The melody came and went like a merry-go-round.
Severus loved to listen to her playing. Not because it was particularly good - she made mistakes and was evidently out of practice, but because it was like sharing something with her. He couldn't help himself, even though he knew he was indulging, even though he knew they actually shared nothing expect space and sound. Every Friday evening, he came back to the Music Room. She always worried she was disturbing his marking. He said he didn't even notice her, and she could continue to butcher the great piano repertoire as long as she wanted. He stole glimpses of her profile, never daring to watch her too long, he let the air full of notes wrap around him, awaking his body from synapses to skin. He tried to focus on the music, on anything, let his traitorous mind lead him to fantasies of her that would only leave him feel bereft, but her presence overwhelmed his senses and each time the night left him hard, and yearning.
This evening, she had sat at the piano excitedly, in front of a score so new the cover kept closing stubbornly. A deep breath, and her fingers had fell cautiously on the keys. Just a few notes, swaying like the current of a quiet river, and then, above it, a timid melody had risen in the air.
His heart had quickened. Of all the pieces... she had chosen this one?
Memories had come rushing. Long afternoons in Spinner's End, sitting against his mother on the stool, his feet not quite touching the ground, his fingers imitating hers. Listen to this, Severus, love, isn't it magical? He hadn't thought about his mother's smile for a long time, buried under years of misery, but there it was, conjured by the harmonies.
The music had stopped abruptly after a flat chord, and Hermione had started again. Again, the low whisper of the left hand and, above it, the hopeful song. Again. And again.
Severus' fingers pressed invisible keys. He remembered this passage, this deep rumble of music, the accelerating rhythm, and the long flow of notes that ran alongside the piano. It had taken him weeks to master it.
"Damn it!" Hermione let her hands fall on her knees.
"Is something the matter?", he said, raising his eyes towards her like he had forgotten she was here.
"I can't play it. It is just too difficult." She looked dejected.
"Why don't you play something else? I am sure we could find you a nursery rime or a pop song that even you might be able to not entirely mangle."
She didn't laugh, and cold regret slithered in his stomach.
"It's just... I really wanted to play this piece", she said.
"Why this one?"
She said nothing. Her eyes shone in the light of the fire. He wanted to take her in his arms, but he just cleared his throat.
"Maybe you can't play it because it is not supposed to be played by you alone." He ignored her look of surprise, he ignored the voice in his head yelling at him to stay silent. "You only have two hands, this is for four."
The look she gave him, full of amazement and something like joy, was enough to make his heart beat faster.
"You know this?"
Holding her gaze, he nodded.
"How?" She hesitated. "Forgive me... but how?"
"Do you mean, how does a Death Eater from the wrong side of town knows Schubert?"
"No! I didn't mean it like that." She seemed mortified and he chuckled. "Please don't call yourself that", she pleaded. "Death Eater."
Had it been anyone else, he would have insisted that was exactly what he was, but he just raised his hands in a gesture of apology.
"My mother loved music. This music, especially."
Hermione turned around on the stool to face him. Under her expectant gaze, he felt restless.
"It is rare for pure-bloods to show any interest in Muggle culture", she said softly. "She must have been a rare sort of witch."
Images of his mother flashed up in Severus' mind: singing with the radio when they were alone, hiding in his closet a pair of red shoes she had bought so his father wouldn't find them, begging him not to throw them in the bin when he eventually did, playing the old piano with sparkles of magic at her fingertips, telling him resisting his father would only make it worse.
"She was too weak for the world she was born in." He was staring far in front of him. "In the end, it destroyed her."
The room fell silent. He turned his head. She was looking at him with the same gaze he once insulted, some years ago, at the beginning of their tentative friendship. You mistake empathy with pity, Severus. He had surprised even himself when he had apologised, albeit without eloquence or enthusiasm. In retrospect, perhaps he was already falling in love.
"Severus, I am so sorry."
There it was, like last time, her voice full of earnest emotion. But this time, he felt no shame, no anger, just the deep longing her presence always sparked off.
"I think that when she lost everything from our world, when she was most alone, music was her last source of magic."
"But she shared it with you."
"Yes, she did. To a point. But in the end, I also left." He sighed. "I abandoned her."
He hadn't expected the words he had suppressed for so long to escape him. Hermione's voice was soft.
"Would you tell me about her?"
"I will, but another time."
The lump in his throat strangled his words, and he was grateful she said nothing about it. She got up to make them some tea, leaving him to compose himself.
"So, you know Schubert", she said lightly when she came back. "Had I known you were a connaisseur, I wouldn't have inflicted my playing on you."
"I am not a connaisseur, merely... an amateur."
"That's even worse."
She settled on the stool.
"Do you play?"
A nod. Her whole face lit up. He knew what she was going to ask, and he also knew he wouldn't be able to say no.
"Would you play it with me?"
"Will you leave me in peace if I refuse?"
"Of course not".
With an exaggerated gesture and bow, she beckoned him to the piano.
"Maestro".
He wondered if he should enlarge the stool. Would he offend if he did? Would she be uncomfortable if he didn't? Then she moved to the side, and he sat near her, choice taken from him.
Their bodies didn't touch. Between them, there was almost nothing, a few atoms, a small space, a whole universe Severus did not dare to cross. The heat of her reached him, an almost physical thing. She talked, and he had to turn his head to look at her. Had they ever been this close?
"Ready, Severus?"
On the score, the notes looked like footprints on a forgotten path. His fingers hovered over the keyboard, making imaginary music. Oh, yes. He remembered.
"Ready."
Seconds stretched in the room. Finally, as a breath filled him, he let his fingers fall on the piano and the long silence died.
His fingers moved, compelled by the memories of movements he had thought long gone. For a few notes, he fell uncertain, but then her hand appeared in the corner of his eye, its melody joining his, and he could not think about anything but this music that by some kind of strange magic, they made together. Severus felt he couldn't stop playing. It was something more powerful than them, a force they couldn't escape, a violent river which kept shaking them in parallel tremors, separating them and throwing them again to collapse against each other. She swayed in the flow of music, grazing his body with the side of her hand, her shoulder, then of her entirely. Their hands crossed in a difficult chord and the nearness of her, their flesh so intertwined made him burn with arousal.
This curious exchange in the voice of someone else, this tenuous echo of a human heart, felt more intimate than any conversation he ever had with her. He felt he was pouring everything he held secret, all the things he wouldn't even whisper to himself. Couldn't she see it in the way he watched out for her breath? Couldn't she hear it in the agitation of his playing ?
And then, in the middle of a turbulent passage, he remembered. This duet. This moment with her. Its creator had written it, in the last days of his young life, for the woman he loved, hopelessly. His student. His fucking student.
Had Severus been less overwhelmed, he might have found the irony amusing. In that moment, though, he was striken by the fear she would see through him. She would understand. She would know.
A silence. Her eyes on his. They took a breath. Music once again. It was the small song of the beginning, less hopeful this time. Nostalgia had enveloped it in its soft cotton. The end was near. Everything sounded darker. A saturnine song, frenzied, urgent, begging not to end. Hear me now.
As the last chords escaped their fingers in harmony, like the toll of distant bells, they held each other's gaze. The air was full of unspoken words and quiet music.
And she hadn't heard.