1000 hours. Office of the Head of Department of Mysteries.


Yavin turned away from the Victorian windows behind his desk as he heard the door open. Three people stepped into the room - firstly Ophelia, then Savvina. A guard brought up the rear as the door closed behind him.

When one of level two's attorneys turned in a request for the recovery of a prisoner's memories, he had been uncertain what to expect. Yavin had been ready to pass it one to somebody else in the Brain Room but reading Savvina's case file had interested him.

After all, he loved a good mystery. And here was one ready to be picked at, unravelled. Brought out of shadow. It was more workable than some other mysteries on this floor, such as the ever-confounding Sphere.

"Thank, ah, thank you," he nodded at the two escorts. "That will be, um, that will be all. We're quite alright by ourselves, aren't we Ms. Katopodis?" Yavin gestured her over to one of the four empty chairs in front of the desk. A fifth was occupied by a skeleton in a bright yellow dress, who swivelled its head about to grin at Savvina.

He walked around to the other side, ignoring his working chair. "You'll, hm, forgive me for arranging to do this here. I believe that, hah, that a different environment can help with the, that is, with the process."

Savvina had been told about Yavin Morgenthau but one really couldn't prepare for him, nor something called the Department of Mysteries. He sounded like some sphinx and this place something from stories. Now that she was here, she found out the characterization had fallen short in many respects. He was tall, dark of hair and eyes, and dressed strangely. He stammered in an American accent, hands moving too much. He wore no silver, no accoutrement of authority. He seemed like an eccentric academic.

The Greek werewolf, the long-traveled, underground and bound these last six months, was dressed in the simple grey shirt and trousers, and easy flat shoes. There was a numbered patch on her chest. Over it all she wore a loose cardigan. There was no need for shackles - there never had been, but now the government agreed. She was looking more hale than she had in several months. Her stomach was icy with nerves, but there was something warm in her chest.

Savvina's escorts left them and she took a deep breath. The skeleton, she was not afraid to admit, made her think twice. She wondered what its purpose could possibly be, and whether it had ever been a person. After a moment and a confident pause to turn in place to see the entire space, she moved towards the chairs.

"No argument from me," she said and had a seat furthest from the skeleton. "It is welcome to see more of this place than Level Two and Four."

She'd picked up the lingo in her six months - the numbered floors inside-shorthand to replace the lengthy official names of each headquarters. Mysteries didn't need the abbreviation, but nonetheless, it was Nine.

"You are the mnemosage , the Legelimancer? They tell me you can recover memories. Is that true?"

People told her a lot of things that managed to change their own minds from day to day here. She found it best to confirm.

He took a seat next to the skeleton, keeping an empty chair between himself and the werewolf. Yavin crossed his legs and leaned forward slightly, hands on knee. His eyes settled pensively on Savvina as he allowed himself a moment to appraise her appearance. Nobody took well to imprisonment but she seemed resilient.

Not quite the resilience he was used to seeing but something softer, maybe.

"I can recover memories, with work and, hm, and time." Yavin sighed slightly and the skeleton mimicked his mannerisms behind him, "However. All minds are different. It isn't, uh, it isn't ever easy and sometimes it is... inadvisable. Sometimes our minds, they, ah, they make us forget to protect us. And it is, daunting to, that is, to work against the nature of the mind.

He spoke in a low, casual voice the whole time. Then he smiled at Savvina. "Why don't you, ah, tell me what you want to remember. What you imagine you are, uh, are recovering?"

Yavin preferred this to reading her file. There were things you could only sense about a person when you see them before you, intangible notions that didn't require legilimency to detect. Simply imagination and sympathy.

"That is a paradoxical question, no?" Savvina said with a smile in her eye. Certainly she expected to be asked something like this and by now she was very practiced in her story so it was no problem to tell it again.

"Remembering what you cannot remember? But I understand."

Savvina had lately become sensitive to the word 'forget'. That word had no actor that made it so, which made its use in her saga a euphemism. Savvina had forgotten nothing. A thief had come, she was now sure.

"It is like this: I want to know who I saw in the park. I want to remember the thing right after what I last thing I remember."  There now, Savvina became just a little animated, her voice a little more staccato. She touched her finger to her thumb.

"I know from here," she showed with her hand a wall. "To here." Her other hand a shoulder's width away. "I need to know the between."

Savvina thought that maybe Mr. Morgenthau might appreciate a narrative. "One day, I was walking in the park in London with my dog like we did almost every day. That is the last thing I remember. The next thing I remember is waking up here, captured by werewolf hunters telling me I had killed someone. But there is something. I almost have it."

Being here with a mind-reader, maybe he could understand what it was like to chase a thread, Savvina leaned forward, too.

"I remember who I met in the park but she denies it. I had not seen her in ages and then she turns up and we make plans. It's notable, you know? In a city this big, people don't just turn up every day. That has to be something, right?"

She looked at Yavin right in the eyes.

Under different circumstances, he thought, Savvina might seem almost playful in her wording - a characteristic he often associated with intelligence. He saw it in Lawrence too, and wondered if it was part of how these two imprisoned wixes kept their spirits buoyed.

Yavin unfolded his legs and leaned back in the chair as he listened. His gaze flicked to the floor, then back to her gestures at intervals. What she explained, the clarity with which she explained it, did not indicate the loss of a memory through trauma. There was no haziness or confusion in Savvina's mind if what she said was true.

Simply something... missing. How clumsy, if someone did enter and steal. Clumsy of them not to replace it.

"Yes," he met her gaze through his gleaming spectacles. "Yes, ah, you may be on to something. You think somebody has taken a memory from you. And that this, hm, this long lost acquaintance, she is, as they say, in on it?" his eyebrows rose pointedly.

It was easy to see why Savvina needed someone in the Ministry to help her, rather than from St.Mungo's. Healers were sworn to confidentiality but this was sensitive information to an ongoing case. If someone was removing memories, they might do it again.

"If so," Yavin continued in a matter-of-fact voice, "Then we should get, uh, get down to it. I think for today we can aim to, aim to ascertain if the memory has indeed been, that is, been taken. Confirmation of a void, an absence."

He held his hands out in a questioning manner. "What do you think?"

Savvina broke off her eye contact, and thought of Raizel and when she'd visited - or been pushed to.[1] The chat had been painfully short, Raizel obstinate and even offended at Savvina's accusation. They'd smiled before she'd left and Raizel had mended things further, when she'd remembered her for Pesach.[2] To think she was 'in on it', no. That didn't seem right.

"Yes, that's fine," she said with just a little distance in her voice. "But I don't think Raizel would hurt me. It's been a long time, but we are friends. I don't know why I remember seeing her but she doesn't. Maybe knowing will be one more step."

Like the pebble that starts a landslide.

"How do we do this?" Savvina asked then now that she'd had her say. "There are weeks missing, you know, and I want to help. Or, at least, not stand in your way."

Savvina rediscovered her nerves but quieted them. She knew little of Legelimency, at least the Western style. Everyone had secrets - private things - that they didn't want strangers to know.

1.	17 Jan 2012 - Yiyeh B'seder
2.	6 Apr 2012 - Pesach Semeach

Inwardly, he didn't rule out Savvina's friend as a potential cause - but of course Yavin had been around long enough to know that impersonation was a popular tool. There could be many explanations. Perhaps her mind wasn't the only one meddled with by their mystery instigators.

            "How do we do this?"

"Suspend expectation," he replied as he looked over his shoulder and made a flicking motion with his hand, causing the skeleton to rise. "Drink? Water, juice, a calming, ah, a calming tonic maybe? And make yourself comfortable, other, hm, other kinds of chairs can be made available if you desire it."

The skeleton clattered off to the far side of the large office, to fix a drink at the lab table against the wall. "Your state of mind should be, um, somewhat sedate. Don't try to force a memory. It will come. It might not be what you, hah, what you want or suspect but if you are surprised that's alright. Allow the surprise to come and go."

Pliable, believing subjects were the easiest to work with. They were also the easiest to take advantage of. The vulnerability of it made him disinclined to push for trust - he only requested, once.

"When you're ready, ah, it's best if you close your eyes and try to picture the last thing you remember..." Yavin paused; it had been some time since he did this with a person he had just met. "I'll be there the entire time. You will be able to communicate with, ah, with me."

Savvina was not one to rush. She'd learned in her many stays in custody that you never kept your custodians waiting, but Mr. Mystery was more to her like a Healer. She didn't mistake this moment as irrelevant to her incarceration, oh no, but with the offer to situate herself, Savvina considered it carefully.

With a side-eye to the skeleton valet, if that's what it was, she requested a decaffeinated tea. And from Yavin Morgenthau she asked of him a rug. At the prompting of what kind of rug, she chose something with a high pile. These things were provided as promised. Savvina stood, removed her shoes and padded across the cold floor to her little rug, where she got situated. She was almost savoring it. She sat with her legs loosely crossed and moved her hips so she could make her spine comfortable.

She took a deep breath, considering once again the strange office. She marked again the location of the door and the other strange objects Yavin decorated with. The lanky man, she did not mind him.

"Expectations have been suspended. I am ready." Having said this, she closed her eyes and looked for Skżlos, her lost tawny colored dog with the sooty nose and ears. She found him by that bench in Regents Park on that cold day and the thought made her heart ache. She knelt in front of him and scratched him around his thick neck fur. She focused on the memory of his texture and smell.[1]

It was hard to separate this day from other days because she and he had done it often, regularly.

"I see Raizel," she said. She did not realize her mind had superimposed her old friend over another. This change of memory was not deliberate. In her mind's eye, Savvina saw her clearly with her blonde hair and jacket. "We are happy to see each other. We are speaking Hebrew."

Savvina tried not to follow a tug in her viscera that wanted to lead her towards confusion and shame for knowing so little.

1.	7 Dec 2011 - In this place, in this part of the world

He was pleased that Savvina had specific requests - it meant she was comfortable asking for what she needed in order to facilitate the process. When everything was at last in place, the thick rug and their respective drinks, Yavin procured a cushion off his armchair and sat on the floor a little across from the witch.

Some might call him pedantic but he didn't like to situate himself in a higher or lower point; better to be at the same level. Even if it did look peculiar in the large, white office with its chairs and stools.

            "I am ready."

He closed his eyes and then opened the inner eye into that of Savvina's memory. It was winter. Regents Park was familiar to him, but as with any mind it looked different through this person's experience. Yavin watched and listened.

"Yes," Yavin replied to the werewolf's statement. "I understand it."

Though he was no longer of the religious persuasion, he had grown up speaking Hebrew to his Austrian grandmother. There was a tinge of nostalgia there but he ignored it, focusing on the Raizel woman with interest. Her texture... hm. He listened to the Hebrew again, trying to detect that same Other texture in its words.

Yavin gently froze the image playing out, mid-conversation. "Hold on," he told Savvina as he manifested himself in the park.

In here he looked much as he did in the corporeal world, though he lacked his conversational ticks. The wizard approached the bench in a saunter, scratching his chin.

"This isn't your friend," he reached out to touch Raizel's forehead, which rippled like watter. "No. This doesn't belong, whatever this is..." Yavin frowned and the ripples extended all through the false image as if she were cut out of their three-dimensional reality.

Not wanting to alarm Savvina, he continued in a casual voice: "I can remove it. I don't know the face behind it, if there is one," he did not discount a worker of mind magic efficient enough to cut themselves out of memory entirely, "but someone has placed the memory of your friend over the truth."

When Yavin entered Savvina's memory, his practiced and powerful magic drew Savvina in and her mind forgot her body. She was no longer remembering Regent's Park; the Legilimency allowed her to be in Regents Park. It felt like stepping into a painting, her subconscious free to fill in details the active memory did not take the time to recall.

When she turned her head to look, her mind tried to construct details she hadn't actually absorbed, papering them together from fragments that looked almost right. The image Skżlos sometimes blurred and stuttered, the exact course of his movements untracked, but best-guessed. It was easier to take in when time froze. After a moment of initial adjustment, Savvina attended to Yavin. He seemed different as well, but she couldn't put her finger on it.

"No, she was there. I remember," Savvina insisted. "This is Raizel. Who else could it be?"

Who else could have spoken to her in Hebrew? Who else would she have been surprised to see in London? Who else would have pulled her into her past with warmth and - caution...? Savvina let herself notice it. With the memory so engulfing and Yavin's skepticism, Savvina remembered - something about seeing Raizel was off. She checked on Skżlos who was frozen mid-step.

He waited for her to consider it, not wanting to remove the illusion so suddenly. "As I said, suspend expectation."

Satisfied by the time elapsed, Yavin make another gesture that caused Raizel's rippling image to suddenly dissolve - a sheet of water falling to the ground and dissipating into swirling mist. Behind it was revealed the face of a wizard with dark hair and eyes. It was not one he recognised, though of course he hardly expected that.

"Hm!" Yavin made an intrigued sound. "Now, who do we have here?" he glanced back at Savvina, eyebrows softly raised.

So this memory was salvageable. It had not been cut out the way he or another master Legilimens might be able to, simply displaced in the fashion of an Obliviation. Yavin could feel around him the underlying threads of Savvina's memory, knotted and twisted to other corners of her mind, all running back to this once-obscured figure.

The threads could be untangled and untwisted, the memory could be rebuilt and played like a merry-go-round. Slowly, carefully. "I take it you know this man."

Yavin dismissed Raizel's image so easily. This face that Savvina had worked so hard to place, he could just wave away. Raizel was supposed to be the answer and Savvina had to admit now that she'd placed so much hope on her.

The revelation of the wizard who'd been hiding beneath was then that much more unacceptable. Yavin was curious, but Savvina was not ready. She backed away, backed away, backed away until she was stepping off of the thick rug and towards the heavy door of Yavin's boutique office. She put her back against it, but made no move to open it.

"I didn't want it to be this," she muttered sadly. "I thought we would find something else."

Now that she and Yavin had been in the memory under his mind-reading magic, the memory was clearer and fresher. All trace of Raizel was gone from it. Now it just ended bluntly, like a memory shouldn't.