Disclaimer: The characters in this book all belong to J.K. Rowling, I've only borrowed them for my own momentary entertainment. This goes, as well, for the musical icon Sir Elton John and every other artist mentioned in this fic. All lyrics used have been credited and no monetary gain has been made. I'm just bored during the quarantine. I'll gladly remove this if it offends any powers that be. For the love of Merlin, please don't sue me.
A quick note: This fic was born from a silly discussion between my sister and myself, where we came up with the headcannon that the Marauders must've listened to 60s and 70s music. How could they not? It was such a revolutionary time in music, there was no way it didn't make it into their lives in one way or another. Mainly, we imagined them going to Elton John concerts and wondered ourselves whether he possessed any magical origins, other than the obvious ones. I've been wanting to write this for like five years, finally, here it is.
ELTON JOHN!
IS THERE MAGIC
BEHIND HIS SUCCESS?
Find out on Page 5
This was the blaring headline on this month's Witch Weekly. The bright yellow letters taking up just slightly more than a quarter of the page, overlapping a blown up picture of Elton John's face. He wore pink star-shaped glasses and a green bowler hat. His mouth was open wide in mock surprise, the slightest hint of a smile in the slight, upturned corners of his mouth, selling the mystery the magazine claimed to have all the details on.
The debate had been going on for years in the wizard community. Obviously, muggles didn't know about Elton John's supposed duplicitous life seeing as they didn't know about wizards at all. They just thought he was an overly flamboyant man, who wrote and sang really catchy rock and roll tunes. But in the media world of wizardry there was hardly anyone left who didn't have an opinion on the topic. Although wizards were aware of muggle life, they weren't always up to date on the more nuanced details of muggle culture. Yet, somehow Elton John had seeped into both, and no wizard could tell whether he had done this purposely or not.
Was he a wizard pretending to be a muggle? Was he a muggle who had somehow learned about the wizarding world and was now shrewdly catering to both sides of the field? Was he muggleborn perhaps? How was it that he had managed to captivate two cultures so inherently different, so separate, all at once?
Lily had known of him in the muggle world before his inadvertent crossover into the wizarding world. "Crossover" being a word you'd use if you were of the opinion that he'd orchestrated his transition in order to cover more ground and expand his success. "Inadvertent" was the word you added to it if you thought he was just that much of a talented muggle presence on the world that even wizards were immune to it.
Lily was convinced he was a muggle. She'd argued that side vehemently, infuriated by the idea that wizards thought muggles could never gain success on their own without the help of magic. She could hardly remember which came first: her fascination with Elton John or her advocacy for muggle resilience.
Of course, James Potter would be the one to calmly announce one evening when the subject came up that he believed Elton John was born a wizard and was taking everyone for a ride because the speculation only added to his enigma which in turn birthed curiosity which in turn sold records and concert tickets.
Lily was sure she'd never hated him more.
He had found her button. It had been like pulling the fire alarm in the house of her brain just to watch pandemonium set in. She lit up like a firecracker, visage matching the color of her hair.
It quickly became a dinner tradition. A tradition from hell, if you asked many students sitting near by, murmurs of "this again" as they picked up their plates and went to join friends at other house tables. All James had to do was bring up the subject and Lily would fire up. The table around them, unbeknownst to Lily, emptying out. Lily making passionate points with tightly wound fists on the dining table.
But arguments about Elton John's magical—or non-magical—beginnings turned into discussions about his technique, his influences, and rock and roll artists wizards were still very much in the dark about. Artists that didn't have a trace of magic in their blood. Lily was suddenly excited to introduce her new circle of friends to Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis. She tipped over cackling while sitting on the Gryffindor common room floor when James tried to impersonate Elvis Presley's dance moves, pushing out of her mind the way his bangs fells slightly over his forehead in a very Elvis-esque manner.
Lily seemed to have begun something. She'd even found Sirius Black, who was usually so blasé about everything, eyeing the back cover of a Jimi Hendrix record sleeve while she played it on the gramophone she'd acquired with Professor McGonagall's help, and then later charmed to play muggle records.
"What else is like this?" Sirius had asked. After a slow expanding grin, Lily quickly sent a letter to her father to please mail her her record collection.
It was soon after introducing him to The Doors that Sirius showed up to King's Cross at the end of the summer of 1976 sporting blue jeans, a leather jacket and a haircut not dissimilar to that of Jim Morrison. Girls on the platform who usually stared at him longingly from a distance back at Hogwarts were now literally tripping over their own feet on the platform, some having to be pulled by the back of their blouses before absentmindedly stepping right into the tracks. Sirius, of course, was oblivious to it all.
"Took me some work, but I managed to hunt one down," he said in his familiar proud, smug way, but there was something else in his expression, perhaps the way something lit up behind his eyes that almost revealed a little kid on Christmas day excitedly showing everyone his new toy.
It was on that same train ride that Sirius, much to Lily's shock and amusement, pulled out the muggle magazine Rolling Stone and showed Lily a picture of Jim Morrison nonchalantly leaning on his motorcycle.
Pointing to it, Sirius asked, "What is it that and what does it do?"
Lily was enjoying this far too much.
She'd often find him studying in the common room, sprawled out on the chaise lounge, looking only as regal as Sirius Black knew how to do without even trying at all. "When the Music's Over" was a recurring play during these study sessions and "People Are Strange" for when he was in a more upbeat mood.
He wasn't as much into Elton John as she was, or even as James had gradually become, but he didn't seem to mind and might even bob his foot along when Lily played her records in the common room. He would even play drums with his and James' wand when James would break into his impression of the musician sitting at the piano, pressing only half the right keys, belting at the top of his voice "Bitch! Bitch! Bitch is back!" stopping abruptly when McGonagall entered the room and stared at him paralyzed.
But this discovery of muggle music opened a door for him, wider than Lily could even begin to imagine. Summer of '76 he'd returned home, his head full of muggle voices singing about freedom, fighting for your dreams and rebelling against "the system." It was as if he'd found a new brand of energy.
It was also a way to distinguish himself from the other Blacks at Grimmauld place. But even more than that, it was a way to aggravate his mother.
Afternoon outings into the muggle parts of cities led him to learn so much about the culture. He bought magazines, clothing, and strange artifacts like batteries and a fanny pack even though he didn't know how to use them. Lily would just have to explain. He covered the walls of his bedroom in posters of artists, some of whom he'd learned about through Lily, like Marlon Brando in the poster for The Godfather and Farrah Fawcett in a red bathing suit smiling wide, golden hair flowing all around her. And of course, one huge colorful poster of Elton John leaning over, reaching out to the camera in a way that made it seem like he was reaching out of the poster into the real world, a surprised expression on his face like he was amazed at his own power to do this.
To say that his mother hated it was the understatement of the year—of the century, perhaps of all existence. She came into his room raging, swinging her wand madly about, attempting to tear it all off his walls, but he'd placed a permanent sticking charm on it all. This only infuriated her more. Then again his maniacal laughter and his cynical egging on as she'd tried and failed probably also fanned the flames of her rage. What Sirius had managed to do was push tensions to a point they had never reached before. He did wonder whether in some subconscious part of his mind this was what he'd set out to do. He personally enjoyed the study of muggle culture, but it had also given him the catalyst he'd craved for the last sixteen years.
On a night after which his mother had made herself sick with fury, she threatened him and ordered him to stop with his muggle pursuits, or he could find somewhere else to sleep from now on.
Sirius didn't hesitate. He packed his things but left all the posters perpetually unremovable. She'd have to literally burn the house down to get rid of them. And even then, he wasn't completely sure if that would work. He grinned one last time at the muggle monument he'd made of his room, and while everyone slept, he walked out of Grimmauld Place never to return again.
But he would return. In 1995 he'd stand at the door of his bedroom again and look around at all the faces on posters and pictures around him, the distant sounds of "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road" drifting upwards from the muggle radio Arthur Weasley had set up in the family room.
What do you think you'll do, then?
I bet they'll shoot down the plane
It'll take you a couple of vodka and tonics
To set you on your feet again
They still don't know, Lily, he thought to himself. Whether he's a wizard or not. He knew with unwavering certainty that she would still plunge deep into this discussion, tight wound fists and all.
But it didn't matter, did it? Elton John's was a different kind of magic. One that could transport you forward and backward through time. All at once he was a boy intrigued by the allure of Jim Morrison and what he meant when he sang "Some are born to sweet delight, some are born to the endless night" and the way the energy in "Bitch is Back" made him feel the future expanding with all its endless possibilities. Being young made you feel invincible and music somehow fueled that. But music lied. Like a drug, it was just a momentary solution to get you through whatever you were currently going through. Music gave you wings like that to dream of better futures, of lives lived fully free. But one thing he'd learned for certain was this: your zest for life could only take you so far. In the end life would always find a way to cut you down.
Remus was perhaps the only one of the bunch that truly didn't seem to have any interest in Lily's records. He wasn't dismissive, in fact he was always polite when Lily asked if he minded her playing them. Secretly, of course, she was playing DJ/Archeologist, hoping to find the one song that would pique his interest, convinced that there had to be one—that's just the way music worked.
He seemed to enjoy The Beatles—but who didn't? They were The Beatles. It frustrated Lily to no end. It was too basic. Even when she would play their more recent stuff, he'd ask her if she could play "Love Me Do" which of course was a fine song, but generic at best. She found it hard to believe that 1. She'd been able to tap into Sirius' tastes before him, and 2. That someone who seemed to spend so much time in quiet contemplation couldn't find the right combination of music and lyrics to stir something inside him.
Truth was Remus had heard plenty to stir too much inside him. His opinion, which he'd mostly chosen to keep to himself because James and Sirius would surely have louder, more convincing ideas about this, was that wizard music was subpar to muggle music. He sometimes would even like to tell Lily that he believed Elton John was pure muggle. There just seemed to be something in particular about the muggle experience that made music all that more poignant, all that more painful. Wizards could tell a story with music and entertain you, but muggles had perfected the magic of touching parts of you that were mostly intangible.
It was true that a lot of things came easier to wizards because of their access to magic, but maybe this was why muggle music was so much more moving. Their struggle was reflected in their art. Yes, wizards had all the same heartache as muggles did, but at least they could break glasses and plates in a fit of fury and pain and still have a full china set when the moment passed.
Years later, as the wizarding world was in the throes of the second war, Remus had come across a homeless man playing Bob Dylan's "Blowing in the Wind" on a guitar.
How many times can a man look up
Before he sees the sky?
How many ears must one person have
Before he can hear people cry?
And how many deaths will it take 'till he knows
That too many people have died?
It was as if all the weariness of the last twenty years was suddenly coming down on him. It was so easy sometimes to keep going, to keep fighting, and to not stop and feel the weight of the world around you. Sometimes it was better not to break momentum. If he stopped to do so, he feared the weight might be too much and he would not be able to find the strength to get up again.
He'd leaned on the wall of the building behind him and slid so that he'd ended up sitting next to the homeless man as he played, his eyes becoming moist, his fist clutched, his chest tight, the reality of everything, of having to fight this fight again, this time without his friends, pressing on him.
"You alright, mate?" the homeless man asked him soon as his song was over, tuning his guitar peg.
Distracted, Remus took a moment to register the man talking to him.
"Yeah," he said. "Just need a moment."
"Cool," said the man. He strummed a few strings.
Then with renewed vigor he began the first notes of Elton John's "I'm Still Standing."
Feeling blood flooding back into his face, the numbness of his limbs fading away, Remus stood up again. He dug into his pocket and dropped some muggle coins into the man's cup. Though feeling better, he was still somewhat startled, now more by the man's choice of song and artist. Remus didn't know it, but he was staring at the homeless man incredulously.
The man winked at him and belted, "I'm still standing! Yeah, yeah yeah!"
He thought of Lily in the summer of '78, driving her car, James in the passenger seat, Sirius with him in the back, windows rolled down so that her long red hair blew wildly into the back seat. She and James practically screaming the lyrics to "Benny and the Jets" en route to an Elton John concert. Sirius excited enough and not too cool to join them, playing drums on the headrest of James' seat.
He could see it clear as day, Lily's hand outside her window, riding the waves of the wind in time to the beat. James playing air guitar to all the piano notes. Sirius wearing that ridiculous leather jacket even though it was over 26 degrees Celsius and the sun was beating down on them.
James belting, "BENNY! BENNY! BENNY!" almost to a perfect pitch.
Of course it was Elton John, Lily. But it was the sadder, slower songs, the ones no one else wanted to listen to. The ones James would call songs to sleep to, the one's Sirius would leave the room for, never wanting to be impolite to Lily (she had, after all, been the only one who'd seen him for the first time in that leather jacket and kept a straight face). It was "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road" and "Your Song," Joni Mitchell's "River" and The Beatles' "Yesterday."
It had always played out this way: Remus was simply just not like the others. Things seemed to always touch him on a deeper level. He enjoyed the faster, more upbeat, wilder songs along with everyone else. He clapped along to "Crocodile Rock" and appreciated the dark coolness of "Riders on the Street," but the slower ballads, the acoustics, the way he wasn't sure what a Rocketman was, but he knew felt a terribly longing when he heard it, an emptiness he couldn't explain, those were the songs his heartstrings were constantly being pulled by.
He was different enough already. He didn't understand why he also had to prefer the songs the others made fun of.
Standing in front of that homeless man that day, he wished he'd told Lily: He loved all of it. Always careful never to reveal too much emotion, muggle music was the only thing that could ever make him feel like he was losing control of his incessantly restrained self.
"I'm not allowed to listen to him," Peter announced one day when Lily asked him what his favorite Elton John song was.
"What?" James asked bemused. "Not allowed?"
Of course, to James "not allowed" was a concept he'd never quite understood. But saying you weren't allowed to listen to music was like saying you weren't allowed to look at the sky.
"My mother says it's the devil's music," Peter explained. "He says Elton John probably practices dark magic. She doesn't like the way he dresses either."
"What's wrong with the way he dresses?" James asked, becoming more and more alarmed. "I've seen wizards wearing underwear outside of their pants when trying to dress like muggles. How's that any better?"
Peter shrugged. All he knew was that his mother had warned him against listening to that type of music. Somehow he thought perhaps she saw something in Elton John that was wild and unrestrained. He thought he could see it too—all that color and the vivaciousness of his music represented a type of freedom. But too much freedom was dangerous, his mother would often say. She already slaved long days at the ministry of magic cleaning offices and hallways on every floor, so many floors, he never wanted to be a source of worry to her. He didn't want her to think that he was meddling in dark, dangerous things. So if his mother asked him to stay away from "that funny Elton John man" then he would stay away.
That didn't mean he didn't feel left out when Remus, Sirius, James and Lily went off to concerts without him every summer. No one had even thought to invite him. Yes, he would've turned down the invitation, but he still would have liked to have been invited, to know that they had at least thought of him. But not even Lily, who always went out of her way to make sure he and Remus didn't feel excluded when James and Sirius got caught up in their own bubble, had asked.
In an attempt to feel like a part of it all, Peter decided to give a rather chaste looking record a try. It had two men on the cover: one very tall and ginger, the other very short and dark. The short one partially covering the face of the of the tall one behind him. "Bridge Over Troubled Water" was the name of the song, and when he let Lily know he quite liked the mellow and soothing sound of it, she replied in an almost coo that it was very sweet.
"This is a song about loyalty and the endurance of friendship, Pete. It's a beautiful song."
Peter hadn't gotten that. He thought the man had literally been singing about a bridge over some form of creek. He thought that his mother might allow him to listen to this duo going by the name of Simon and Garfunkel, whose melodies sounded so unthreatening. Lily loaned him the record, and Peter remained in the common room one night well after everyone had gone to sleep playing it.
He also liked "Sounds of Silence." He didn't know what it meant when they said "because a vision slowly creeping, left a seed while I was sleeping" and "people talking without speaking, people hearing without listening." It didn't make any sense at all. But the melody brought a strange calm to him. The world came almost to a stand still. It almost didn't matter that James had said "Bridge Over Troubled Water" was a song for old ladies. It almost made it insignificant that Lily sometimes, in trying so hard to be nice to him, to make up for James' natural rudeness, treated him like a little child. This sometimes felt like condescension even more than when James talked down to him. Lily's attention sometimes felt like being pitied, and he didn't like being pitied.
He was almost glad that he had very little interest in Elton John. He almost relished that his mother had asked him to refrain from having anything to do with the man. It gave him a form of power to be able to represent the opposite of their beliefs: He's not that special, and neither are any of you.
Still, he didn't completely hate muggle music. Even if he couldn't see it. Even if it felt somehow beyond his reach, even if he felt like they were talking in riddles. Why did songs have to be so duplicitous? he thought. Why couldn't people in songs just say outright how they felt, in words everyone could understand?
Can you imagine us years from today,
Sharing a park bench quietly
How terribly strange to be seventy
Old friends, memory brushes the same years,
Silently sharing the same fears
Some songs were pretty straight forward, though, and he was able to enjoy those more. This song called "Old Friends," for example, made him think of himself, Sirius, James and Remus sitting in a park bench many years from now, feeding birds or something. If he ever got good at it, maybe playing wizard's chess, having a laugh as he called out, "Checkmate!"
Lily, for her part, was pleased. So much in fact that she couldn't bring herself to tell Peter that Simon and Garfunkel had split up years ago. Better to let the illusion live on.
James, for his part, had never had any interest in the Elton John discussion. That is, until he'd heard Lily Evans giving an impassioned speech at dinner time in the Great Hall. Suddenly, he was very interested in the subject, even while still feeling pretty impartial to the conversation. But what better way to get Lily's attention than to disagree with her on a subject she had so much to say about.
Maybe it was his own more grown-up version of pulling her pigtails. To agree with her, to nod and say "Yes, I hear what you're saying. Just because he's a muggle doesn't mean he can't be that talented" would've gotten him what? A split second of recognition. A "Yes, thank you." And then what? Everyone back to their own lives.
By disagreeing with her he could invoke some sort of lasting reaction in her. One that would have her acknowledge him wherever he was, even if just by the fury in the pit of her stomach. Lily loved a good debate. He'd known this about her since their very first year at Hogwarts. He didn't think there was anything wrong in simply trying make himself a part of it.
Then again, when had James ever approached anything from the simpler angle?
After years of trying to get her attention (making fun of Snivellus didn't count), he'd finally figured it out. While she'd done her best to ignore his advances in the past, Lily was finally engaging with him. They were so deep into the ongoing discussion that she almost didn't realize when he'd turned the conversation to areas that didn't require either of them to stand on either side of an argument.
Lily had known James was trying to get a rise out of her. The only thing she hadn't realized was that it wasn't solely with the idea to infuriate her. Not really, anyway. The fury was just a catalyst. He'd just needed an in.
But by the time Lily realized how much time she was spending talking to James and his friends about Elton John and other muggle music, she was so far in, when she looked back the start seemed a distant blur.
Now James was sitting at the common room piano banging keys, belting 'The Bitch is Back," Sirius was browsing through motorcycle magazines, Remus was staring wistfully out the window when "Rocketman" played, and Peter was hurting his head attempting to make abstract connections with the lyrics, "When darkness comes and pain is all around, like a bridge over troubled water I will lay me down…"
It was almost panic inducing, the way the events of your life sometimes suddenly caught up to you in a fast forward reel to a medley of every song that has ever meant anything to you. One minute you're lost in the rhythm, the next your life is being played out to the beat of all your favorite songs.
Suddenly, James is asking her what her favorite song is. She doesn't know why he cares, but she tells him she couldn't pick one anyway. He tells her his is "Tiny Dancer," and she doesn't know why she cares, but she'll hear it differently now every time it plays.
Suddenly, she's allowing herself to dwell on the strands of hair that fall over his forehead when he impersonates Elvis. Suddenly, she's laughing at almost everything he does. When once everything he did infuriated her, suddenly, her eye rolling is ironic. Suddenly, she hears Elton belt from the gramophone, "And I think it's gonna be a long long time, 'til touchdown brings me round again to find…"
Suddenly, it's late at night in the common room, and he's asking her to dance to "Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters." She can't think of a reason to say no. As he holds her close, and he sings into her ear, "Turn around and say good morning to the night…" Suddenly, their fingers entwine. Suddenly, Lily knows she's too far in; she can never go back. Suddenly, she thinks maybe that's alright.
Suddenly, she's driving long distance with these boys she'd once despised to watch the man that had brought them together perform. Suddenly, the four of them minus one, filling up her tiny car with sound, with a form of energy that can only ever be felt. "Oh but they're weird, and they're wonderful! Oh, Benny she's really keen!"
Suddenly she's in the middle of a sea of bodies, all chanting the same words like one massive universal voice, "Blue jean baby, L.A. lady…"
Suddenly, in this sea of bodies James is standing behind her, arms around her, whispering "Now she's in me, always with me, tiny dancer in my hand…"
A small, black, palm-sized box materializes in his hand in front of her.
Suddenly, a flurry of white petals, giggles and tears, cheesy vows with borrowed song lines. Suddenly, champagne and a duet to "Don't Go Breaking My Heart" from two pissed drunk best friends.
Suddenly, destruction and death. Suddenly, a black and white photograph of warriors. A memory frozen in time that will inspire future warriors. Looking at the picture, the words just come to her:
All this science I don't understand
It's just my job five days a week
Suddenly, a rocking chair, two wide green eyes that stare up at her with wonder, blinking with dewy-eyed amazement. Softly, she sings to him, "…how wonderful life is while you're in the world…"
Suddenly, it makes sense, why two worlds so separate, and yet so very similar, were so desperate to lay claim to a form of magic so difficult to replicate.
And she realizes she could never choose one single favorite song. Songs were like colors and there was one for every season. At every different stage of her life a different song had meant something different to her. And there had been so many. Her own life soundtrack could play for close to an eternity.
So many words. So many melodies. Not a blank pallet without it all, but how much more vibrant the colors of her story shone because of it all.