floor, leaving behind a pipe entrance big enough for them to walk - or fall - into. "Stairs." When there was no response, Tom screwed up his face in concentration. "Stairs," he said again, and this time stairs formed within the pipe.
With a glance back at the locked door, Tom went into the pipe. Rachel took a deep breath and followed, wishing she could cast a light orb to carry with her. Tom lit his wand after the first few steps and they began the journey downward. Rachel wasn't sure how a memory could smell, but it did. It smelled of sludge and mold and other things she didn't want to name.
As they descended, Rachel wondered if Ginny had gone into the chamber itself while she was being possessed. She'd never asked Ginny about her time with the diary, because she hadn't wanted to hurt her. It had been obvious that Ginny had found the experience traumatizing, and rightly so. Even with the Dark Lord in her head, Rachel had always been in control of her body. The idea that he could have fully possessed her if things had continued in the direction they'd been going was deeply disturbing.
It didn't take much for Rachel to guess what the Dark Lord would have done with her body. He would have used her to kill Severus, and maybe Professor Dumbledore, and then have either used her to take down Hogwarts' wards so that he and his Death Eaters could come in, or have Rachel leave Hogwarts' grounds so he could kill her. In a way, they were very lucky that the war had ended as it had. Even though many people had died, it easily could have been much worse if the Death Eaters had reached the students.
Rachel found herself thinking of Tom Riddle and the Dark Lord as different people, which she knew was something she should try to resist. The boy curiously climbing down the stairs in front of her grew to become the man who had killed her parents. It wasn't like Tom had been possessed. He had made the decisions that brought him to becoming the Dark Lord. Thus far she hadn't seen anything that suggested something was wrong with Tom.
He was becoming popular within Slytherin House. His dormmates had begun to look to him for leadership instead of Abraxus. In a weird way, Tom almost reminded her of Cedric. She'd heard frequently enough when she went to school that Cedric was handsome. Cedric had been popular, his grades had been excellent, and he'd also been a prefect and Head Boy. The difference, of course, was that Cedric was honestly a kind person who cared about other people. For all that Tom was popular, she'd never seen him actually show concern for another person, even while he was ostensibly being kind to them.
"Ew," she said as they reached the bottom of the stairs and entered a corridor that was filled with old bones of rodents and god knew what else. Surprisingly the smell wasn't terrible.
Tom seemed curious rather than bothered by the bones, and they followed the dark corridor until they reached a large round doorway that had metal snakes decorating it. Tom nodded to himself. "Open."
Rachel decided that Salazar Slytherin hadn't actually wanted his Chamber of Secrets to be all that secure if the passphrase was just 'open' in parseltongue. This was a room for parselmouths to gather.
The metal snakes slid back and the door opened. Rachel braced herself for meeting a basilisk. She knew they were supposed to be big and dangerous, but otherwise she didn't know what to expect.
The chamber they entered was large, and perhaps unsurprisingly, had large stone snakes decorating it. There was a tunnel at one end, and Rachel figured that's where the basilisk would be coming from.
"Hello?" Tom called as he looked around.
"Who calls?" came another voice, followed by a strange sound that Rachel belatedly identified as something enormous slithering.
Even knowing that basilisks were enormous hadn't prepared her to see it coming out of the tunnel and into the chamber. It didn't quite fill the chamber, but it took up a fair amount of space. Rachel couldn't help but think of the dragon she'd faced in her fourth year at Hogwarts, though the basilisk was actually probably more dangerous than that.
Tom looked a little shaken, but he persevered. "My name is Tom Riddle. I'm a parselmouth. Who are you?"
"I am called Amira. Why do you come?" the basilisk asked.
"To speak with you. You are the guardian, aren't you?"
"I am the guardian of Hogwarts, yes. Has a new foe arisen?"
This seemed to stymie Tom for a moment. "Not yet," he said, sounding a little uncertain. "But I think there will be."
"War is brewing?" Amira asked.
"Has there been wars? Have you fought in wars?" Tom asked.
"There is always war. I defend Hogwarts from intruders and from the impure."
"You mean muggleborns?"
"Those who would bring danger to our people and our students, yes."
Tom looked thoughtful as he considered this. "I'm not a muggleborn. My father was magical. I'm a parselmouth, that proves it."
Rachel wondered how long it would take Tom to learn that it had been his mother who'd been magical. Perhaps this explained why he'd gone so far as to kill his muggle family members upon discovering who they were.
"Who is your father, child?" Amira asked, shifting on the stones.
"I don't know. I was orphaned. I'm trying to find out, but I can't find the name Riddle anywhere in the genealogy books."
"Perhaps the name you carry now is not the name you were given at your birth," Amira suggested. "There are not many who can speak with snakes. If you seek them, they may know from whence you came."
Tom nodded. "I will." He stood for a moment, looking like he was thinking something through. "What would you do if I told you the impure were here in Hogwarts?"
"I would ask you to guide me to them, so we could purify Hogwarts once again. That is the task that Master Slytherin left me. Guard the school."
"I can do that, but not right now. I need time."
Rachel felt chilled all over again. Here was thirteen year old Tom Riddle plotting murder. Murder of children who had done nothing to him. It didn't make sense to her. She didn't understand why he wanted to do this.
"Find the impure and return when it is time," Amira said.
"I will," Tom promised.
The memory ended and Rachel found herself back in the room with the Morsius Pensieve.
She sat down and quickly wrote out the memory, recalling as much specific dialogue as she could. It took about thirty minutes and then she rose, intent on speaking with Patrick again. The Department apparently knew she was in a hurry, because it let her out in three rooms. Rachel signed herself out and then made her way back to the offices and found Liesel and Patrick in Patrick's office.
"May I speak with you when you're done?" she asked.
"You can have him now," Liesel said, gathering her pile of parchment. "Have those signed by tonight, I need them. We can't run a department like this."
"I will," Patrick said, sounding a little weary.
"I mean it this time," Liesel said.
"If you want the Head position, just say so," Patrick said.
Rachel shifted uncomfortably, feeling that she shouldn't be here for this conversation.
"I most certainly do not; do your job," Liesel said as she brushed by Rachel. "How are you, dear?"
"Good. How are you?" Rachel asked, as it was polite to ask in return.
"Well enough to be getting on with," Liesel said before leaving.
"Please tell me you don't need me to sign or review something?" Patrick asked, poking at the piles on his desk.
"I don't. Can I come in?"
"Yes, do. Problem with the project?" he asked when Rachel shut the door behind her.
"Um, not exactly a problem, just something we may need to do something about," she hedged, coming to a stop in front of Patrick's desk.
"More Death Eaters?" he asked.
"No. There's a living basilisk beneath Hogwarts. As far as I know she's still there," she said, feeling that was at least as important as Death Eaters. "Maybe we should tell Professor McGongagall, so she knows?"
"I'm certain she does know. Albus informed the Ministry of the presence of the basilisk a number of years ago, but he seemed certain that the situation was taken care of."
Rachel waved her hand back and forth. "I'm not sure 'taken care of' is the full answer here. Any parselmouth can go into the Chamber of Secrets and ask the basilisk to purify the school of muggleborns."
"Are you planning on having children?" Patrick asked, seemingly out of nowhere.
"No," Rachel said, feeling her eyes go wide.
"Then I'm not certain we do have a problem. Parseltongue is passed through families, and we know Tom Riddle did not have a child. The two of you are the only known parselmouths in Britain in the past fifty years."
"But we don't know how I became a parselmouth, it easily could have been through my mother's family somewhere, as there are undoubtedly squibs in her family line at some point," she pointed out.
"I thought the consensus was that your abilities were given to you the night you were hit with the Killing Curse?"
"Consensus? How many people know about that?" Rachel asked.
"The fact that you were a horcrux? I think the only ones who know that were those of us on the research team that investigated you, unless you told someone?" Patrick asked.
"I didn't. How did you know?" she pressed, feeling very uneasy.
"There are only so many ways to survive the Killing Curse and come back the way that You-Know-Who did. When you accomplished the same feat, along with the various powers that you manifested, a horcrux seemed to be the obvious solution. Clearly there was another horcrux somewhere, but Albus must have taken care of it."
Well, he didn't know everything, but he knew far more than Rachel would have liked. "Who else knows about horcruxes?"
"The Dark Arts team here and that's it. That knowledge is bound by compulsion spells that don't allow us to share it with anyone who doesn't already know. It was just you and Dumbledore who knew about the horcruxes?" he checked again.
"Yes," she lied. She didn't want to bring Severus into this. "I didn't know I was a horcrux until I died."
"It was an intriguing sequence of events, to be certain. You have defied what was accepted as possible. Back to the Chamber of Secrets. You know where it is?"
"Yes. And how to access it. And you need a parselmouth to access it," she paused, and then saw a way to get what she wanted. "Don't you want to go into the Chamber of Secrets?"
"Well. I mean, there is a basilisk down there," he said, looking a little bit daunted.
"I can speak with the basilisk," she reminded him. "She didn't attack Tom Riddle when he went down there, I don't think she'd attack me either."
"Are you still a parselmouth? Even now that you're no longer a horcrux?" Patrick asked.
Rachel held out her hand and conjured a snake on Patrick's desk.
A sleepy ball python appeared. "Hello?"
"Hello. Sorry for the interruption," Rachel said.
"Who am I? Who are you?" the snake asked.
"Just visiting for a moment. Sorry about this," she said, and then vanished it. She'd found that conjured snakes seemed to be stuck on the idea of who they were and she found it a little bit creepy.
Patrick's eyes were wide and this was definitely the most alarmed she had ever seen him. "Well," he said, and then fell silent.
Rachel shrugged. Maybe she should ask Daphne if she could do an interview with a snake for her next Witch Weekly article. Maybe that would help people feel less freaked out by parseltongue and the people who spoke it.
"Well," he said again. "We may need to rethink the idea that your parseltongue ability came from You-Know-Who."
Rachel shrugged again. "Anything is possible. It's just as possible that the ability became an innate part of me, even though it was initially granted by the horcrux. Just like my mind magic."
Patrick nodded, though he still looked uncertain. "I will talk to some people about the possibility of putting together an expedition into the Chamber of Secrets. For now, I must ask that you don't share this information with anyone."
"I won't. I just think that the Headmistress of Hogwarts should be aware that there's still a potential threat in the school. I don't think we should assume that we know all of the parselmouths either. It's stigmatized, so parents would probably instruct their children to keep it a secret."
"I suppose that is a possibility, yes," he said. "Thank you for bringing this to my attention."
"It felt important," she said.
"Well, I trust your judgment. If something you see feels important, please inform me."
"I will," Rachel said, checking her watch. She'd spent long enough in the memory that she didn't have time for research today. Maybe she'd spend tomorrow morning in research and then go back to Tom's memories the next day.
Rachel had a pile of parchment at her elbow, ink on her fingertips, and several books open on her desk. Balancing unfamiliar ingredients was always a challenge and she wanted a series of recipes she could brew so she could spend a few days with a cauldron before coming back out and making changes.
She had a small niggling feeling in the back of her mind, one that had been slowly growing the longer she'd spend working on sleeping potions this past decade. Maybe there wasn't supposed to be a sleeping potion that could be used every night, much less one that helped people never dream.
There was always a line in magic, and there were stories in pretty much every magical field about what happened when someone crossed that line into things that should not be done. Most of those stories ended in the death of the person doing the research, but the particularly gruesome ones ended in the deaths of everyone around the researcher. It was generally accepted that those stories were apocryphal, but Rachel knew that it was true that sometimes people did die performing magical research, especially if they weren't taking precautions.
On one hand, Rachel knew there were other people like her who had done pretty much everything possible and still slept poorly. Rachel had been through therapy, had dealt with her mind magic, had practiced meditating, had tried sleeping in her cat form, had changed around her sleeping arrangements multiple times, had exercised, had avoided certain foods and drinks before bed, and more. The only thing she hadn't tried yet was muggle medications for sleep, and Healers had warned her that muggle medicines often had odd interactions with magical people.
On the other hand, maybe she'd spent the last ten years banging her head on an impossible problem. It was difficult to tell. She figured that the Unspeakables were her last resort on this. She would brew new potions, she would research more about mind altering ingredients as well as sedatives and stimulants, she would consult with the other Unspeakables in the potions group on mind altering potions, and if at the end of all of that she'd made no progress, she would consign herself to researching something else. Given the amount of information she had to go through and the possibilities for brewing potions, that could take her several years. Maybe when she was done with all of this she would write a definitive book on sleeping potions and call it a day.
"I hear you have a project," Cyril said, dropping some books on his desk and then dragging his chair up to hers.
"Sleeping potions," she said, gesturing at her work.
"No. A project in the Department. You're not just in there to get to know the Department, rumor has it Patrick actually assigned you to something," he said, looking at her intently.
"I do, but I can't really discuss it." She wondered exactly how those rumors had gotten started. She knew Patrick and Liesel wouldn't have said anything. "Are all Unspeakables insatiable gossips?"
"We are. Comes with the desire to know everything, though from what I hear, we're not as bad as the Wizengamot," Cyril said, looking pleased about that.
"It's not the Wizengamot who are the gossips, it's the clerks," she said, shaking her head. Booker told her everything he heard from the rest of the clerks, letting her know when something had the basis in truth instead of being outright absurd.
"What room do they have you working in? Not the Veil, I presume?" he pressed.
"Not the Veil. I'd rather not go in there again." She'd felt dazed for a good day after spending time with the Veil.
"Good. Nasty room. We lost someone there a few years back."
"Lost them? They went through the Veil?" she checked, curious despite herself.
Cyril nodded, entirely serious now. "Sometimes people get drawn to it and can't help themselves. In the past we've tried to keep people who've known those who have died away from there, but with the war, that's pretty much everyone. Patrick has refused any further research projects on the Veil since we lost Naya. I think if he could find a way to shut that room off from the rest of the Department, he would. Do stay away from there. If the Department takes you there, tell her clearly that you don't want to be there, and then leave the Department for the rest of the day. She'll get the idea."
"How much can the Department understand of what we say to her?"
"Oh, that's anyone's guess. It's not like she speaks to us directly. She has favorites, you know."
"How do they know?" She wasn't sure if it was a good thing or not to be the favorite of an entity like the Department. While it was always nice to be liked, she was a little wary of how the Department might choose to show affection.
"The Department tries to get them to stay. Shows them more things, brings them to rooms we don't often see. Most people the Department really likes wind up doing most of their research there. She's not all that fond of me, for whatever reason. Kept sending me around in circles. I don't go in the Department all that often these days."
Rachel decided to ask. "Does that bother you?"
"No. I'm a potioneer at heart, and I think she knows that. She knows I'd be resentful if I wound up spending all my time in the Department instead of over a cauldron. How does the Department treat you?" he asked, looking eager again.
"Um, well, I suppose. It usually takes me a bit to get to where I'm going, and some days I don't make it there at all. I've identified thirty individual rooms that I've seen so far. I can feel her in my mind. She pays more attention to me when I'm wandering than when I'm working, assuming that the increased presence feeling is her paying attention to me."
"What does she feel like to you?"
She shrugged as she reached for the right words. "Just like a presence on the edge of my mind. Pressure, maybe. I've checked in my mental architecture, and I can't see her there, and my manifestation says that she isn't an intruder. How does she feel to you?"
"Like a passenger. Like I'm carrying her," Cyril said.
Rachel knew that feeling from carrying the Dark Lord with her, and she didn't feel that it was the same at all. "Was it uncomfortable?"
"Not necessarily, but I'm used to having my mind to myself, if you know what I mean. I haven't let anyone in my mind since I was taught to occlude."
"How old were you?" she asked, curious about other people's experience with mind magic.
"Oh, I learned in my twenties, after my Mastery. I knew that the Unspeakables require all of us to be proficient with occlumency, so I figured I would increase my chances at getting an invitation by showing that I was prepared. When did you learn?"
"I'm a natural occlumens, but I didn't learn to control my shield until I was fifteen," she admitted.
"That's young to have someone mucking about in your mind. Most legilimens and occlumens won't teach minors," Cyril said.
"My father taught me, so it was alright."
Cyril's eyebrows shot up and then he laughed. "You must have a much better relationship with your father than I do with mine. I cannot imagine allowing him inside my mind now, let alone when I was a teenager."
"I have a very good relationship with my father. He's always protected me," she said, feeling the need to defend Severus.
"Even so. All teenagers have secrets, it's part of being a teenager."
"I had plenty of secrets as a teenager, even from my father. My mind was just organized enough that I didn't need to worry about him wandering into any of them." And, of course, when she'd first started learning to manipulate her mind magic, she hadn't known that Severus would have come across any secrets that she'd been keeping, and neither of them had known that her mind was already organized. Water under the bridge, she supposed.
"That's impressive that you mastered that so young. Of course, you must be used to that. I heard you were still seventeen when you became an animagus as well?" he asked.
"Yes. It would have been earlier, but our teacher wouldn't take us until we were adults."
"Ah, they must have had a hard time keeping you contained at Hogwarts," Cyril said. "I was a little bit like that myself, not as powerful as you, of course, but always pushing the bounds on what I could learn and what I could do. Drove Professor Slughorn mad with the amount of trouble I got into."
Rachel smiled. "I suspect you would get along very well with both my godfather and the Weasley twins. All of them drove the professors quite spare while they were at Hogwarts."
"There's always someone to cause mischief," Cyril agreed. "Need another set of eyes on your project?"
"Do you know anything about balancing sedatives with stimulants?" she asked.
"That I do not, but if you want a potion that will keep you awake and going for three days straight, I'm your man," Cyril said.
When she was younger, such a potion might have appealed to her, but right now, she just wanted to be able to sleep on a normal schedule. "I think I'll pass, but thank you. I assume they didn't let you publish that?"
"No. They felt that was too dangerous to be released among the general populace. Too addictive, and it had health drawbacks if people used it too frequently. But that's alright. Most of the work we do here is like that, but we're still making the basis for the advancement of the nation. Our work here is built on generations of research, and the people who come after us will be building on what we do," he said, seeming unbothered that he hadn't been allowed to publish his potion.
Rachel nodded. "There's a lot of things to discover. I feel like I don't have the time to look into half of the things that I want to."
Cyril stood and patted her on the shoulder. "That is life. Pursue what is most important to you, because there is no guarantee that you'll get to everything."
"That's true. For now that's sleeping potions, but it won't always be."
"I'm glad you have your eyes on the horizon. It never hurts to think about what is coming next."
She felt she could agree with that. Cyril dragged his chair back to his own desk, and Rachel returned to her work.
Rachel opened her eyes to the sound of Dingbat crying in plaintive meows. "What?"
She found the cat directly next to her and was immediately poked with a questing paw. "You do not make a good alarm clock," Rachel told her, reaching up and scratching behind Dingbat's ears.
Dingbat meowed again, shaking her head, and then stood. She darted to the end of the bed, and then came back up when Rachel didn't follow her.
"I don't feed you. Dobby feeds you. You know that," Rachel said, giving up and looking at the clock on her bedside table. It was six thirty, which meant it was about time to get up if she wanted to be in the Department by eight. "Go ask Dobby for breakfast."
Dobby popped into the room. "Dobby will take her, Miss."
"She can take herself to the kitchen if she wants to be fed. She's not incapable of that much," Rachel said, swinging her feet out of bed and carefully stretching. Her left shoulder had settled into a general mild soreness, as long as she was careful with it. The swelling had been completely gone for nearly two months, so she was hoping it was just finishing healing and she'd be alright with no further complications.
"She is bothering Miss in the morning and being a naughty cat," Dobby said, looking at Dingbat reprovingly.
"Ring-A-Ding is alright. I needed to get up anyway," Rachel said. "Dingbat, go downstairs with Dobby and have breakfast."
Dingbat sat on the bed and looked blankly at Rachel.
Dobby gave a strange whistle, the tone traveling up and down into notes that Rachel was pretty sure humans couldn't make. Dingbat immediately hopped off the bed and went to Dobby's side and meowed. "Dobby will feed the naughty cat, come with Dobby."
Rachel watched as Dingbat followed Dobby out of the room. Some days she was not in control of her own house. Twenty minutes later she was showered, dressed, and had her hair neatly tied back. She'd chosen robes she could get dirty, since going into the Department of Mysteries was never a sure thing. She had robes in her Wizengamot office she could change into when she went upstairs and was no longer in danger of running across something strange or filthy.
Strangely, she found no breakfast or tea waiting at the table. She went into the kitchen, finding the cats sitting by their bowls, the owls on their perch, and not a House Elf in sight. She supposed she could get herself breakfast, though it had been a very long time since she'd cooked anything.
She looked around the kitchen, wondering where the House Elves had stashed the kettle.
"Miss?"
Rachel turned and found Kreacher waiting for her. "Is something going on?"
"Miss should come take a seat," Kreacher said.
Rachel spotted the newspaper rolled up under his arm. "What happened?"
"Miss will see, but Miss should sit," Kreacher insisted.
Recognizing that she wasn't going to get her newspaper without ordering it out of Kreacher's hands, Rachel went back to the table and sat down. Kreacher, clearly reluctant, handed her the newspaper.
'Ten Dead in Death Eater Attacks' the headline read, with a large photo beneath of a burning home with the Dark Mark above it.
Rachel set down the paper without reading further and slowly inhaled and exhaled through her nose. Why now? Why was this happening now? She still couldn't think of anything that might have prompted this. It wasn't the anniversary of anything that she knew of. It wasn't a holiday. It was just a random Wednesday in October.
The Dark Lord had never been the real problem in the war, he was just one man. He could only be in one place at a time. What had made him dangerous was the number of people who had followed him, the number of people who were willing to kill for him. The idea that the Death Eaters had found themselves a new leader after all this time was worrisome, but she thought it was a possibility that they were going to have to seriously examine.
She braced herself and forced herself to read the article. Two homes had been attacked. Fiendfyre at one had spread to a surrounding home. They were theorizing that the second attack took place while people were responding to the Fiendfyre. The article didn't mention the situation with the wards, which meant either they didn't know yet or they were holding back that information so as to not further panic people.
"What's wrong?" Theo asked, stopping in the doorway.
"Death Eater attacks, ten dead. Muggleborns, muggles, and their children. They're attacking families with young children," she said, folding the paper and setting it down at his place.
"Does Miss and Master want tea or food?" Kreacher asked.
Rachel shook her head. She didn't want to put anything in her stomach at the moment.
"Not right now, thank you," Theo said, his gaze focused on the newspaper. He sighed and then pressed his hand to his mouth. "This looks organized."
She nodded. This wasn't someone motivated by revenge or a simple happenstance. This was someone, or multiple someones, targeting muggleborns out of hate.
"Well, they have someone powerful enough to control Fiendfyre. That's uncommon. There can't be more than two or three hundred people in Britain who can do that," he said, folding the newspaper and then looking at Rachel.
"And they know how to cast the Dark Mark. And they can take down wards. Put the three lists together and that should be a narrow suspect pool, unless it's multiple Death Eaters collaborating."
"Why though? What are they hoping to gain from this?" he asked.
"Fear. Panic. Relieving their glory days. Or maybe they just like to kill." She was starting to believe that for some people there wasn't anything they found particularly wrong with killing, as strange as that seemed to her. In her mind, killing should always mean something. But she could recognize that not everyone thought and felt the way that she did.
"The Dark Mark is a statement. If this were just murders, it would be different. They wanted people to see this."
Booker's raven Patronus flew into the room and landed on the table in front of Rachel. "They're calling an emergency meeting of the Wizengamot. They want everyone in the chambers by nine. I'm already in, but it doesn't look like I can get you in to see Rufus or Amelia before the meeting. Is there anyone else you need to see immediately?"
"That's me then," Rachel said. It took an extra moment for her to focus to cast her Patronus. "To Booker Richmond. I'll be in my office in fifteen minutes. I'd like to see Sirius when he's in. If I can get a meeting with Draco, that would be good too. And someone should check on Malcolm and make sure he's alright. Sirius might have already taken care of that. I'll see you soon."
Theo stood with Rachel and they hugged for a long moment. "I'm just a Patronus away if you need me."
"Thank you. I'll send you a message once we either get out of the meeting or break for lunch," she said into his chest, taking a moment to rest her forehead against him. "Can you check on everyone today, make sure they're alright? I'll touch base with Draco and Neville if you can get the others."
"I will. I imagine we'll hear from them if we don't send a message first," Theo said, letting her go.
Rachel nodded. "I'm going to go change and then I'm heading to the Ministry. I might be late tonight, but I'll keep in touch."
"Alright. I should just be at the Guild and then here."
"Love you," she said, grasping his hand briefly.
"I love you too," he said, squeezing her hand.
Rachel went upstairs and changed into a nice set of robes in darker colors that would be more appropriate for the occasion. She then went to her bedside table and checked her pocket watch. Draco's hand was already on 'work', but everyone else was home. She slipped the pocket watch into her robe pocket, knowing that she'd be checking it obsessively today. It was time to go see what she could do.
"Where are we at?" Rachel asked as soon as Booker came into her office.
"Sirius and Malcolm aren't in yet, though their clerks have summoned them. I can get you Draco if you want him now," Booker said.
"Yes, please. Are Amelia and Rufus in seclusion at the moment, is that the problem?" she checked. "What about Gawain?"
"Amelia and Gawain are down in the MLE managing things from there. Stella says not to expect her until the meeting itself. Rufus is in with some of the department heads. I don't think he'll be coming out before the meeting either."
Rachel restrained herself from running her hands through her hair. "Alright. Let's start with Draco. If you find Sirius, send him in even if I'm still with Draco."
"I will. Anyone else?" he checked.
"No. I will check in with the rest of the faction as need be, but I can't do anything until I have information."
"Understood," Booker said, exiting quickly.
"How bad?" Monty asked.
"Ten dead. This time." Halloween was a week and a half away, and if they were keeping with Death Eater traditions, there would be another attack that night - or worse, a series of attacks.
"Who are they targeting?"
"Who else? Muggleborns and muggles." Rachel paced as she thought, trying to come up with something that the Wizengamot could do about this. She wondered if the Wizengamot had felt this same sense of helplessness during the war. At least this time she didn't have to contend with a hostile Minister or Wizengamot. And she was assured that the war was still fresh enough in everyone's minds that these attacks would be taken seriously.
"What about the public?" Monty asked.
"What about them?"
"Is panic spreading? Are the Death Eaters recruiting?"
"Not that I know of," she said, though there were undoubtedly muggleborns and families of muggleborns all over the nation having serious conversations about whether or not they should even be in Britain at this point. "I thought we were fixing things."
"Change does not happen overnight," Monty began.
"It's been a decade."
"And how long is a decade in the course of a nation's history? You are taking a very short view of a problem that has plagued our country off and on for a millenia. Do you not know your history? Do you not know why the school you attended was founded?"
Rachel came to a stop and looked at Monty. "There's a difference. Muggles actually used to be a threat to magical people. They had to take shelter from them. A safe place for their children."
"Look me in the eyes and tell me that you believe that muggles were ever actually a threat to a grown and trained witch or wizard," Monty said firmly.
She hesitated and then made her way to her desk and sat down with a sigh. "But the children?" she asked, not wanting to think that Hogwarts had been founded on the same prejudice that they were fighting today.
"Were trained in their arts by their families. At the time of the founding of Hogwarts, magical people mostly lived in cohabitation with muggles, and muggles fully believed in magic. The Statute of Secrecy wasn't formed until nearly seven hundred years later. Muggleborn children were identified in their communities and then they apprenticed with magical families. I am not saying Hogwarts is a bad institution or that it was unnecessary, but the story we tell that it was to protect our children from muggles is a fallacy."
"Then why did Salazar Slytherin want to cleanse the impure from Hogwarts?" she asked, thinking of what the basilisk had said.
"Why does anyone take to prejudice? I'm not saying there were never difficulties and divides between the magical and the muggle community, as there certainly were, but the state of the world now is not the state it was always in," he said, watching Rachel closely.
A knock on the door finished their conversation, though Rachel's mind was swirling with history and the idea that what she thought she knew was not always the case, and she opened the door to find Draco. "Are you alright?" she asked.
"Fine. I wasn't on call. I just got out of an auror briefing about ten minutes ago," he said.
Rachel let him in her office and they took seats. "What should I know?"
"That this is going to be a bloody mess," Draco said, smoothing a lock of hair away from his forehead. "The Jones' wards were taken down without their awareness."
She frowned. "They're not related to Gwenog, are they?" she checked.
"No, different Jones family. Mother was muggleborn, father was half-blood. One child. Their other child is a second year at Hogwarts."
"Of course," she said, trying to control her expression. Yet another child left orphaned by the Death Eaters. Didn't they have enough orphans? Hadn't they done enough? "What about the Fiendfyre?"
"That was the Lasbys. Same pattern; two adults, one of them muggleborn, two children. The fire spread to a nearby muggle residence before they could stop it and three muggles were killed. As far as we can tell, that was unintentional. I'm sure they don't care that it happened, but from the burning of the Fiendfyre it was all directed at the Lasby's home," Draco explained.
"It's under control now?" she checked.
"Shacklebolt brought it under control - he's in St. Mungo's for smoke inhalation."
"He's alright?" she checked, wondering if she should go visit him.
"The MLE Healer said he'll be fine. He just needed a potion and some time to clear out his lungs. The plan is for him to be back on active duty by Monday. There were no other MLE injuries. We were too late," Draco said, shaking his head.
"Not too late. If the Fiendfyre had spread, it would have killed even more," she said, thinking of Godric's Hollow. As upsetting as her visions had been, at least some of the time she'd been able to help. They didn't have that advantage now. "Any ideas why these families were targeted beside blood status and make up of their family?"
"Amelia's got people on it. We're looking through everything we can find on the families for commonalities. Nothing so far, but we haven't had much time to research or interview people yet. Also, beyond knowing at least one of them can cast Fiendfyre, no luck on narrowing down the identities of our Death Eaters either. I'd say based on what they're able to do, there's a good chance Rookwood or Crouch Junior are with them."
"Anyone else we know of with those skills?" she checked.
"We're also going through records to see who we think is powerful enough to control Fiendfyre like that; not many people can direct it," he said, nodding to Rachel.
"If the MLE needs someone to come help put out Fiendfyre, they can always call me," Rachel offered, knowing she'd be making the same offer to Amelia when she saw her.
Draco shook his head. "Robards, Shacklebolt, Diggory, and Collins can all manage it. I think we have more people who can contain it than they have who can start it. I think Amelia and Rufus are going to want to keep you as far away from this as possible, at least until…"
"Until we know who we're dealing with and are ready to confront them," she finished for him, flexing her hands.
"Are you serious, young lady?" Monty asked abruptly.
Rachel looked up at him. "I'm not letting them start another war. If we know who this is, we're stopping them. Ideally without killing them, but if it's necessary-"
"If nothing else, think of your poor father," Monty said.
"Severus fought in two wars, he has no grounds for complaint," she said.
"I assure you, it is an entirely different thing seeing your child go to war, and you would not speak so lightly of it if you had given me great grandchildren by now."
Rachel sighed. Monty had not taken the idea that the Snow line was ending with her very well.
A knock on the door interrupted them again and Rachel got to her feet and let Sirius and Malcolm inside.
"Everyone in one piece?" Sirius checked.
"We're fine," Rachel said, getting nods from Malcolm and Draco.
"We need to talk to the faction about their wards, if they have not taken care of it already," Sirius said.
"I'll write a memo," she said, moving to put that on her neverending to-do list.
"Will they really target us if they're going after muggleborns?" Malcolm asked.
"It always starts with targeting muggleborns and muggles. It will come to us soon enough," Sirius said, looking harried.
"I don't understand why they're even bothering. They lost the war," Malcolm insisted.
"Somehow, this war in particular never seems to end. People have been fighting over this since before I was born, and I don't see that they're going to stop any time soon," Sirius said, patting Malcolm on the shoulder.
That was what Rachel was afraid of. "Britain cannot go through another war. We are not fully recovered from the last one, either financially or through the people we lost."
"And that's what we have to make clear to the Wizengamot today. We have to authorize whatever means the MLE needs to take care of this problem quickly, before the Death Eaters start gaining more people than they already have. Do we have any estimates on how many people they do have?" Sirius asked Draco.
"It could be anything from a single skilled Death Eater acting alone to a small band. Right now we're cautiously saying no more than twenty at the most. We would have heard something before now if they were recruiting," Draco said.
Twenty. That was a lot of Death Eaters. And twenty Death Eaters could easily become fifty, or even a hundred.
"Any sign of Rookwood?" Sirius asked.
"No, nothing. The man vanished out of thin air. We're operating under the assumption that he had some sort of permanent facial reconstruction done. Either that or he's a hermit somewhere," Draco answered.
Rachel looked at the very worried faces of her friends and family. "Every attack is a clue about their future intentions. At every attack they leave us more information with which to catch them. We know more now than we did last night. I am confident that the Wizengamot will act in the best interests of the nation. No one has forgotten what the last war looked like. Draco, do you have any ideas about what provisions Amelia will be asking for?"
"I don't know, I only saw her at the briefing," he said.
"I think for now we should urge our faction to follow Amelia's lead. I will speak in favor of what she asks for, assuming it's nothing absolutely ridiculous." Rachel didn't expect that it would be. Right now she'd be first in line to reauthorize the provisions they'd had for hunting Death Eaters during the war.
"We can do that," Sirius said. "We can start dropping by offices and spreading the word, though everyone should know to follow you. I'll start making inquiries about wards as well. Anything else before we head into this meeting?"
Rachel checked her watch. "We have about twenty minutes before we're needed in the chamber. Seek whoever you can before then."
"On it," Malcolm said.
"We'll see you in there," Draco said, following Sirius out the door.
Rachel disappeared into her inner office to change into her Wizengamot robes.
"Rachel?" Monty called after her.
"You can't change my mind, so don't try," she called back, pulling her dark grey robes over her head and then hanging them up before pulling on her more voluminous plum Wizengamot robes. She always felt like such a ponce in these robes.
"I simply wish to speak with you for a moment before you go into the chambers," Monty called.
"In a moment," she said, going into her small bathroom and making sure none of her hair had escaped with the exchanging of robes. Satisfied that she looked decent, robes aside, she went back into her main office. "What?"
"I would like it very much if you would consider the value of your own life. Not just in what you mean to the people around you, but for yourself as well," he said, adjusting his glasses as he peered down at her.
"Why?" she asked, uncertain what to do with that request.
"Because one thing that has not changed over the years that I have known you is your willingness to throw yourself into a cause at the detriment to yourself. Under most circumstances, I simply watch, and encourage you to take better care of yourself. Under circumstances such as these, I can only urge you to think about the consequences of your actions before you go seeking combat with Death Eaters."
"Magical Britain is worth more than any single life. If I can stop this before it has a chance to grow into a war, then it is my duty to do so," she said firmly. "And I think you, just like everyone else, sees me and forgets who I am."
"I know who you are. You are my beloved granddaughter," Monty said steadily.
Rachel felt a twinge of guilt. "I love you too, Monty. I couldn't ask for a better grandfather. But I'm also the most dangerous person in magical Britain."
"There is a difference I think that you miss, between the most dangerous and the most powerful."
She didn't think there was much of a difference at all. The more power a person had, the more dangerous they inherently were. "It's time," she said, glancing at her watch. "Wish me luck."
"I will always wish you well, Rachel," he said. "Even when I believe you are being foolish."
"Well, it's not time for facing Death Eaters just yet, it's only the Wizengamot today," she pointed out.
"Every bit as complicated and recalcitrant as Death Eaters, in their own way," Monty said.
Rachel knew that firsthand. At least with the Death Eaters she could actually stun them when they were bothering her. There was nothing to do about the Wizengamot but let them blather and bicker. "I'll be back in a few hours."
"I will see you then."
She left her office and joined the sporadic traffic of people in Wizengamot robes on their way into the chambers.
"Alright?" Anyssa asked as Rachel approached.
"As alright as anyone can be under the circumstances. You?" Rachel checked.
"Not bad. This is going to be hell," Anyssa said as she looked around.
Rachel followed her gaze, noting the small gathering of Wizengamot members as they discussed matters. "Could be worse, could be the Wizengamot we had in the nineties."
Anyssa huffed in near laughter. "You do have a way with words, considering a fair number of that Wizengamot were murdered and several of them are in prison."
That hadn't entirely been what Rachel had meant, but it was a fair point. "Your wards are alright? Your family is okay?"
"Yes, we're fine. We're prepared. One of my cousins is part of the Curse Breaking and Warding Guild. She's been very busy lately, but she made sure the family was taken care of first."
Rachel was glad to hear that people were taking precautions. When she had a moment, she was going to double check with Hermione that her wards were taken care of.
"Ah, here we go," Anyssa said, moving to her chair as Rufus and Janice entered the room.
Rachel took her own seat and watched as the rest of the Wizengamot took their places.
"I, Chief Warlock Janice Hawthorne, call this emergency session of the Wizengamot to order. This session has been called in the light of the attacks last night. Madam Amelia Bones, I request that you enlighten the rest of the Wizengamot to the full details of the situation," Janice directed as the room fell silent.
Amelia rose. "Thank you for gathering on such short notice. I will begin with a summary of events that took place nine days ago, and then we will proceed to what we currently know of the events last night."
Rachel settled in to listen and began constructing her speech on supporting whatever measures Amelia set forth. Usually she liked Booker to edit her speeches before she gave them, but depending on how swiftly things moved, she wanted to be prepared to speak. It would do, for now.
