Author's Note / Disclaimer: I wanted to have more of this part finished before posting, but since (a) it's been forever since the last chapter, and (b) this one was getting very long, I figured I'd find the best stopping point I could and break it up into two parts. The next will hopefully not take as long as this one did (I already have quite a bit of it done). I have, in past fanfics, been accused of boring the readers needlessly with my descriptions of music in this silent medium, and that in mind, perhaps it's best not to post all of it at once anyway. Thank you for your patience.
Finding the Muse
By Rain Fletcher
Part 4
The Hufflepuff common room was bustling with activity as Harry and Ron entered: it seemed as though all seven years worth of the house had crowded into the space, making it far more cosy than expected. The air was abuzz with laughter and chatter, and Hufflepuffs of all ages were engaged in animated discussion all around them. Harry stood on his toes and looked desperately for Hermione and Luna, and found them standing near the centre of the throng with Ernie, who was rummaging in a large battered wooden trunk. Giving apologetic excuse-mes to the students in front of him, Harry wove a path to them, just in time to see Ernie hand each of the girls a thick hardbound book that looked as battered as the trunk. By the time Harry managed to reach them, Ernie had also handed Hermione an odd stringed instrument that resembled a small harp tacked sideways onto a board, with several wooden bars running across the strings.
"Ah, there you are," Ernie nodded at Harry as he shouldered his way to Hermione's side. "Now, Luna… you have your own, I see?"
"I do," Luna nodded, indicating her instrument case.
"Very good. So, Harry, Ron, what do you play?" Ernie passed each of the boys one of the enormous books, and Harry saw that each was decorated with the Hufflepuff crest in faded yellow and black.
"I… don't, really," Harry admitted, completely bemused.
"Then you're a drummer for the evening," Ernie nodded, reaching into the trunk and pulling out a one-headed wooden drum in a sort of bent cylindrical shape. "Ron? Drums for you as well?"
Harry chanced a look at Ron, and was amazed to see his friend looking into the trunk with a surprised smile. "Oh, wicked, you don't have a bodhram in there, do you?"
"I think we might," Ernie muttered, rummaging for a moment before emerging with another drum, smaller than Harry's. This one was a simple ring of wood with two bars crossing in the center (for support, Harry could only imagine) and a single head. Ron took it from Ernie's hands along with a wooden beater in an oddly elongated figure-eight shape.
Just as it occurred to Harry to wonder how Ron had known what a bodhram was, Ernie spoke again. "Well, find a place to sit anywhere, if you can. We'll be starting in just a couple of minutes." And then he was assisting a first-year with a book and another small drum.
"Come on, there's a spot over here," Hermione said, adjusting the harp and book under one arm so she could use the other hand to pull Harry's sleeve. She led them toward one of the walls, then settled down on the floor. Harry sat down next to her, and Ron flanked him on the other side. Luna filled out the quartet by sitting beside Ron and fixing him with a sleepy, contented smile. Ron, for his part, was engrossed in studying every detail of his drum.
"Do you know how to play that?" Harry asked him.
"No idea," Ron grinned, giving the bodhram a few experimental hits with the beater. "But Mum has one of these. She's never let me touch it."
Harry nodded, but found that he had to look away, as his head was simply buzzing. All of a sudden, nothing made sense. He looked past his oldest friend to see that Luna had opened her case and was busily assembling yet another woodwind, this time a polished black clarinet. Hearing a strumming sound over his opposite shoulder, he looked to his right to see that Hermione had set the harp-thing flat against her lap, and was testing the strings with what looked like a guitar pick while pressing down one of the bars crossing the strings.
Feeling that he was not yet ready to face the idea that Ron might secretly be a musician as well, Harry decided to talk to Hermione instead. "What is that, anyway?" he asked her.
"It's an autoharp," she beamed at him. "You see how the keys here are marked with the names of different notes? All you do is press the key for the chord you want and then strum. It dampens all the strings except the notes in that chord." She demonstrated by strumming while pressing C, then F, then C again. "They were first made in Germany, but they really became popular in America in the late nineteenth century, and sort of worked their way into folk music retroactively. I've always wanted to try one - much easier than a real harp, that's certain. And I love the drum!"
Harry could have hugged her: Hermione giving a complete discourse rather than a simple answer was refreshingly normal in the midst of this unfamiliar scene. It thus took him a couple of seconds to realize that she was now focused on the drum he had been given. "Oh… yeah. Er… do you know what it is?"
"Not specifically," Hermione admitted, studying the instrument in Harry's hands. "I'm guessing it's either Middle Eastern or African, though. See where it tapers here in the middle? You could hold it between your arm and your body and play it with the opposite hand, or you could hold it with your legs and play with both hands. It might be a djembe - I didn't study percussion very much at all, but I have some books back in my room, so I can look it up later if you'd like…"
"No, no, that's fine," Harry assured her. He adjusted his legs so that he was sitting cross-legged, as she was doing, and tried different positions for the drum.
At that moment, the portrait door opened again, and Professor Sprout, Herbology mistress and head of the Hufflepuff House, stepped in, carrying a large oblong case beside her. "Good evening, Hufflepuff!" she called over the general rumble.
"Good evening, Professor Sprout!" the Hufflepuffs said in unison, ceasing their conversations to greet their House leader. They immediately began to pile onto the chairs, couches and floor, forming a rough semicircle around the battered trunk of books and instruments. Professor Sprout waved her wand a few times, causing the trunk to close and latch, a stool to appear next to it, and an upright piano and mobile blackboard to slowly roll out of an open closet door.
The plump Herbology instructor seated herself on the stool and smiled around the semicircle, her eyes widening in happy recognition when she reached the far side of it, where Harry and his friends were seated. "Well, Hufflepuff, it appears we have guests tonight! I take it they have been properly warned?"
"Yes, Professor Sprout," Ernie nodded, looking over in their direction and winking. Harry had to wonder about the professor's choice of words - why "warned?"
"Very good. Names on the board, please! We'll begin in five minutes!"
With that, Professor Sprout set to opening a complicated series of latches on her instrument case, and conversations resumed amongst the Hufflepuffs as several of them went to the blackboard and started writing their names in a neat column down the left side. Harry took a look around the room and realized, again to his chagrin, that he did not recognize many of them at all. Ernie was easy enough to spot in any crowd, and Harry easily recognized Justin Finch-Fletchley, whom he had become friends with after a shaky start in second year. Others he knew only from the DA or Quidditch: he spotted a pigtailed Hannah Abbott chatting animatedly with two other girls after returning from the blackboard, and Susan Bones was seated on the arm of one of the chairs tuning the strings of a violin. Looking toward the far end of the arc, Harry was somewhat taken aback to see that Zacharias Smith was staring right at him, his eyes hooded and skeptical as always. He was holding a guitar over one knee and absently picking at the strings, and when he noticed Harry was looking back, he gave one slow nod and then turned his attention to his fingers.
Meanwhile, the professor had finally gotten her case open and pulled out one of the oddest instruments Harry had ever seen. It looked something like two of Hermione's autoharps placed end to end, but with no chord-bars across the strings. She set it on the flat top of the closed trunk and reached back into her case to pull out two small metal beaters, one in each hand. She then tapped several strings in sequence, causing them to give forth a beautiful ringing sound. It reminded Harry of the two or three times he had ever heard the sound of a harpsichord.
Beside him, Hermione all but gasped. "Oh, how beautiful!" she whispered to Harry.
"What is that?" he whispered back, unable to take his eyes from what the professor was doing.
"A hammered dulcimer," Hermione informed him. "I've heard recordings, but I've never actually seen one played."
Harry watched Professor Sprout continue testing the hammers against the strings stretched taut over the body of the dulcimer, occasionally using a small tool to tighten or loosen a string to get it more in tune. Her gnarled hands were as deft with the hammers as they were with any of the magical plants she worked with on a daily basis. This only added to Harry's growing sense of unreality - it made perfect sense, and yet was completely foreign to everything Harry thought he had known about his jovial Herbology instructor. A small part of his mind wondered what Neville would think of this, and he felt a pang of regret that he would not be able to tell his classmate about it.
At length, once her instrument was tuned to her satisfaction, the professor set the hammers aside, then clapped her hands twice to get the room's attention. "Let us begin, Hufflepuff!"
"Professor, the Fat Friar's not here yet," someone piped up.
"Oh, he'll be here," Sprout frowned. "Now, we'll begin with rhythm. Drum if you have a drum, shake if you have a shaker, and clap if you have neither. Here's your quarter note!"
That said, she began clapping out a slow beat, a little faster than one per second. Most of the Hufflepuffs joined in right away, as did Hermione and Luna. Harry traded glances with Ron, who shrugged at him and started tapping his bodhram with one end of the figure-eight beater. Harry gave his own drum a tentative tap, and it responded with a deep, quiet tone.
For a while, that was all there was: more than fifty drums, shakers, tambourines, rattles or pairs of hands holding to a single pulse. Harry experimented with different ways of hitting the drum, figuring that if he messed it up no one would hear him anyway, and by giving it a good slap in the center he found he was able to get a resounding thmmm that he could feel more than hear.
"Listen to each other, listen!" the professor called over the pulse. "Clean the ragged attack. One voice, Hufflepuff!"
Harry wasn't at all sure what "clean the ragged attack" meant, but after listening to the way the players responded, he figured it out. They had not all been exactly on the beat, making each pulse sound something like a wave hitting a rocky shore. As he listened, he was able to hear that he had been one of the ones missing it - only by a fraction of a second, but it was enough to make a difference. Concentrating on the beat now, he did his best to time each slap of the drumhead with the sound around him.
As the crashing wave tightened in focus, Harry closed his eyes and concentrated less on what he was hearing than on how the beat actually felt. The vibrations of his own drum, and those of the others in the room, swept through his body and caused the hairs on his arms and the back of his neck to stand up. It was like the heartbeat of some enormous creature, and he felt compelled to match it and become part of it.
"First through fourth years and guests, stay on the quarter note," Professor Sprout instructed. "Fifth through seventh, I want eighth notes starting… now."
With that, all of the older Hufflepuffs began drumming out beats in double-time. Harry had been so focused on maintaining synchronization that this threw him completely off for the space of two or three beats - he did not know which to follow. After this, he got back on the original pulse, so that his beat matched every other beat from the fifth- through seventh-years.
By now he was beginning to get an idea of the purpose behind this exercise: it forced them to listen to one another, and match one another, even while playing different rhythms. Soon the professor called for first- and third-years to start sixteenth notes, and they began hammering out four beats to one, doubling the already doubled speed of the older drummers.
"Mister Finch-Fletchley, Mister Cauldwell, Miss Madley, Miss Lorenz, I want triplets! Give us threes against the fours. The rest of you continue as you are. Starting… now!"
What came next made Harry extremely glad he was still playing the basic beat, because suddenly the four players named by Professor Sprout were playing a rhythm completely off-set from any of the others, with three counts to each of his one. Then he realized that they were not offset at all, because even though there were now four rhythms going, each of them had one beat in common - the original beat. All of them hit simultaneously for that one count before continuing on to do their separate patterns. That original pulse continued to hold them together. He looked around at the players only to find that they were each and every one of them focused, alternating between watching Professor Sprout and one another. It seemed to be as much about concentration as listening - they had to hear one another well enough to share the common beat, but play against one another well enough to match their assigned rhythms with their own sub-groupings.
"Very good, Hufflepuff! Cut off now in three… two… one… DONE!"
The drumming stopped with one last resounding THMMMM, and suddenly the common room was very quiet. Harry was somewhat surprised to discover that he was sweating, and that he could still feel the beat sweeping through him, even now that it had ceased.
"Very good!" Professor Sprout repeated. "Let's stretch out our voices, shall we? Turn to page twenty-eight. Everyone sing for the choruses, and I'll point out soloists for each verse. As always, those who wish to play along, feel free, but I want voices most of all!"
There was the sound of more than fifty books shuffling open, with pages flipping madly. Harry did as Hermione was doing and set his book on the floor in front of him so that he could have both hands free for his drum. There were noises of approval from some of the students as they found the indicated page, and Professor Sprout began playing well before Harry managed to reach page twenty-eight. This turned out to be the written score for a "Skye Boat Song," and he felt a moment of panic - he had no idea how to read music. There were words, however, and that was something he knew he could follow.
Speed, bonnie boat, like a bird on the wing
"Onward," the sailors cry
Carry the lad that's born to be king
Over the sea to Skye
During the final line of the chorus, Professor Sprout pointed into the crowd, giving the first verse to a Hufflepuff known to Harry only as Stebbins, from the house quidditch team.
Loud the winds howl, loud the waves roar
Thunderclouds rend the air
Baffled, our foes stand by the shore
Follow they will not dare
The chorus joined in again, and Harry tried to sing along based on what he'd heard before. Hermione and Luna seemed to be having better luck than himself and Ron. As the chorus neared its end, the next verse was given to Susan Bones, who turned out to have a pleasant, lilting tone to her voice, more so than could be heard in her spoken words.
Tho' the waves leap, soft shall ye sleep
Ocean's a royal bed
Rock'd in the deep, Flora will keep
Watch by your weary head
With the third repetition of the chorus, Harry was beginning to get a feel for it, and actually managed to get out more than half the words this time. He exchanged glances with Ron, and his friend gave him a look somewhere between humor and sheer panic as he stumbled along with it.
Then, to Harry's surprise, Professor Sprout pointed at Luna to give her the third verse. He was even more surprised when Luna began singing it as though she'd known it since birth.
Many's the lad fought on that day
Well the claymore could wield
When the night came, silently lay
Dead on Culloden's field
Another chorus, another step closer to putting words and tune together. Harry couldn't help noticing that most of the Hufflepuffs seemed to know this one by heart, as they were not even looking at their books. More than a dozen were even singing and playing their respective instruments at the same time. Not for the first time that evening, Harry felt as though he were an outsider witnessing a ritual, and he wondered how long this had been going on in Hufflepuff without the other houses knowing.
The final verse was sung by a deep-voiced older Hufflepuff boy who like so many others was vaguely familiar, but whose name Harry simply could not place.
Burn'd are our homes, exile and death
Scatter the loyal men
Yet ere the sword cool in the sheath
Charlie will come again
Feeling strangely determined to make himself a part of this, Harry gave the final chorus everything he had. Somehow it was not enough to merely witness the ritual.
Speed, bonnie boat, like a bird on the wing
"Onward," the sailors cry
Carry the lad that's born to be king
Over the sea to Skye
Almost before the final chord faded, Professor Sprout called out "Page forty-eight!" Again, the pages shuffled, again several of the Hufflepuffs gave noises of happy recognition, and again, Professor Sprout led them in, with Zacharias and several of the percussionists following suit with practiced ease. When the vocals came, it was with a raucous abandon befitting the text.
Look ahead, look astern, look the weather in the lee
Blow high! Blow low! And so sailed we!
I see a wreck to windward and a lofty ship to lee
A-sailing down along the coast of High Barbary!
This was the first time Harry had ever heard a real sea chantey, and he found it surprisingly easy to join in, as each verse was precisely the same tune. Beside him, Hermione was strumming away on her autoharp, following the written score for the chord changes.
After the six-verse battle with pirates, Professor Sprout called out another page number, and scarcely taking time to catch their breath, they followed her through an Irish folk song (at least, that was what it said next to the title).
Near to Banbridge Town, in the County Down
One morning in July
Down a boreen green came a sweet colleen
And she smiled as she passed me by
Oh, she looked so neat from her two white feet
To the sheen of her nut-brown hair
Such a coaxing elf, had to shake myself
To be sure I was really there
Oh, from Bantry Bay up to Derry Quay
And from Galway to Dublin town
No maid I've seen like the brown colleen
That I met in the County Down
In all, they sang more than half a dozen folk songs from the British isles with barely a pause between them, and the longer it went, the more caught up in the spirit Harry was becoming. The entire event had a sort of pleasant anarchy to it: there was an unrehearsed feel to everything, but it was obvious the Hufflepuffs had been singing together like this for ages. Those with drums or other hand-held instruments played and sang with equal abandon, and those whose instruments required more attention, like Susan with her violin, alternated between singing and playing along seemingly at random.
The fact that Luna picked right up on the vibe of the room - adding the mellow tones of her clarinet when appropriate and singing when it was not - was no longer much of a shock to Harry. Nor was he particularly surprised that Hermione seemed to have a good grasp of this muggle-born music, and was thoroughly enjoying the combined challenge of singing along and mastering the autoharp.
The focus of his surprise, as it turned out, was Ron.
First of all, amazingly enough, Ron seemed to be having a good time. Harry realized that he had been expecting (in fact dreading) a reaction of derision, but Ron's good humor seemed genuine rather than sarcastic. While it was clear that he had very little idea of what he was doing with the bodhram, he was an enthusiastic enough singer, and by the fourth of fifth song he was even allowing Luna to give him pointers on how to properly grip the beater (by the center, to allow for rapid strikes with either end of it).
The bloody git was enjoying himself! After all the worry Harry had invested in how all of this might drive a wedge between them, with Ron on one side and Harry and Hermione on the other, Ron was actually grinning a lot, and laughing at his own mistakes on the choruses, and showing dogged determination to play his drum, technique be hanged.
Variations on this thought had been haunting the back corners of his mind for some time now, and in the midst of all the emotions swirling through him, Harry felt a little ashamed of his lack of faith in Ron. He should have realized that they would find a way to come to an understanding, the three of them, no matter what.
The relief Harry felt at this realization was making him almost light-headed, though he imagined the full-voiced singing might have something to do with that as well. For the first time in longer than he could remember, he genuinely felt that he hadn't a worry in the world. He was free to enjoy this evening with his two greatest friends, with a room full of surprisingly talented schoolmates, and with the one who'd started it all with her bassoon last Saturday at the lake.
After the chorus wrapped up the final verse of a Welsh folk piece called "Migildi Magildi," Professor Sprout finally brought them to a stop. "Oh, very good, Hufflepuff! Give yourselves a round!" She began applauding, and her students followed suit, congratulating themselves and one another.
"Rest your voices, children," Sprout continued, pivoting on her stool to take a look at the chalkboard. "Now, let's see what we have tonight for recitals. Mister Finch-Fletchley, Mister Smith, Miss Bones, it would appear you're first on the list! What do you have for us this week?"
"It's a Spanish song, Professor," Justin explained, getting up from the box he had been sitting on and picking it up. He and the other two made their way to the centre, stopping between the trunk and the circle of students. He set the box down, then sat on it again, and Zacharias with his guitar and Susan with her violin flanked him.
Just as Harry was beginning to wonder what exactly Justin had brought the box for, he reached down and struck out a complicated rhythm on one face of it, and it gave an amazingly clear sound. More than that, Justin was able to get several distinct percussive tones from it depending on whether he tapped the center or the edge, or whether he hit it with his fingertips, his knuckles or the heel of his hand. It was as though he had an entire percussion kit contained in this box he was sitting on.
Zacharias joined in next, his fingers blurring over the strings. Rather than using a pick, this time he was plucking the strings with all five fingers of his right hand, and the notes were coming in wave after wave. Susan added a soft, haunting violin part moments later, the sweeping sound contrasting markedly with the rhythmic guitar and drum.
Now that he was watching rather than participating, Harry was nothing short of mesmerised, and his eyes darted from one set of hands to the other, marveling at the speed and accuracy of their movements. He wondered how long the three of them must have worked together in order to play so flawlessly as a unit, and he was suddenly flooded with mental images of the Hufflepuff dormitories filled with practicing musicians, the halls and common room always ringing with sound.
Ron must have been thinking exactly the same thing, for at that moment he leaned in and whispered "No wonder they're so lousy at quidditch."
Harry just nodded, but for a moment he had to wonder which house it was that truly had its priorities in order.
The trio brought its song to a close, and Harry added his own enthusiastic applause to that of the Hufflepuffs. "Very good, very good," Professor Sprout cheered them as they went back to their seats. "Who's next, then?"
The next group was a vocal quartet, two boys and two girls (none of whom Harry recognized except Stebbins, who appeared to be singing the lower of the two male parts), performing what they introduced as an English madrigal.
Say, love, if ever thou didst find
A woman with a constant mind
None but one - none but one
And what should that rare mirror be
Some goddess or some queen is she
She, she, she, and only she
She only queen of love and beauty
This time, in spite of being quite the amateur, Harry was able to tell that this song was a work in progress, as the performance was far from perfect. There were a couple of moments where one singer or another would drop a couple of words, but they never fell out of tune, nor did they stop - with every error they quickly recovered and carried on, which in some ways was more impressive than perfection.
After the quartet returned to their seats (to the applause of their schoolmates), Professor Sprout turned and gave the four visitors a long look. "So, Hufflepuff, we appear to have three Gryffindors and a Ravenclaw with us this evening. It's certainly been a long time since we've had this many guests all at once - longer than any of you have been here, I do believe - but nonetheless, we must observe tradition and give our guests every opportunity to contribute something. Agreed?"
The Hufflepuffs gave a rumble that was equal parts applause, laughter, encouragement and challenge, and Harry's mouth went dry. He desperately found Ernie in the crowd and shot him a distressed look, as if to say "You did not warn us about this," but Ernie just grinned wickedly in reply.
Luna, however, was already standing, and after pausing to clear her throat, she addressed the crowd. "Hermione and I will play a duet for you, if you'd like."
The cheers of the Hufflepuffs drowned out Hermione's shocked "We will?" Then Luna crossed over to help her to her feet, leaving her to hurriedly pass her autoharp to Harry.
Professor Sprout vacated her stool and came around to watch from the crowd as Luna led Hermione to the upright piano. All the while, Hermione was whispering frantically to the Ravenclaw girl, eyes wide with terror, but Luna's face remained the very picture of contentedness as she whispered back.
"What're they playing at?" Ron asked Harry. "Hermione doesn't play piano."
"I thought the same thing a week ago," Harry said back. "Don't worry. Luna knows what she's doing."
"I think your head's come loose."
As Ron said this, Harry noticed an interesting exchange between the two girls: Luna leaned in close to Hermione, her eyes wide even by her standards, and she whispered one last thing while taking Hermione's hand and giving it a squeeze. She then stepped to one side the piano, positioning her fingers on her clarinet and standing ready. For her part, Hermione looked puzzled, but then she took a deep breath and focused her attention on the keys.
After a long silence, Hermione began to play the increasingly familiar haunting tones of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata. There was a tiny buzz of recognition from the crowd, and on more than a few faces there were expressions of surprise and genuine admiration.
Harry sat back and closed his eyes, remembering the unlikely meeting in the Room of Requirement, and how Luna's flute combined with Hermione's piano had been something chillingly beautiful. This time, however, the mood was decidedly different with the presence of the clarinet: rather than trilling and fluttering like a winter bird, Luna was playing a slow, apparently improvised melody, and the warm, mellow voice of her instrument brought an almost jazz-like feeling to the classical piece.
As well as Hermione was playing, she was still very much out of practice, and occasionally she hit an incorrect note. However, Luna would then immediately work that same wrong note into her accompaniment, making it sound as though they had planned it that way all along. Harry remembered Luna's assertion that the song belonged to them, and not to Beethoven, and hearing this familiar yet radically different rendition, there was no doubt about it.
They drew to a close, with Hermione repeating the final chord beneath a last bluesy riff by Luna, and the Hufflepuffs went slightly mad with cheering. "Bloody Hell," Ron nodded, his eyes never leaving the pair of them as they turned and gave a small bow. "Loony's good! D'you reckon that's why she's so far gone in real life?"
"Couldn't say," Harry replied, trying not to laugh at the bemused expression on Hermione's face as the two girls returned to their seats.
"Miss Lovegood, Miss Granger, that was wonderful," Professor Sprout congratulated them as she returned to the centre of the room. "You see, Hufflepuff? It's good to have guests once in a while! Now, let us continue with… page seventy!"
Over the sound of pages turning, Hermione leaned in and whispered in Harry's ear. "I don't understand how she does that."
"Sounds to me like you were both doing that," Harry grinned.
"I'm going to get to the bottom of this," Hermione went on. "I've no business playing that well without magic. She must be doing something. I just don't understand it."
He looked over at her, and his planned witty rejoinder stuck in his throat as he took in the look of confusion in her brown eyes. "Hermione," he said, his smile softening, "has it occurred to you that there are some things that no one can really understand? Not even you?" He said the last with the tiniest smirk.
She gave him a decidedly sardonic look, but her reply was lost amidst the singing voices of Hufflepuff House.
To be continued
Next: Harry sings! (You didn't think Luna and Hermione got him off the hook, did you?)