Nobody knew that Harriet Potter played the piano, and in a way she preferred it like that – just her and the music, utterly together as velvety fingers softly coaxed out smooth, trilling notes.
Nobody knew about the constant beat in her head, anything from rock to pop, to classical – twirling through her head at any time of the day, with her fingers itching to pour out the music onto paper instead of labouring over complicated Transfiguration notes.
Nobody ever questioned where Harriet Potter's talent at charms came from, other than the occasional "It must be from her mother" that really explained nothing, seeing as her dead mother couldn't really have taught Harriet's one-year-old self many charms.
Nobody knew that to her charms weren't complicated notes, and swishes, and flicks – it was the beat of samba drums, the rhythm of a tango, the tapping beat of a Charleston. That it was the music in her head that directed the magic – not Latin, and jittery pokes.
Magic is all about belief, after all, and – as any witch or wizard in their right mind could tell you – it's about inspiration, and passion and joy. And when it came to music Harriet Potter had it all in bucket loads, letting magic and music – because they were simply the same thing to her – come out of her unneeded wand in shimmering, multi-coloured pulses and sprays; sparkles and shimmers – directing the magic and its intent as though it was the orchestra and she the conductor.
When she was younger the music was an escape from mean words, and spiteful glares; her way out from the pain that came from pushes and shoves from her cousin, and beatings from her drunk uncle.
She never particularly cared whether others would like the sound that she played from her heart, never even considered that she would have an audience. No one but her could reach the room – she'd made sure of it when she'd asked the house elves for a place to play in peace – and, for the little moments she could sneak away each day, she could be just Harriet – not the Girl-Who-Lived, an Orphan, a Freak or a Saviour, but the girl behind the labels, herself under the masks and out of sight of the rose-tinted glasses of her 'fans'.
Nobody but her ever heard her music, and that was just the way Harriet liked it – until one day Neville Longbottom was there, clapping, when she finished playing the piano. His hair was windswept, he had a bloody lip and a large bruise was beginning to bloom on his left cheekbone, and yet he wasn't the same, timid boy he'd been in First Year… and he was almost… charming.
Blushing, Harriet dragged herself out of her thoughts, and turned around to face him – feeling indignant that out of all the rooms in Hogwarts he had to pick this one. "What are you doing here?" she asked angrily, though her face still had a faint blush.
"Ron Weasley." Neville said simply, to which she offered a simple, and rather lacking "Ohhh…" in return. Of course it would be Ron Weasley, Harriet thought, glad for the billionth time that their friendship hadn't lasted beyond the first five minutes of the train journey, when she realised – halfway through his long, rambling rant on how, despite her inferiority, he was willing to give her the honour of being his girlfriend – how much he reminded her of her cousin Dudley.
She'd bolted from the train compartment – giving him a half-assed excuse of how "She had to go change… or something." – and had avoided him since, but Neville hadn't been so lucky. All it had taken was a dropped plate at the Sorting Ceremony – typical of poor, clumsy Neville – landing on Ron Weasley to kick start five years of non-stop bullying.
"I-is your," Harriet made a vague motion to all of his face, "okay?"
Neville let out a snort. "I've had worse."
Suddenly, Harriet remembered that she should be angry and returned – with a little less vigour – to her heated 'interrogation'.
"How did you get in here?" she demanded, hands on her hips in an effort to look intimidating, despite a height difference of nearly a foot (she always had been short).
"I was looking for a place to get away and – There was a door out of nowhere!" Neville began to scramble up on long legs. "I'll be going now."
"No!" shouted Harriet, and even she was surprised at her force. "I mean, you don't have to leave because of me."
"Okay," Neville agreed happily, and sat back down – he hadn't really moved that much, at all. Harriet had a suspicion that he'd been angling for that all along. But she didn't complain any more, and if Neville was there, waiting, the next day she didn't say anything. And if Neville was there every day afterwards she didn't mention it either, except for a few, stilted attempts at conversation.
By the time their sixth year at Hogwarts rolled around the broken bits of conversation had become debates, and laughter, and chatting about everything and nothing all at once. And if, sometimes, on a bad day, it was just comfortable silence with her playing whatever instrument Neville felt like, neither of them broke the silence – neither of them wanted to.
And on the worst days it was just the two of them – for once with no music – and the night Dumbledore died, it wasn't their little room that appeared, but another one – where sadness and broken hope and rage at the world became a kiss, and then something more.
It wasn't loving, or fun, or playful – but desperate, and passionate – like a firework exploding, just before it burned out.
Somehow, the entire war was just as bad as the night of Dumbledore's death, maybe even worse. There were deaths every night, they were moving too slowly, and they couldn't stop fighting, and fighting, and fighting –
It was only when Neville stormed off, left her burnt out, and pleading, and crying for him to 'Please -Just come back!" that she realised, huddled into a broken, sobbing heap in the mud, that Neville had become the tune in her head, and the beating of her heart. 'It was strange,' she thought bitterly. 'To not even realise what you have until it's gone,"
When he came back, face drawn and tear streaked – an apology already coming out of his throat as he ran towards her, Harriet slapped him, then kissed him. Only telling him to "Never leave me again."
As she sobbed over his still body – an expression of shock still frozen on his face – and tenderly closed his eyes, Harriet Potter for the first time in years, didn't try to hold back the pain as she tore her way through the Death Eaters' ranks.
Her wand never stopped flashing as she danced and weaved under clumsy attempts at spells. Utterly in tune with her magic, she blasted a whole through a Death Eater's chest, not even pausing to watch as he fell – already moving on to the next.
To Harriet it wasn't people that she saw as she killed, never a father, or brother, or son – but murderers, packed together for her convenience in a crowd of nameless, faceless killers.
When Bellatrix Lestrange tried to gloat about killing Neville – "Would've tortured him, just like his parents, if I'd had the time." She'd cooed in a nasty, simpering voice – Harriet used the one spell she swore she'd never use, and Bellatrix's was the only death she stopped to watch with glee as the green Avada Kedavra hit the bitch – who tumbled gracelessly in an arc, down into the mud.
When she reached Voldemort it was with a sea of dead bodies behind her, and she revelled in the fear in his eyes as he tried to hide behind a hastily-constructed wall of his dead 'comrades'. To Tom Riddle she was Death, as his own spell was rebounded back at him, the one being he'd ever feared. To Harriet she was Revenge, the only thing she now wanted. And there was nobody else but the dead who could judge.
When she found Neville's body in the long line of the fallen inside – she'd personally made sure that the Death Eaters were burned – she just lay next to him – ignoring the whispers, and murmurs, and stares – and buried her head in his cold shoulder, singing in a cracked voice interrupted every few beats by sobs.
She was still singing when everybody else had left, gone to sleep in their former house dorms, and when, at four am, she thought she saw his eye twitch she blamed it on the lack of sleep. When a now-warmer hand clenched around hers, she knew it wasn't a glitch.
"Stunners are a bloody pain," came that familiar voice, and Harriet rugby tackled Neville, now wide awake, in a hug. "Never do that to me again." She ordered him, a smile spread wide across her face. "Never," he agreed, breathlessly.
A few months later…
"And so unexpectedly – " came the nasal tones of Muriel Weasley – who they would've never invited if she wasn't one of Neville's grandmother's seventy 'closest friends'. (Her and Neville having only invited about thirty people combined).
Signalling for the music to start – something she'd written – she smiled happily as the complaints were drowned out, and began her slow walk down to the altar, never taking her eyes of Neville who stood, beaming, with his hair as messy as the day she met him.
For once Harriet wasn't nervous or scared, and as her dress, smooth satin with a train off diamond music notes, trailed behind her she realised that for the first time she had nothing to worry about, that it could be her and Neville – instead of just Harriet – against the world.
And, as Neville slipped her wedding ring on, there was no music, only a single thought running through her mind: "I do."