"You might not ever find out," Waverly said. She didn't want to believe Virgil was right about how the Muse visions were sourced, but Raine seemed convinced.

"If done properly, you leave something convincing in place of what's been taken," she said, unable to help herself, unaware of the irony that just such a thing had been done to her at her bidding. "You wouldn't know something's wrong unless you were staring directly at it."

There was something poetic about that. She tended to the gillyweed joint in the cup, dabbing it out, finished with it for the moment.

"Or else you'd hear about it. Like, no one's been saying St. Mungo's is overrun with amnesiacs." She stretched out on the couch, transitioning to a gently grinning liquid detective.

"So either they're not memories at all, well-stolen memories, memories freely donated, or ... memories of the dead."

That gave her a chill. Grave robbers cracking open skulls for anything good that hadn't rotted away yet.

There was a bit of auror in Waverly after all - though she wasn't sure if the other witch would take the compliment.

Raine knew some Occlumency from her studies with Professor Storm but her knowledge of mind magic wasn't otherwise that deep; it came down to her trusting Nine. Except it was difficult to trust Nine... and Auror Gamp probably had reservations, considering her father had been party to the whole kidnapping business.

"That's a good point about St.Mungo's," she frowned slightly, because that was tugging at something at the back of her head. "I don't know if you can take dead people memories. What if they're muggle memories? That's a bigger pool of people."

Lots of possibilities, come to think of it.

"I'm sure we'll figure it out," Raine shrugged and gave up on the tug. "If they are memories, real memories, there's got to be a way to tell. We'll probably get a brain off Mysteries or St.Mungo's to have a look."

Waverly didn't know if you could get memories out of dead people either. She had a mind to point Raine directly at Virgil Carstairs, but it would do her once-Gryffindor friend a disservice to suggest the obvious. It made sense, in fact, that Raine had already been round to the little prince on Level Nine.

Knowing that Raine could very well mean a literal brain, Waverly's scalp itched. She adjusted herself on the pillow.

"Muggle memories, though, oof," she said with a sympathetic grimace. Any trespass done across that impassible mago/mundane barrier was immediately an international-grade tire fire. It could get existential.

"Good luck with that."

Then she thought out loud, the gillyweed speaking first. "They say you can't read in a dream. Maybe that's how you tell. Maybe it's the same."

It was all very interesting, which was more than Raine could say of the paperwork and errands she'd been doing as part of the usual gauntlet of trainee challenges. Raine appreciated Wav's sympathy - where drugs and mind magic were involved, the path was bound to be messy. Violent, too, she was willing to bet.

"Could be," she bit her bottom lip, thinking. "Real memories have to be special somehow, we need them to form patroni and whatnot."

There was a terrible thought. Not being able to cast a patronus because someone took the only memories capable of inspiring one...

Raine sighed and got up from the arm of the sofa, where she'd been perched. "I'd better be on my way," she nodded at Waverly. "If you think of anything else, owl me. Or drop by Hiraeth, I'm usually home in the evenings."

After a day of Two or footwork, she liked nothing better than to curl up at home and chat to Abby about whatever was going down the Ministry grapevine. Nevermind a social life during the weekday.

"Thanks for the smoke," Raine smiled dryly: "and the other things."

Waverly smiled serenely.

"Yeah, babe, anything you need, cause ... I'm a snitch indeed." She gave a little snort. Gillyweed and adrenaline. The former was welcome, the latter was dangerous. She got herself up to lead the way to the door.

"We should hang out," she said, opened the door and leaned against it the edge of it. "When you're not busting drug rings."

Fin