Harry walked into the screening room and splayed himself out across three chairs. The place was sparsely populated, with barely ten people in all, and the balcony seats were entirely deserted apart from an ice-cream girl who was being pleasured by an usherette far less discreetly than she thought.
It was a lovely old place, with romanesque columns and floral arrangements done over in gold and brass, a wonderful damascus carpet of purple and deep crimson, and walls which were painted in a terrific 'art deco' style. The theater was an old one, the railing now dusty and the paint chipping in places, but Harry found it added to the atmosphere. He loved the place, from the dilapidated exterior, to the charmingly liminal hallway areas that provoked such eerie comfort in him, to the elegantly baroque yet crassly commercial screening rooms.
Harry dozed off, lulled into slumber by these architectural surroundings which reminded him of a far-off and long-forgotten childhood which could not possibly have been his. His last half-conscious thoughts were of a line from a poem he'd read but could no longer name nor even remember fully.
"How charming its grey and pink… "
When Harry awoke, the theater was much more crowded, and considerably louder too. He had evidently been rolled onto the floor as he was sleeping, and the three seats he was saving had been taken by three kids he recognized from school. Looking around, every seat in the room was occupied by someone he had seen at least twice walking along the courtyards and hallways of Hogwarts. And yet Ron and Severus were nowhere to be found.
Harry was about to leave when suddenly he heard a bombastic fanfare echoing from some trumpets, which he recognized as being from Tannhauser. Turning around, he noticed that standing before the projector on a podium was yet another person he recognized from school, Tom Riddle, surrounded on either side by uniformed trumpeters. Next, they belted out part of the prelude from Tristan and Isolde. Harry enjoyed the music of Wagner well enough as did, he felt, anyone with a soul. He went over to the steps of one of the aisles where a few of the other people who couldn't get proper seating were and sat down. A young girl with mousy features and dyed red hair offered him a spliff, which he gladly accepted.
After a while, Riddle began to speak. "My friends, my brothers, my sisters… you are all here because you have heard great things about this film which we are about to show you. You have heard from your friends who were there with us that first night we showed it in the clearing in the forbidden forest… "
Harry chuckled and whispered to the mousy redhead, "Which clearing? The place is mostly clearings!"
She giggled quietly and then shushed him. Harry turned his attention back to Riddle and chuckled to himself.
"- Well, the owners were kind enough to, upon seeing the film themselves, let us hold a screening of it here. And, treat of all treats, the soundtrack shall be played for you live! Not only by these trumpeters, but by the Hogwarts symphonic band!" Riddle threw his arms out, gesturing to the band as they set up their things to the side of the screen. He then walked off the podium, which he picked up and moved out of the way.
The crowd clapped and cheered, meanwhile Harry stole a few discreet glances at the girl. She reminded him of Ginny in some ways, at certain angles. He looked down at his feet, ashamed. Was every time he approached or flirted with a girl just some vain attempt to recreate what he had with Ginny?
He couldn't even be sure that he'd even had much of anything with Ginny. It could have all been the way that he remembered it. It could have been that that towering, mythic romance, the standard to which he held his other relationships, never really existed. It could have all just been a cheap veneer the distortions of memory had lathered onto what was just another meaningless and empty thing devoid of love.