Symphony, a harry potter fanfic

A/N: I was originally going to pursue a different (and longer) avenue for my start-of-the-year story, but I couldn't get into it. This was the only thing I could write without wanting to chuck the document into my Recycling Bin. Hence…I chose to do this instead.

This whole thing is basically a massive music metaphor, so a lot of it won't make sense if you don't have at least a rudimentary background in music, but try your best. My orchestra teacher's constant nagging lectures about chords and the classical period have, unfortunately, sunk in just a little bit.

Beta-ed by the amazing and brilliant and all-around fantastic Wilhelmina Willoughby, who bravely and graciously took this project on. Muchly appreciated on this end, darling.

I really do hope you guys enjoy this – it's a little different for me, stylistically – and here we go. Cheers!

Symphony
By: Zayz

The strings sustain a soft tremolo, earthy and warm and anticipatory, as he rises this morning, introducing his eyes to the flood of early sunshine. His eyelids flutter unsteadily, his sheets soft to his warm skin and he knows inexplicably that today is going to change his life forevermore. Slowly, he gets out of bed, dresses with particular care.

The tremolo crescendos with a subtle surge as he feels his limbs quiver ever so slightly, as he puts on his familiar shirt, pants, socks, shoes. Something clenches in his abdomen and he finds that he is scared. He doesn't want to do this. He took a risk, he did, he did, and now he's not sure if he wants to stick around for the results.

But he is also acutely aware that delaying won't do him any good. He sighs, running a hand through his perpetually messy hair, and slips out of his dormitory for breakfast.

The day has to start some time.

First period comes around. He sits in his seat – second row, fourth back – and he can feel his concentration slipping in and out of the lecture their teacher is attempting to give. It's Thursday morning and all he can think about is her. Everything about her.

The tremolo is layered with a quirky clarinet solo, as he watches her restlessly ponder on the task at hand. The notes – richly organic but also brooding, lurking in the instrument's lower register – flutter across the musical staff like butterflies as she takes notes, scrutinizes her teacher, and then nudges her friend, the set of her mouth mischievous somehow. He hears her laugh and a high, pleasant note from the glockenspiel twinkles unexpectedly.

She's animated now, he knows, and she was the same way yesterday, when they lingered in the corridor together, laughing as he revealed the punch-line of his joke. It's this animation – that starburst of intelligent vivacity in her bottle-green eyes – that always gets him. It dazzles him, renders him breathless sometimes.

There's so much energy in her. It emanates off of her, like a glow, and he's drawn to her like a wanderer to the full moon above him. He admires her for it, in a way that fills him up and makes his chest swell like a particularly handsome crescendo, and that's probably why he blurted out those three frightening words to her, just as she was about to walk away.

They fell out of his lips faster than he could even register they were there; and before he knew it, they were out in the open, actual notes in an actual song, and they made their way into her tender ears. At once, she whirled around, and he could see the instant, initial panic in her pretty face, taking him in wild suspicion, alarm, awe.

They had been maintaining a sweetly awkward friendship this year, unsteady like a beginning orchestra just learning the basics of tempo, but he toppled over their fragile progress irrevocably with his carelessly flung words.

His cheeks burn a smoldering, embarrassed red as he thinks of it now – the way she stood there, unsure and unsafe, and how she uncomfortably waited ten long seconds before fleeing with her murmured apologies – and his abdomen clenches again.

Ever since that moment, he keeps turning the scenario around and around in his head. Maybe he should have said it, maybe he shouldn't have. Maybe he ruined everything, maybe he didn't. In truth, he doesn't really know what to think. But she did leave a note on his seat before second period saying she would meet him by the tapestry on the fourth floor after classes – so he supposes he'll found out soon enough.

Sighing, he rests his cheek in the palm of his hand and tries to focus his attention back where it belongs. But somewhere in his brain, the reminder lingers…only a few more hours…

Lunchtime follows Herbology, like dream follows nightmare. He troops into the castle, exhausted and sweating and caked in dirt, and all he wants is to escape into the Great Hall, stuff his face with food, and take a breather before his next class. The stress of the morning has driven all other thoughts from his head.

Rumpling his hair with his freshly-washed hand, he decides to take a quick stop at his dormitory to change his socks. He rides the staircases, remembers to jump the trick step and makes it to the room in question, with every intention of changing his socks and nothing more.

However, when he gets there, he is caught unawares by the sight of her walking in his direction from the back corridor, for once without a giggling female escort, the look on her face cloudy with murk. The bass drum appears out of nowhere, the rate of its thumping accelerating swiftly, like the beat of his heart. The strings' tremolo builds, builds, the clarinets dropping to low and ominous half-notes moving up a minor scale as he leaps behind the statue conveniently located close to him, like a child playing hide-and-seek.

Her face may betray her worries, he notes, but her movements are graceful, appealing. She breezes by him, her hair bouncing slightly off her shoulders, and chimes sweetly sway, tinkling and dainty and perfect. Even as he crouches there, he notes her posture, her gently crafted hips, her long legs, and he softens. But only a little.

Danger passes quickly – she turns the corner and vanishes – and the music decrescendos, the now-steady bass drum the only sound sticking out above the quiet mess of strings and clarinet. On some level, he realizes how silly it is that he has to hide from her, so afraid is he of looking at her, or talking to her. And, on some level, he regrets this childish need to hide behind statues.

But, on a more conscious and agreeable level, he breathes a sigh of relief and promises himself he won't hide when he meets her by the tapestry on the fourth floor after classes today.

It is during Potions when the trouble starts.

Initially, the period passes innocently enough. The seventh-years are commanded to make another difficult, fiddly potion for a significant number of points; they complain but settle down and sweat to make their work as close as they can to the impossible standard; they swear loudly when they drop something.

He works on the opposite side of the room as her. Sometimes, this is the most catastrophic tragedy in his world, while other times it is a blessing from the heavens. Today, it seems to be the latter, and he creates his potion in peace, pleased and anxious that this is the third-to-last period of the day. He's lost in the world of his project, hopeful that it won't blow up like last week's did, and by the end of the period, he is relatively pleased with his work.

Slughorn calls for the potions to be bottled, marked with each student's name, and placed on his desk. He is part of the scramble to get to the flasks and he manages to grab one by sheer luck. He scoops up some of his potion and puts in the wax, making sure to hold it carefully to avoid a spill.

Finally done, he walks to the teacher's desk and places the flask, now with his name on it, proudly on the surface. However, his arm brushes against someone else's arm, and he hears a girl's inhale, sharply surprised.

He turns to apologize to her when he realizes it's her; and before he can stop himself, they are making direct eye contact, naked and unavoidable, in the middle of the chattering crowd.

The results are potent and immediate. This is the first time she has looked him in the eye since he told her he loved her and she can't hide what she's felt for almost twenty-four hours. The bass drum starts up again – he can see it all the way through her, as though she's made of glass – and a new melody starts up, an intricately entwined round.

It starts in the flutes, then goes to the oboes, the trumpets, the saxophones. It layers, it develops; it dips and soars; it's beautiful and ragged and wonderful; it drowns out the anxiety of the strings' tremolo and the bass drum's lament.

It takes him several minutes – long after they break eye contact and scurry back to their seats – but he finally figures out what this motif is.

It's easy to deduce, but it's the last thing he would think of. It's unbelievable, but it makes a world of obvious sense. It's bold and pure and gorgeous and intimately theirs, even if they know it's much larger than them.

The song that plays in his head as he steals one more glance in her direction is hope, plain and simple.

Hope that reaches, hope that leaps, hope that flies. Hope that can make him or break him. Hope that is, in fact, mutual.

He has now decided: two hours cannot pass fast enough.

The next two class periods are a blur. It's all he can do to contain himself, stay sitting and quiet in one place, when he wants so desperately to get up, run, scream, jump, shake that girl and make her talk. Everything about him is restless, impatient, and time seems to crawl when all he wants is for it to zip past.

The strings' tremolo is dramatic, loud, yearning, the dissonance creating a wash of agonized background; the bass drums are going, pushing, shoving; the horns' cries blend and blur; the sounds are angry and extremely present, filling up the air with their displeasure.

It's huge. It's full. It's next to impossible to ignore. He feels as though he could burst with the pressure of it all, and yet the world remains peaceful, ambling along at its usual leisurely pace.

Somehow, someway, the two periods pass, and he sprints out of the classroom. He is known for his speed and agility – he is an athlete after all – but he stumbles, almost trips over himself, in his haste to reach their meeting place in as little time as possible.

The snare drum starts up, galloping along like a racehorse; the tremolo surges yet again; but this time, there is something different in the progression. Major and minor chords clash in the chaos, morphing into one another like some fantastic, mythological beast borne of hurricane winds; the wail of the oboe is obviously pained; the whole thing is a solid wall of sound, ready to take the roof off with intensity, and it takes him over, single bit of him, and fills him up with something he can't explain.

And then…it all falls away.

He skids to a stop in front of the statue, breath catching, legs aching, lungs threatening to tear, and the snare drum is the only sound left in the open air. His hand goes straight to his hair like it does when he's nervous; and then, just like that, she appears from the opposite side of the corridor, walking with forced calm to where he stands.

A lilting violin melody starts up from nowhere, the slurred eighth notes dainty, elegant. It's difficult to assess what key it's in – the speed of the notes is accelerating and individual notes are too close together – and as she gets close, he feels the tightness of her mood, the anxiety.

"Hey," she says, oddly breathless as she comes to a standstill. The violin melody fades off, but the bass and snare drums remain, their unique, erratic rhythms interlocking, oddly complimentary to one another.

"Hey," he answers, just as breathlessly.

She takes another breath and tucks a stray lock of her red hair behind her ear. "I haven't been able to stop thinking about what you said yesterday," she admits, getting straight to the point, as usual. "You know…when you accidentally said…"

"When I said I loved you?"

She blushes, her eyes to the ground. "Yeah…that."

A knot tightens in his stomach. "I haven't been able to stop thinking about it either."

"But…I guess, what I really want to know is, did you mean what you said?" She manages a brave look at his face, her tone hopeful, her eyes earnest, pure. "I mean…was it an accident, or did you say that on purpose?"

He takes a breath. He tries to look at her, hold her gaze, try to understand how desperately muddled she is, but his brain has stopped working. It leaves him unsettled, like a string section without the bass, and he feels his tongue take on a mind of its own as he swallows thickly and answers:

"I said it by accident, but I mean it. I've always meant it. You just…never listened."

She bites her lip and the tempo of the drum duet surges again.

"So what do you want us to do now?" she asks. "Where are we supposed to go from here?"

He shrugs, the flippant gesture laughably contrasting with the current state of his internal organs. "I wish I knew. I guess I'd been hoping you would have an idea."

She unwillingly allows a smile to light up her face, but confusion remains as she searches him for something, her lips still pursed.

"I don't know either," she admits. "You were always the one with the big, wild plans."

He holds her gaze. "And you were always the one who had alternate plans of her own."

"You told me you loved me," she reminds him, her tone straining just a little. "What did you think that would accomplish?"

"It was an accident," he says honestly. "I didn't know I would say it. But you know what? I'm not sorry I did."

"I…well, I'm confused," she says just as honestly. "I thought we were friends, at the very least…but now…I mean, when you come down to it, I barely know you. I'm not sure what's supposed to happen now."

"Then my question is, do you want to?" he asks. "Do you want to know me? Can you trust me?"

This quiets her. She considers this a good, long moment, her eyes on the floor, her hair loose around her heart-shaped face. The drum duet gallops forth as the two of them hesitate; he holds his breath in anticipation and she releases hers in a controlled sigh; the two of them remain in limbo, not looking at each other, wondering where this is going.

And then, plainly and softly, she says, "I think so."

At once, the two of them look up, the effect of her simple statement opening and rippling at lightning speed – wide eyes, wide silence, sudden constriction, sudden fear. And, as mysteriously as the boy becomes a man, as the winter becomes spring, that melody starts up again.

It starts in the flutes, then goes to the oboes, the trumpets, the saxophones. It layers, it develops; it dips and soars; it's beautiful and ragged and wonderful; the strings tremolo beneath it, the drums continue their frantic duet, but it all works together somehow, like it was meant to be that way.

The song that plays in his head as he steals one more glance in her direction is hope.

And as the two of them shyly try to hold hands, their steps not quite in-sync and their chatter too determinedly normal, hope plays on, getting louder every second.

A/N: Now that you've read, review, and have a happy 2010! I'm sure you will continue to hear from me and I look forward to hearing from you too.

Cheers!

-Zay