SONATA
Part One
Such sweet sound, such dark and tantalizing melodies. They were as dark as the corridor that he followed and as beautifully bitter as his longing to have heard them again with his own ears.
How had missed them. How he had missed she that played them.
The door that hid both the player and the piano on which she played was near the end of the unlit corridor. The soft light of candles bled out from under the door over the floor and he stepped into that stain of light curling his toes against the carpet and the warmth within it.
He opened the door carefully and stepped inside quietly, shutting the door behind himself. There she was across the room seated at her black instrument, her delicate fingers caressing and pressing its teeth to make such beautiful music.
He placed his wand atop the bookshelf nearest the door; a custom she had insisted of him since their time together had begun long before his exile, long before his demise. He had not relinquished his wand for any other, but it was part of her terms...terms he had abided by and would now if he wished her to receive him as he desired her to.
Her back was to him and she had not heard him enter. The bedroom had not changed from when he had last seen it. The fire still crackled warmly in the behind the hearth stone and the many candles fitted to ornamental wall fixtures were lit and sputtering wax. Their wicks were always too long, he had told her that before, and yet she always insists they were fine.
As he crossed the hardwood floor he cantered towards her as delicately as he could, his ears fixated on the cadence of the tune. If she faltered it was a sign she had heard him...and while he wanted to surprise her he did not want to scare her, she would be scared enough when she laid eyes upon him.
He was close enough that he could smell her, reach out and touch her if he liked when he carefully sunk to his knees and approached her from behind. He held his breath when he found himself only inches from her and hesitated when he reached out and gently tangled the fingers of one hand in the ends of her long dark hair. It was longer now by as much as several inches since he'd last seen her.
He stood on his knees and let the arms of his robes fall down to his elbows as he gently laid his hands on her upper arms and spoke gently to her, whispering as kindly as he could into her ear. "Elizabeth..."
She did not stop playing and for this he was grateful. Though he wondered if she wanted to see him, if her stony indifference to his touch was her way of telling him to leave.
He whispered into her name a little more loudly into her other ear before kissing her delicately on the neck.
Her hands fells from the piano's keys and landed at her sides. She still held her arms and remained close to her, but she was still as a statue, peering not at her music notes, but through them...that much of her face he could see.
"I know it's you." She started. He opened his mouth to speak but shut it when she continued. "I never doubted any of those tales the Potter boy told...about you, about your return...about your inhuman way of persisting through life after what should have been your death."
He waited, unable to decipher the tone of her reception of him by the inflections in her voice or the stillness of her form. "I wondered when- and if I'd see you again." She added.
"Of course...of course you would see me again." He said softly.
She turned on her seat to face him, her hair flying and her face set as if to fight. But when her dark eyes fell on him – on his new self – the intention in her face faltered as did the words on her lips. Instead she regarded him, taking in his new features. She raised a hand as if to cover her mouth but instead she reached out timidly to touch him pulling back a half inch before actually laying her palm on the side of his face. Her eyes became tearful and he sunk into her touch, tacking hold of her wrist to keep her hand there, not wanting her to take it back.
"Oh Tom...what have you done to yourself?" She asked softly. His eyes flitted open sharply, he hated that name...though with her it had seemed appropriate. "I don't care if you came back from the dead...I'm still not calling you Lord and I'm certainly not calling you Voldemort."
He looked up at her and when face broke into a tearful smile he lunged forward and hugged her, holding her tight.
"I always thought that was such a stupid sounding name." She said through her tears and if had been capable...he thought this might have been the one occasion where he too might have cried.