De Aegypto

The body remembers.

The mind and the heart, they forget. Thoughts, emotions—they slip away unnoticed, replaced by other, newer discoveries, new loves, new disappointments. Each is experienced, lived, used up, then disappears into the aether, never to be heard from again.

But the body is constant. Every shiver of delight, every acrid odour, each blunt hurt, is meticulously catalogued and stored, ready for a moment—that sublime moment when it is suddenly borne anew, in the salivating anticipation of a tart lemon on the tongue, in a teasing caress from a lover, in the bright sting of a blade as it rends the flesh.

This is what crosses Minerva's mind as Rolanda's breath puffs gently and warmly past her ear as she receives the obligatory friendly embrace. A shiver of recognition passes through her, and she's afraid she'll be flushed, but she soldiers through.

"Welcome to Hogwarts."

"Thank you, Deputy Headmistress. Happy to be here."

Minerva raises an eyebrow at 'Deputy Headmistress'. Formality was never Rolanda's default setting, and it occurs to Minerva that Rolanda feels as off-kilter as Minerva herself does.

They go through the motions of superior and subordinate, Minerva enumerating the expectations for adjunct staff and offering advice that is doubtless more useful in a classroom setting than on the Quidditch pitch, Rolanda asking polite, anodyne questions about rules and schedules. Minerva sees her to her office, and when the door shuts, puts Rolanda back in the room in her heart reserved for precious things long mislaid.

Rolanda settles in, presumably, and teaches her first classes without incident. During her free period, Minerva observes from her office window, ashamed at her need to conceal herself behind a curtain as she watches. She is the deputy headmistress, and the observation of new teachers is within her purview, after all. But watching Rolanda has always a been furtive exercise, and Minerva relishes both the pain and the pleasure in it, private flavours to be tasted and mixed according to the appetite of the hour.

Her first love. Her first lover. Her first broken heart.

There have been a few of the former in Minerva's life since, several of the second, but none of the third, since Rolanda. Minerva hasn't allowed it. It's ridiculous, she knows, to keep one's heart suspended as if in amber, taken out, examined, admired, but ultimately untouched, but she has despaired of altering this singular fact of her singular life.

One evening, long after dinner, Minerva is working late in her office. A shadow disturbs the serenity of the bright winter moonlight. She stands and goes to the window. A figure on a broom silhouetted against the stars soars and swoops in heart-stopping arcs, taunting gravity, denying it its rightful power.

Minerva's breath stalls behind her mouth, and her body remembers the sensation of the frigid wind in her face, the firm broomstick between her thighs, and, most of all, the twitch and quiver of Rolanda's muscles as Minerva clutches at her waist, terrified and exhilarated as she had never been before but would be again when she clutched Rolanda to her in bed in the dingy Holyhead flat Rolanda could afford on the salary of a first-string Chaser on a second-string team.

Warmth flows through her body like blood, like wine, like a curse, and she grasps blindly at the casement, pushing open the window to watch her breath plume forth into the frigid night air. The shock of it filling her lungs steadies her, and she is almost right again when the figure on the broom turns and begins to hurtle towards her.

She can't quite move until Rolanda fills her vision, and only jumps aside when she realises the daft witch intends to fly straight in through the large window.

"Gods,woman!" she says when she's caught her breath and Rolanda has dismounted fromher broom, panting, but otherwise unruffled by her explosive entry into Minerva's office.

"When," Rolanda says, between gulps of air, "was the last time you did a double Coventry Corkscrew?"

"I couldn't possibly."

"Couldn'tyou?"

"I am a Hogwarts professor."

"So'm I. Well ... an instructor, anyway. You could evaluate my fitness as an instructor of flying."

She holds out an ungloved hand, and Minerva feels the rough callouses against her palm, although her arms remain stolidly by her sides.

Rolanda steps back, pulling the turgid air with her.

"Sorry. I just ..." she says, pulling her broom close against herself. "Wanted to fly with you again."

Minerva wants that too, more than she has wanted anything in a very, very long time, and it is a delicious shock that she can still desire something with such intensity that she's nearly faint with it.

With an act of will she could never explain to anyone who hasn't forced animation into a teapot or exchanged a neatly manicured hand for a furry and taloned paw, she pulls the broom from Rolanda's hands and Transfigures her long skirt into a pair of close-fitting trews.

The grin that spreads across Rolanda's face slides inside Minerva, filling her until there is barely room for breath.

Steadying herself, she throws a leg over the broomstick. The slide of the wood against her awakens something in her centre, frightening in its animal ferocity. The beast within Minerva, she's learned over the years, is always there, but until this moment she has not realised how much of herself she has kept caged within her own disciplined body, even when she allows herself the license to enjoy her feline form.

She keeps the tremor from her voice when she says, "Coming?" and holds out a hand to Rolanda.

The crucible in which Minerva has guarded her most essential self melts as they take to the sky. She knows it can be remade, that the power of her mind and magic can create anything she needs to stay safe, but what she needs is not to be safe. She needs the wind in her face and Rolanda's breath hot against her neck and strong hands searing the flesh underneath the silk of Minerva's bodice. Whatever else she needs, she needs this trembling moment of possibility.

It has been an age since she's felt this, or else it's been an instant. It doesn't matter, either way.

She points the broom towards thestars, and her thoughts fall away with the earth. There is only this, her bodycutting through time and space, slashing it, rending it, until it toodisappears, leaving only Minerva, naked and helpless as a bairn left on a moor.

The press of Rolanda's breasts against her back pulls her back from the void. How strange that something as ordinary as this can tether Minerva to herself again.

Yes, she thinks to herself, the body remembers. The sky, the stars, Rolanda. They fill her until she is whole, and she pulls back on the broomstick, turning for home.

"Had enough?" Rolanda asks.

"No,"Minerva says. "Not by half."

Any response is lost in the crash of thunder over the Black Lake.

Later, lying in her large bed withRolanda's arm slung low across her belly, Minerva thinks, "It will never be enough."

She smiles to herself and turns over on her side, pulling Rolanda's arm around her.

The air is still and smells of moss and sweet cedar smoke from the banked fire.

Minerva sleeps. Tomorrow she will teach and talk and plan. But for now, she sleeps and dreams of a vastness in which she floats and floats, and floats, and the only thing that can touch her is soft and blameless as the sky.