We wake up empty and scared.
Don't open the door of your study
And begin reading.
Cybele was up late in the Ravenclaw common room making translations from Ancient Persian for Snape when a sharp tap at the window made her look up.
A fierce eagle owl was standing outside, looking right at her.
The icy February wind made her shiver as she opened the window. She noticed frost on the window’s edge “ it was definitely time to go to bed.
She went back near the chimney and enjoyed the warmth before reading the parchment.
Love,
Draco
It was the tiniest piece of parchment, written in a cramped handwriting, as if Draco had found it more bearable to write it smaller, Cybele thought ironically.
It meant a lot for Draco to apologize like that, on parchment moreover, she reflected. Does it mean a lot to me too, now? she asked herself. She didn’t know anymore.
She stayed a while, staring at the fire, rolling the parchment absent-mindedly in her fingers, before she checked herself. She had better get some sleep; it was very late. She looked at the books and parchments on the table and at the tiny roll in her hands, not knowing what to do with it.
Then she spotted her brass watch. She decided it would open, like a locket. And so it did obediently. She folded the tiny parchment inside, let it close and by the next day, she had forgotten all about it.
Meetings with Professor Snape had mainly consisted of the pure documentation of facts since Cybele had awakened.
When Cybele had brought him her translations from the night she had received Draco’s letter in late February, Snape had suggested they could use more Muggle resources than what Caroline had found in London.
‘The Muggle documentation matches and completes the wizarding one, once one gets used to their specific terminology. We should seek to extend our reading in this field as much as in the wizarding world,’ Professor Snape had declared after reading her translations.
Professor Snape had traveled a great deal all over the wizarding world for Cybele and came back with copies of ancient books and parchment, some of which had never been translated into English before. He had trusted Cybele to translating them, with her gift of understanding all languages.
‘I cannot think of any other wizarding private or public collection left I could explore,’ he admitted. ‘Would you like to help me and seek more Muggle documents?’
‘Of course,’ Cybele answered, wondering why the Potions Master wanted her to travel with him this time round. She had never been invited to follow him to any wizarding libraries. She merely looked at him interrogatively.
‘I had advisors and guides into the wizarding collections,’ Snape explained, ‘who I was careful not to render suspicious. It would have been risky to go around asking about the origins of magi with you on my trail.’
That seemed quite obvious to Cybele. ‘But this time?’ she prompted.
‘This time, I will have no guides. Your absolute knowledge of the Muggle world and your language abilities will be crucial. As you may guess, Cybele, we are not going to take registration cards into all the major Muggle libraries of the world,’ he explained.
Cybele held his gaze, her interest picked. ‘So?’ she asked simply.
‘I suggest we start taking some night strolls in the Muggle world,’ he answered, ‘and you will be the one planning our destinations. We need to visit the major documentation centers in History and oriental studies.’
Cybele smiled.
That’s how she found herself, a cold night of March, Apparating her favourite professor into the Sorbonne University. She guided him through the huge library and peered into ancient Latin and Greek texts quickly to assess whether they wanted to copy it and bring back.
Only on this first trip, they brought back a quantity of fascinating documents, especially countless ones about a Magus Muggle named Zoroaster, whom orientalists considered to be the inventor of magic.
After that, they took a stroll every week, steadily the all spring long, visiting, after the other major European libraries, the United States, Middle-East, North Africa and India. It was weird, reflected Cybele, how even a library in the middle of the night simply could feel foreign, each one carrying a bit of their country’s special atmosphere.
The American libraries were air-conditioned and spotlessly clean with their stainless steel shelves and security cameras Cybele had to bug when they appeared. The forbidding European libraries had readers confined to ugly modern tables and shelves, yet surrounded by century old shelves that only the staff could approach and leather bound books which one needed a special authorization to consult. Vatican library, a preserved museum where chairs, tables, books, shelves had all traveled centuries unchanged in this sanctuary where a dull old grey computer had made its nest behind a majestic counter. Oriental libraries, where the overwhelming richness of the scrolls, parchments and books contrasted with the poor plastic tables and chairs sometimes offered to the nocturnal visitors.
Cybele was waiting for Snape to complete some copying charms on a selection of books in Latin one night at the London Public Library when she found it.
On an isolated desk behind the last row of shelves, she noticed a book had been left out. She went eagerly to it, as she had noticed a missing volume in the part of the esoteric section that spoke of magic.
It was this volume indeed, she realized, as she took in a title that would not have looked foreign in Hogwarts’ library: Famous Wizards and Witches.
She sat at the small table and turned the pages, curious to see which wizards were known to Muggles. Not any modern ones, she reflected seeing that the text was in very old German. Merlin was in, lots of Arabic wizards; Nicolas Flamel was in the “modern” section, as the book was so old. As she flipped back the pages from Flamel, a name caught her eyes. Ravenclaw. Not Rowena, though, another name. Strange.
In the mean time Snape was almost done so she closed back the volume and brought it to him to copy. He pointed his wand at it and stopped.
‘Two documents,’ he mumbled. The spell wouldn’t work on more than a document at a time and Professor Snape often had to look for scraps from notebooks left by students inside the books before he could copy it properly. So he aimed a different spell at the old volume first and a tiny old-looking piece of parchment escaped from the book to roll at Cybele’s feet.
Picking up the minute scrap of paper, Cybele gave it a quick look soon followed by a double take. The tiny scroll had an image on it. It looked something between a black and white drawing and a photocopy, like an imprint of an object on the paper, which outlined would have been penciled.
As she looked closer, she thought the imprinted object could have been a broach, or maybe the front of a tiara “ she was not sure. The thing that had her gap at the imprinted objected was not its nature anyways but the text it bore in a curvy regular handwritten style “ Arta Magush Afarida.
‘Bring us back,’ came the cool voice of Professor Snape as she felt his hand on her shoulder. She had been quite oblivious of him and he had crept silently behind her to read over her shoulders. He looked serious.
He withdrew his hand at soon as they found themselves in the Potions classroom.
‘Sir,’ Cybele started, handling the small scroll to Snape.
Professor Snape simply took it and made for his office wordlessly in a quick pace. Cybele decided to follow and found him seating at his desk with a large volume of Hogwarts, A History opened in front of him.
Imitating her Professor, Cybele silently walked behind the desk to look at the page too. Professor Snape was now comparing the imprint with a moving painting of Rowena Ravenclaw. Cybele could see now that the imprinted object must have been a tiara “ very similar indeed with the founder’s one, but the painter would not have been able to see the small text on it if it was there.
As Professor Snape was still frowning at the pictures, Cybele took a seat at the side of the table, knowing better than to force any comment out of the forbidding teacher.
She observed the frown relax slightly as Snape took his wand out.
‘Digitorum imposo!’ he chanted in a trying voice, pointing first at the scroll and then at the book. It seemed to work. A floating image of the founder’s tiara came up the book and a similar floating image of the ancient scroll’s imprint joined it mid air. The imprint seemed to adjust itself in its right place in the image and the all shone brightly in white before vanishing.
He turned to Cybele after that, handing the scroll back to her.
‘You have found the proof that Rowena Ravenclaw was a Magian,’ he confirmed simply.
Cybele opened her mouth but didn’t speak. She needed to be alone.
‘Shall I bring it back?’ She pointed at the original volume on Snape’s desk. With the surprise discovery, Snape had not performed the copying spell on that last book and they had transported it back to Hogwarts. He did, now.
‘Yes.’
Cybele tried to breathe slowly as she stepped back in the darkened London library. The discovery had left her with mixed feelings of hope and frustration. To know that a renown Witch has been a Magian was a relief and gave her a long waited for feeling of belonging to the wizarding community and Hogwarts. But this occurrence was still the only one and dated back over a thousand years ago and this last thought deflated her.
The heavy book on her arm reminded itself to her after a while and with a sigh, she walked to the esoteric shelf.
The missing space left by the volume still stood out and she made to replace it directly when she noticed a card on the table where Professor Snape had been performing the copying charms.
She put down the heavy volume next to it and immediately realized the pale green rectangular card was the traditional borrow and take back records card that most libraries still kept in books even long after the computerization of the system. As it turned out, the card belonged to her volume.
She lifted the cover and slipped back the card into its plastid holder when her eyes were caught by an unusual library user name in the list.
Philiocornus
Weird name, Cybele thought, wondering why she had the impression to have heard it before. Sounds like a wizard name, she dismissed as an explanation.