A/N: Lyrics under the title by Imani Coppola.
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#29 - the sound of waves
a Seascape
- my day at the ocean / my day for collecting shells / it's my day for some fishin' / it's my day at the ocean -
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They walked along the shore one early morning in late August. It was colder than it had been for a long time, and the wind that was blowing from the sea was almost chilly. It was probably going to rain later.
"Oh! Look at this!" Pansy stopped to pick something up.
"A seashell?"
"Yes." Pansy held it up to her ear. "I thought so," she said with a satisfied grin, and gave it to Ron, who did the same.
"What?"
"You can't hear the waves?"
"Well, yes, but..." Ron gestured towards the sea.
Pansy snatched back the shell. "Oh, don't you know anything? Shells you can hear the sea from are actually recordings that the Sea Symphonic Orchestra of the merpeople of the Atlantic have made and left for people to find. It's a sampling of their music."
"So seashells are in fact... advertising?"
They sat down on a rock.
"I guess you could say that. Kind of cool, isn't it?"
"I'd say it's kind of disillusioning, actually."
Pansy shrugged, and pointed her wand at the shell. "Sonorus," she said, and the sound rose to mingle with the actual waves.
It was interrupted almost right away, though, by another sound. "Ron and Pansy, sitting on a beach, K-I-S-S-" a voice began, but was cut off as Ron turned and grabbed something.
"All right, stop that," he said to the surroundings in general, and Fred and George appeared from behind another rock nearby, both of them grinning from ear to ear.
"These Extendable Mouths of yours are freaky," Pansy told them as they approched the rock she and Ron were sitting on. "Who knows what you'll end up doing with them."
Fred and George gave her identical innocent looks.
"I can't believe you two are actually adults," she said.
"Yes, well, we're in denial as well," Fred commented cheerfully.
They bickered back and forth for a while, until Ginny showed up a while later, Neville in tow.
"Ooh, is that one of those Sea Symphony Shells?" she asked, pointing at the shell that was still lying there on the rock next to Pansy. "Luna told me about those."
She took out her wand and pointed at it like Pansy had before. "Haffsårkestern," she said.
"What kind of a spell is that?" Ron asked as the melody the waves changed.
The sky was still grey, and around them the gulls were crying. The wind was blowing from the sea and the salty scent it carried with it was strong.
It was probably going to rain later.
And on an otherwise empty beach, the sound of the waves of the Sea Symphony Shell was forming a familiar melody, and next to it, six young witches and wizards were dancing the Macarena.
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A/N II, geeky language stuff: Haffsårkestern was the name of the ship in Tove Jansson's Muminpappans memoarer. It's a deliberate misspelling of havsorkestern, which means something like "The Orchestra of the Sea", or "The Sea Symphony".