It was a strange feeling, having no place in this vast city to call her own.  In the time since she had graduated from school -- two years in the army, the shadowy, nebulous period after, and her time working as a Cursebreaker -- Raizel had grown used to moving from place to place, to never really putting down roots.  But there had usually been somewhere that she considered her space, and even when there wasn't, that sort of nonexistence had never lasted for so long in the same place.

If she was going to stay here, that would have to change soon. She'd already made a note of that.

Akiva had been a gracious host, but even on her most reckless day, Raizel wouldn't have dreamed of bringing the small music box back to her friend's house.  Dybbukim were bad business.  Even if Goleya told her that there were no hints of magic remaining on the small device, she'd heard too many stories of misfortune, of tragic bad luck -- and besides, there was no telling if the British Ministry would be able to keep the dybbuk trapped.  For all she knew, the ignorant wizards there would manage to accidentally unleash it once more, and then it would be all too easy for the smoky creature to come looking for the container that had surely been both shelter and prison.

That had been what had brought her here to this miserable place.  Normally, her desk in the lower offices at Gringotts felt as much a prison as the music box must have been; the sides pressed in on her, the hours seemed endless, and when she finally fled, she did so with all the fervor of a long-kept inmate finally making good on her escape.  But now, the office felt like the only nook that was even slightly hers in this whole city: the only place she could come without risking a friend if she wanted to study the ill-gained music box in peace.

Most of the office had emptied out by the time that Auror Dean Bailey finally let her go home.  It was past the end of the working day now.  Although it wasn't unusual for other employees to stay late, the lower levels of Gringotts quieted considerably once five o'clock hit, giving her something akin to the privacy that she craved.  Strange artifacts, too, were hardly unknown here; even if someone did happen by to see what she was doing, a Cursebreaker examining an artifact wouldn't look at all out of the ordinary. 

Raizel had cleared her desk of all other papers.  They'd been shoved unceremoniously aside, dumped into unorganized piles that she'd surely regret in the morning, but the flurry had left the space clear for her examination to begin unhindered. She rested her chin on her arms, hunched over her desk, the music box before her at eye level.

There were so many questions that she wanted to ask.  The first certainly had to do with the numbers that had been engraved on the bottom:  27-1-44.  What did they mean?  Could it be a date: the 27th of January, 1944?  And if it was, what was the meaning of the flower-like symbol that had also been carved into the wood?

There was one way to start finding out.

She had already cast Goleya -- the outside of the box revealed no further magic than it had earlier.  Now, Raizel raised her wand a second time, leveling it at the music box so that the tip nearly touched it.  "Akheta[1]," she murmured, letting the Aramaic spell roll off her tongue.

Within seconds, the music box began to glow.  White, and then pink, red, and orange.  It brightened into yellow, and then sharpened into a brilliant lime green.  And then, as she might have predicted, it kept going -- deepening into a brilliant forest color, with the faintest hints of the turquoise that would imply it was approaching a full century.

Raizel examined it thoughtfully, soaking in the nuances of the color.  Comparing the shade to a chart would surely give her a more accurate answer, but in this case, the estimate seemed like enough.  Seventy, maybe eighty years old.  That meant that it had been made in the 1930s or 1940s.

Jerking her wand, she cancelled the spell.  There was one other thing that seemed obvious to examine.

The music box had fallen open so easily earlier, but looking at it now, she could see that the lid fitted firmly in place.  She hesitated for a moment, and then braced her fingers against the wood to pull it open.  It took a second before the lid gave; when it finally did, it popped open with a faint sigh nearly missed as the tinny, intimate music from earlier began to play.

She set it down on the desk, keeping her wand in hand as she examined the newly exposed interior.  There was a motor inside, but no hint of a key or something to wind it; it glowed with the faint hint of a long-cast spell.  The slender metal cylinder inside turned steadily and irrepressibly on.  Each time a raised marking passed under the silver comb that ran across the center of the box, it played a note, which linked together into the hauntingly familiar melody that she'd heard in mere jumble for only a few seconds earlier.

The music played on.  Raizel closed her eyes as she listened, sparing a moment from her examination.  She couldn't say that she knew it, but it had the same nostalgic feel as an old folk tune, at once both eerie and persistent.  Still, there were odd, discordant notes mixed in with the melody, as if the wheel slipped every so often and played something off-key that didn't quite fit with the somber tune.  Perhaps it was getting too old.  Or perhaps whoever had made it hadn't been quite as skilled at casting the motor as they had at making the box and casting the turning charm upon it.

Biting her lip, the Cursebreaker opened her eyes and continued her inspection.  The inside of the box had been lined with lead, which explained both how it had once contained the dybbuk and why she hadn't seen any hint of the spell on the motor from the outside.  The lid indeed sealed tightly, even after all these years.  Some minor experiments convinced her that its falling open earlier could have been no accident; whoever had handed the music box to the old man must have done so with the lid barely ajar.

And the motor was not the only thing inside.  She found a small bunch of blonde hair, bound tightly together with a red cord; a dried rosebud, which nearly crumbled against her fingers when she touched it; three shriveled pits that looked as if they'd come from shrunken olives; and a tiny metal mezuzah, delicately made, marked with the letter Shin on the outside.  When she cast Akheta on them, they all glowed the same forest green -- the mezuzah perhaps a little older, the other objects a little younger, but all certainly near in age to the music box.

With a sigh, Raizel leaned back in her chair, her eyes half-closing as she examined the array of objects before her.  The music box, made more than half a century before, with its lead-lined interior and its strange, dissonant folk tune, had surely been intended to act as a prison for the dybbuk that had been trapped inside it -- but why?  And why free the dybbuk now?  She fingered the small bundle of hair, wishing intently that she had managed to steal away more than just the wooden device.  Perhaps there were answers in those pictures that the barmaid had found, or a way to conjure the solution to this mystery from the dybbuk itself.

But there was no way of getting her hands on any of that now.  The photographs, the dybbuk, and indeed everything else related to the old wizard's death was firmly in the hands of the Ministry.  The Cursebreaker rubbed her hands tiredly over her face, and then slowly began to repack the objects back inside the music box.

When she finally shut the lid, the last run of notes hung dissonant in the air, as if the tune had been left unfinished.  And she would have nearly sworn that she could smell the sweet, sickly scent of dying roses, although surely it was nothing more than a trick of the senses.

1.	Akheta spell on the wiki