On the ground, a hundred thousand hearts beat as one. The image on the first screen showed the empty pilot's chair. The second screen showed a static, grey landscape of dust and rock, the view from the Chimera's forward-facing probe. For a moment, there was nothing but the faint, background hum of the ship's systems.
Then, Ariana's voice, calm and steady, filled the stadium once more. "Cockpit pressure equalized.
Life support in the external suit is stable and self-sustaining. Preparing for extra-vehicular activity."
The crowd watched, mesmerized, as the image on the first screen, now switching to an internal camera, showed Ariana moving to a sealed alcove at the rear of the cockpit. A section of the wall slid away, revealing a sleek, form-fitting suit made of the same shimmering, silver-titanium alloy as the ship itself. It was not the bulky, clumsy apparatus of Muggle astronauts; it was a thing of elegant, magical engineering.
She donned the suit with practiced efficiency. It sealed around her with a soft hiss, conforming perfectly to her form. The helmet was a single, seamless dome of transparent, magically-reinforced crystal that flowed up from the collar, offering an unrestricted, panoramic view. The entire suit was covered in a microscopic, almost invisible web of the same protective and energy-converting runes as the ship. Breathable air flowed within the suit.
Once suited, she picked up the Medusa probe, a small, floating silver sphere that now detached from its mounting inside the ship. "Camera probe detached and active," she reported.
She walked to the main hatch. With a touch on a glowing rune, the thick, reinforced door irised open, revealing the silent, airless, grey world outside. The live feed on the second screen at Hogwarts now switched to the view from the free-floating Medusa probe, which hovered just behind her, offering a third-person perspective.
The world watched. Every witch, every wizard, every child, every ghost in the castle, their eyes glued to the magical screens.
Ariana stood for a moment at the threshold, a lone, slender figure in a silver suit, poised between the pinnacle of magical achievement and the vast, silent emptiness of the cosmos. Below her was the fine, untouched dust of the lunar surface. Above her, hanging in the black sky like a breathtaking blue-and-white jewel, was the Earth.
"That's one small step for a witch, one giant leap for wizardkind."
Then, she stepped off the ramp.
Her boot touched the grey dust. It was a soft, gentle landing in the low gravity, the fine powder puffing up around her foot in a silent, slow-motion cloud.
She had done it.
A human, a witch, was standing on the moon.
A soundless, collective gasp of pure wonder swept through the stadium at Hogwarts. Tears streamed down Hermione's face, tears of a joy so profound it was almost painful. Daphne gripped her hand, her own eyes wide with awe. Sirius let out a whoop of pure, unadulterated triumph, hugging a stunned Remus. Dumbledore simply smiled, his old eyes reflecting the impossible, beautiful image on the screen.
Ariana took another step, then another, her movements graceful and buoyant in the one-sixth gravity. The only sound was the faint, rhythmic whisper of her own breathing, broadcast back across a quarter of a million miles of empty space.
She didn't speak. The moment itself was too profound for words. She simply stood there, a silent, solitary figure, looking back at the distant, beautiful world she had come from. She was the furthest any magical being had ever been from their source of power, yet she had brought her own power with her, a self-sustaining bubble of life and logic in the sterile desolation of the void.
After a few moments of silent contemplation, her practical nature reasserted itself. She had not come here just to stand. She had a purpose.
She unfastened a heavy, metallic object from the side of her suit. It was a small, intricately carved plinth, about a foot high, made of solid, rune-etched silver. She knelt on the lunar surface, the movement slow and deliberate. With a gentle push, she fixed the mount into the soft lunar dust, securing it firmly.
"Primary objective complete," her voice echoed back to Earth. "The 'Artemis' beacon has been deployed. It is now active and broadcasting a stable, continuous positional signal."
She had planted her flag. Not a flag of conquest, but a flag of navigation. A permanent marker in the heavens, a guidepost for all the future journeys that would follow this one.
Her mission accomplished, she gave one last, long look at the distant Earth. Then, she turned, and with a series of graceful, bounding leaps, she returned to the ramp of the Chimera.
She stepped back inside, sealed the hatch, and stood for a moment in the cockpit, looking back through the transparent helmet at the silver mount she had left behind—a tiny, glittering point of magic and reason on the vast, silent face of the moon.
"Mission Control," she said, her voice calm and filled with a quiet finality. "This is Chimera I. I am coming home."