She'd repeat the movement, even though she was no longer there and nothing would ever be the same again. Immersed in the darkness of a gloomy room, she would close her eyelids and recapture the feeling.
Locked in a bottomless pit, swallowed up by the lack of light, the better to melt into it. Devoid of stars, devoid of hope. No candle to pierce the blackness and illuminate it, just a little, to be able to find meaning and shape again. The entrechat of a moving silhouette, perhaps. A hand stretched out towards hers, coming to brush against her just before withdrawing it, with a swift step. The first chords, a humming breath.
The first arpeggios of the symphonic trance of chalk on her blackboard.
Her eyes reopened, wiping away the blurred ink of memories. The harsh neon light caught a tear clinging to her eyelid when she lit it up. Her quill looked hopelessly dead at the end of her hand, unable to inscribe the first row of symbols in the theorem. Not even a silent letter would have made the instrument leak. There were only her and the silence, between those four walls deep underground. Throwing the notebooks on the desk, she turned to the blackboard and with great strokes crossed out all the formulas. Her bare hands clutched her hair. She couldn't do it.
Not in such a short time. Not without her.
She was sure they knew it.
***
She tried to define its outlines. Blurred and shifting, they always eluded her approach. Her hands and eyes weren't enough. There had to be laws, though. Astronomy had them. So did Arithmancy.
She knew it, one day she'd lay her hand on a book, and that book would be titled “The Geometry of Darkness.”
She never thought she'd help her with the writing. Filling those blank pages with calculations and arguments about the shapes of darkness, the dilation of dark spectral spaces, the effect of light refraction on the spectral plane. Dark fractals. The density of obscurity.
She'd helped her draw them, as clear as if they'd been delineated with chalk. Just as she'd taken her face in her hands that evening and gently probed, trying to feel what kind of material lay beneath her fingertips. Friendly, surprised, contemptuous, hostile?
Despite blindness, her intuitive approach to the world had impressed her from the start. She could never conceive how one could be blind from birth and possess such fighting ability.
These days, they'd get in touch before every mission. Fear clutched at her stomach in her place, because every moment could be her last. Aurora couldn't believe Emmeline's serenity about the threat draped in capes and masks, the one that tinged the skies with a deadly intent and terrorized so many.
So whenever the silver ring on her finger grew hot, warning her of danger, she'd stop her marking in the empty classroom, cease her investigations and her gaze would rise towards the galactic map, switching between planets and constellations.
There were so many to watch over for Professor Dumbledore. (81) Terpsichore was one of hers.
***
The moment of discovery had been extraordinary. Emmeline danced in the dark, between the invisible lines she drew, humming the tune of the sonata played by the phonograph. Aurora had introduced her to Chopin. In return, Emmeline had opened her to the beauty of dancing. The precision and grace of a gesture going to its completion. The elegance of an outstretched arm or leg, of a pointed foot, of a posture filling the space, redefining the lines around it.
No wonder why she was so good at fighting. The energy of each movement was millimetric, and if Septima had been there, she could have given it a number, a power, a mass and an equilibrium. Choreography, on the other hand, suffered no missteps, and any improvisation left room for renewal when you were as capable as she was.
It was while she watched her swaying between the living room furniture that she had understood. Image didn't need sight to build itself. Emmeline oscillated, splitting the air, creating her own space. It was she who drew the lines and curves, who bent the straight lines and figures to her will. The air rearranged itself around her with each movement, meticulously measured from the surface of her skin, so sensitive to temperature and wind currents.
Emmeline always wore a shawl. She had assumed it was because she was chilly - which was absurdly true - and she would drop it as soon as her body yielded to the call of the dance. It was possible that the same thing would happen in combat.
It was her sensing that shaped the geometry of the world. She didn't care about the perimeters of abstract figures, the sine and cosine of triangular shapes or the peculiarities of a concentric circle, because she could feel the shapes, touch them under her fingers, imagine them when they didn't exist. With her fingertips or the flat of her hand, she could taste the darkness, make contact with this senseless, blind, bare world.
There had to be equivalence formulas that could help her solve the intangible equations that now loomed in her mind.
***
It happened in the dark. A night when she had thought herself serene, after Emmeline had left on a mission, leaving her with the memory of a kiss on her cheek, an ethereal embrace against her before leaving her side of the bed empty.
The emptiness compressed her. So, she got back to work. Neither bothering to turn on the bedside lamp or take her wand out of the drawer, nor dragging herself to her desk, finding the familiar pages to blacken, Aurora wrestled with a mental blackboard, amongst the starry ceiling.
They took her by surprise. When they seized her, wrapped in the tangled sheets of her own bed, she could still distinguish Canis Major and Libra. Switching to the Solar System view, she looked up to Mars but couldn't find (81) Terpsichore before going along where her captors would take her. Violence was unnecessary. Best to comply, even with the sheer terror of the situation.
Aurora was taken to her living room, where the roar of green fire splashed the walls. Pushed to an unknown destination, she prepared herself for what would come.
Pushed by hands on her shoulders, she walked. Stopped when their grip told her to. She tried to have a look at her captors - they didn't seem the type of those who made the front page everyday. As she was scooped into an elevator, going downstairs, the suspicion of some secret organization grew on her. But why her?
A new series of hallways, dimly lit by blue torches reflecting on black tiles. She felt going in the entrails of a giant black snake. A black door. A round room with a dozen doors. One of them, at the back. She entered to what looked dangerously close to an interrogation room. Locked there alone, wrapped in pyjamas and plaid, waiting for answers to questions that could only be asked in silence, she waited. And waited.
***
"...You didn't fall asleep. I must say I'm impressed."
She looked up to a tall hooded figure with a masculine voice. And an embroidered badge that she was certain having seen somewhere.
"...What time is it?"
A chuckle.
"You have gotten here by unconventional methods and this is the first question you want to ask? That's okay. I'm going to tell you, because you seem to have steady nerves. It is 6:30 in the morning. Do you know where you are?"
"I have no idea."
"That’s what I figured. Look closely. Well, while you seek it out, let's set the bases so we can work together in good intelligence."
He sat on the chair in front of her.
His badge. The infamous, legendary, and right now sinister - Departement of Mysteries.
"…From now on, your fate is on hold. Laws that rule the British Wizarding World won't apply to you anymore, and that until the end of your stay with us. I question, you answer. You're allowed to ask only for basic needs, or if any of the agents authorize you to ; this right can be denied at any moment under uncooperative circumstances. Do you understand?"
She was doing her best to retain a maximum of informations. Tilting her head to the side, she agreed. Did she ever had a choice?
"Now, I'll make some introductory statements, you're going to say if they’re true or false. Shouldn't cause you trouble," he said with an affable tone. "Your name is Aurora Sinistra. You teach astronomy at Hogwarts."
"Right."
"You’re a member of the B3A, the British Astronomy and Arithmancy Academy."
"Right."
The tone of the interrogation gradually shifted.
"You thought about geometry of complex shapes when you discovered it at eight. It made you question the nature of reality. Then, you saw the influence of light gradience. Not only on our perception, but on distance and time."
"How do y… That's correct."
"You wouldn't have been an astronomer without a career in Arithmancy."
"To me they go together, like sisters."
"How do you explain you did not qualify for any diploma in this sister field, then?"
"...I failed."
"Why is it you failed?"
She sighed, clearly uneasy to remember. Before Emmeline there had been a period of void.
"There was a colleague who was harassing me. My grades gradually dropped in my post-NEWTS studies."
"You did not report it?"
"No one would have backed a woman whose minor was Astronomy at the time. I wouldn't be heard, lest believed. I did not want to risk my studies."
"And so you lost your chance. Tragic. Tell me, with whom do you get along well the most at Hogwarts?"
"Professor Vector, mostly. Professor Snape, a little. We arrived at around the same time."
"Sympathy, then."
"One could say that. The beginning is hard. Teaching is incredibly demanding and unforgiving. We don't particularly like it, it seems."
"But you willingly applied to be a teacher, didn't you?"
"That's right. I needed a temporary job to launch myself into new studies and research."
"It stretched more than you would have liked and now you're stuck. Hence your book."
The black cover was unmistakable.
"You think about darkness as a matter. You think it has a weight, a mass, a density and a geometry. That's what you’re trying to prove, through theorems and equations."
"Yes."
"What a valuable asset you would've been. It's a shame, really. I'm done here. Bring her a meal and some amenities," he asked out loud, and that was when she found out they were recorded.
***
"You have a companion."
She didn't understand, nor like where this was going. Was she about to be chastized?
"True."
"Her name is Emmeline Vance. She is part of the Ministry's Auror program and part of Dumbledore’s army."
"Yes. Is she all right?.."
Not bothering to answer, another statement came out.
"You're close to Dumbledore. He sends you letters asking to look at certain stars."
"Certainly. I’m not part of the fight. I'm only a witness. A researcher."
"Knowledge is always wise. Speaking of knowledge, you have great use of this, to know if you or your lover's in danger, am I wrong?"
He held her ring! It had disappeared from her hand without her knowing about it.
"We took the liberty of taking it away from the time being. We wouldn't want your mate to worry unnecessarily about your situation, would we?..."
"Didn't I answer all of your enquiries?..."
"You’ll need to be more responsive from now on. We'll offer you the setting to continue your investigations ; you report your progress in the geometry of the darkness. Your work is of great value, not only to us, and it is, I can assure you, of your best interest to work with us. Your partner will know you're in safe hands, as she lays in the Ministry's."