Fic for Darsynia: A Magic Beyond
Title: A Magic Beyond
Author/Artist: nyxfixx
Recipient: darsynia
Prompt: "the Room of Requirement (at any time--go nuts, people)"
Warnings or notes: Hi, darsynia! I am so sorry my awful killer flu caused me to post your fic so late; thank you so much for being patient. Hope you'll enjoy the fic despite the delay.
1.
At about two in the afternoon, Tivvie the house-elf led his friend Izzy to the seventh floor of Hogwarts. Once they were both standing in the corridor near the tapestry that immortalized Barnabas the Barmy's ill-fated venture into alternative dance, Izzy folded her arms across her chest and said, "Well, I is up here, but I is not hearing a thing."
Tivvie put one finger to his lips. "Izzy must hush. Izzy will hear something, something Izzy is never hearing before. It's always around this time of day, if we just waits."
Izzy looked a bit disgruntled, and was just starting to mutter something about work waiting down in the kitchens and wasted time, when a faint but penetrating noise filled the corridor. It sound a bit like an erumpent dying very badly, and also a bit like several Muggle automobiles falling, one after another, down a flight of stairs, and a bit like a cracked brazen bell tolling the stroke of doom. Izzy clapped her hands over her large ears, horrified.
Tivvie, who had heard the mysterious noise before, had a bit more resistance, and looked all around the corridor, up and down, side to side, and toward the window at the end and back again toward the stairs.
"What is it?" Tivvie asked, whispering.
"And where is it coming from?" Izzy added.
They both stared at each other for a few moments more, as the mysterious noise thundered, whined, buzzed and blared energetically on.
"Izzy thinks her ears is going to bleed soon," said Izzy, as she turned around and sprinted off towards the stairway. Tivvie wasn't far behind her.
They descended several flights of steps in a hurry, until they were well out of hearing range of the noise. They stopped for breath once they were at a landing on the third floor.
Tivvie asked, "Jinky - the sous-chef? Is you knowing him?"
"I is hearing he's a bit of a wanker is all," Izzy answered uncertainly.
"Well, Jinky is claiming that the Come and Go Room is somewhere up on that floor. I is thinking maybe something big and loud is trapped in it up there. A troll or a dragon or some other horrible thing!"
Izzy rolled her eyes. "A troll or a dragon with four or five hundred pots and pans to rattle and a dozen accordions to squash with its great big feet? Tivvie, when is you going to grow up? Everyone is knowing the Come and Go Room is just a silly story! I is never hearing such nonsense! House elves is not knowing all the magic of Hogwarts Castle. The noise could be a wizard's magic Tivvie and Izzy isn't supposed to be messing with!"
"Only at two in the afternoon, once a week? I is telling you, Izzy, there is something big and desperate trapped up there. You is hearing it for yourself!"
Izzy thought about that for a moment, wincing. Then she shrugged.
"Acoustics?" she asked, shrugging. "Let's get back to the kitchens, they'll be starting to get ready for tea."
Tivvie sighed, perhaps over his companion's utter lack of imagination, and then followed her down the stairs.
2.
Argus Filch was very angry. He'd asked Professors McGonagall and Flitwick to join him on the seventh floor around two o'clock on three successive Wednesdays, and this was the first time that either of them had bothered to show up. Mrs. Norris wound around his feet restlessly.
But now they'd hear it for themselves, and whatever filthy little miscreants were causing the disturbance would soon be wishing they hadn't.
"Are you quite sure it's a prank of some kind, Mr. Filch?" Professor Flitwick asked mildly.
"Wait until you hear it," Filch answered. "You'll not doubt me then. Gryffindors, I don't doubt. Their common room is on this floor. Those young hooligans Black and Potter, I expect!"
McGonagall raised her eyebrows a bit and looked haughtily at Filch.
“Black and Potter are certainly trouble, but it hardly seems fair to blame them out of hand for every single thing that goes wrong anywhere in the castle, Mr. Filch. Or indeed, to blame every single student in what is, after all, my house. And your complaint seems to be something about some sort of noises, which is hardly an issue of gravest import, in my opinion. I should think you'd be pleased I’ve taken time out of my busy schedule to -”
She was interrupted by the onset of the unidentified noises. Professor Flitwick's jaw dropped. Professor McGonagall felt the fillings in her teeth start to vibrate. Filch gritted his teeth and managed to look both agonized and vindicated at the same time. All of Mrs. Norris' fur puffed out as though she'd been electrified, and she dashed off toward the stairs, a yowling, spitting, fluffy streak of fur.
Flitwick used sign language to communicate to the others that perhaps they should do the same.
Once on the same third floor landing the Tivvie and Izzy had used, Professor Flitwick patted Filch's arm.
"That was no prank, Mr. Filch, I'm certain of it. And awfully sorry about your cat."
"No student alive could produce such a dreadful noise, I'm sure," McGonagall added. "No, I feel fairly certain that what we heard was a build up of excess magic, rising toward the uppermost floors and becoming trapped."
"But - but - how could that happen?" Filch asked, quite put out. "Who's ever heard of such a thing?"
"Feng shui," said Professor Flitwick wisely. "You really ought to look into it, Mr. Filch."
"Feng shui?" Filch asked. "Who the hell is he?"
3.
Nearly Headless Nick was actually forced to hold his head on with both hands, thanks to the profound vibrations caused by the mysterious noise. He rolled his eyes at the Fat Friar, who had stuffed his fists into his ghostly ears.
Both ghosts listened a moment or two more, and then floated quickly down the hallway and out the window. They both reappeared on the fourth floor a second later.
"Well, I never!" exclaimed the Fat Friar. "Bold as brass!"
"The unmitigated gall!" Nick said. "We shall have to write to the Edinburgh Ghosts Local at once."
"I understand that ghost-squatting is getting to be a more and more common problem these days," The Fat Friar said. "But one just doesn't expect such things at Hogwarts!"
"And from the sound of things, this isn't just one ghost," Nick said. "Why, it sounds like there's a whole colony of freeloaders up there! Just wait until I tell the Bloody Baron!"
Both ghosts nodded so vigorously that Nick's head nearly fell off afresh, and he righted it as they zoomed down through the floor and away.
4.
Remus Lupin was virtually up to his ears in secrets. He knew and had vowed to keep the secrets of others, and he had many secrets of his own, known only to a select few. There were secrets to the right of him, and secrets to the left. He could barely take a step out of bed of a morning without stumbling over one secret or another, and he'd had to watch what he said so carefully for so long, that sometimes he had to think it over for several moments before he opened his mouth even to say 'good morning'.
It was fairly unnatural for a sixteen year old boy's life to be so thoroughly saturated in secrets, and perhaps that's one good reason why Remus also had one extra-special private secret that no one knew, not even his closest friends.
He also had a free period between two and three o'clock every Wednesday afternoon, and he usually used that time to drop by the seventh floor of the castle and, if no one was about in the hallway, to pass to and fro before the tapestry of Barnabas the Barmy and the ballet-dancing trolls, three times exactly, no more, no less.
On this Wednesday afternoon, no one was about in the hallway. Remus began to make his purposeful circuit, once, twice, thrice.
I need a place for ... my vice
On his third pass, a door appeared in the formerly blank wall opposite the tapestry, just as it had many times before, and Remus quickly scuttled inside.
In years past, Remus usually hadn't been able to pursue his vice at such a convenient time as two in the afternoon every Wednesday. He'd discovered what some people at Hogwarts called the Room of Requirement, and what other people called the Come and Go Room, in his second year. But he hadn't been lucky enough to have a free period in his class schedule in any of his previous years at school, and had been forced to just sneak out here in the dead of night, whenever the spirit of vice moved him sufficiently.
Now though, he was certain that the more regular practice schedule was sure to improve his technique.
He was standing in a large, spacious studio with a polished wood floor and a high ceiling. There was nothing in this good-sized, acoustically commodious space at all, other than a music stand, a large stack of polka sheet music, and a gleaming brass tuba with the initials R.J.L. lovingly engraved on the bell.
"Ah-hhh," breathed Remus happily. He rubbed his sleeve over an imaginary dull spot on the tuba's bright brass finish.
Perhaps it was the relentless secrecy of every aspect of his life outside these enchanted walls that had drawn a quiet boy like Remus to one of the loudest, most bombastic musical instruments there was. Maybe it was that deep-seated longing every human being experiences now and then, that need to just make some noise. All Remus knew was that he loved playing the tuba, had done since his first lesson, and that he loved the bright, cheerful strains of polka almost as much, and that he was by-God going to keep practicing, no matter what his stupid music teacher had said after his second lesson.
Remus knew his continued tuba-playing was a vice because his stupid music teacher had told him so. Mr. Glemp, a Muggle, had said to Remus that he occasionally ran across students who had very little musical aptitude. He even, now and then, ran across unfortunates who had none at all. Remus Lupin, however, Glemp had insisted, had such a complete absence of musical talent in his make-up that it veered past the null and into negative territory. In short, Mr. Glemp had said, not only would any amount of practice never bring one iota of improvement to Remus' playing, it would be positively criminal of Remus to ever pick up the instrument again.
Mr. Glemp had admitted that perhaps all this brutal honesty was a rather harsh message to convey to a ten-year-old music enthusiast, but he had simply wanted to save Remus, and, indeed, the world at large, a great deal of pain.
Young Remus, who, at the age of ten had been a werewolf for five years, did not feel that someone like Mr. Glemp was qualified to speak with any authority on the subject of pain. And he really didn't much care if he would never play the tuba well, were the truth to be known. He just liked to play - that was the point, and he would play, and Mr. Save-the-world-a-great-deal-of-pain Glemp could just go suck an egg.
Six years later, Remus at sixteen still felt more or less the same way. He fingered through the stack of music beside the stand, looking for something cheerful to begin his session. He knew his affinity for polka was a vice too, because both Muggle and wizarding cultures alike were united in their unfair bias against the sprightly dance music, and had labeled it terminally uncool. Remus didn't care. He liked it, and he liked to play it on his tuba.
He liked it so much that he had occasionally clumsily rearranged some of the more popular pop tunes of the day into polka-versions for the tuba, and if playing the latest hit from that new band the Sex Pistols polka-style wasn't a vice, Remus didn't know what was. Remus was pretty sure, after six years of being their roommate, that his friends could and did accept his lycanthropy. Turn into a ravening supernatural monster once a month? Sure! Turn the Ramones into a polka-dance band, though?
That, he was certain, not even his closest, dearest friends could ever overlook or accept. There were just some vices a man had to keep a dead secret. He took the gleaming tuba up and fitted it around himself.
He swung into his own arrangement of Lady Marmalade with great gusto. It sounded a bit like an erumpent dying very badly, and also a bit like several Muggle automobiles falling, one after another, down a flight of stairs, and a bit like a cracked brazen bell tolling the stroke of doom, but to Remus, it sounded hot and jazzy and happy, and he played his heart out.
From Lady Marmalade, he swung into the traditional favorite Beer Barrel Polka, and this he could play without music, he knew it so well. Then a quick rendition of Wandzia (the Muggle/Magical cross-cultural pun always made Remus smile) and an enthusiastic version of the comic hit Who the Hell is Johnny. He thought about his friend Sirius for a moment and played the British composer Marriott's Jolly Dogs. He thought about his classmate Snape for a moment and played Eyeballs and Shoestrings. He finished off his session with a grand and terribly British rendition of Prince Albert's Polka, followed immediately by his own personal favorite, the Chasing Lambs Polka.
Remus set the tuba aside at last. His hour was just about up. He caressed the rounded bell of the tuba one last time, polished the spot where his initials were engraved with his sleeve, and walked to the door of the room with a deep, deep sigh of contentment.
He checked outside to make certain that the corridor was empty, then slipped out the door and back into the hallway and also back into the less secret, more well-known traffic of a normal day at Hogwarts.
There was a spring in Remus Lupin's step and a faint, lovely flush of satisfaction dusting his cheeks. Anyone seeing him after one of his Wednesday afternoon sessions might well have thought that he was a boy who had just come away from a passionate rendezvous with a secret love.
And, in a way, they would have been right.
"Ah, music. A magic beyond all we do here!"
-- J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, 1997