Blues
At ten to five the phone rang.
"My brother," said Sev. "I'll get it." He went to the phone and picked it up. "Hello."
"Hi, Sev, it's Ariel."
"I already knew that, honey, and I already recognize your voice. How's everything going?"
"I was calling to tell you that Jack is coming at five and that I'm going to take advantage of the time he's with Mom to go back there and be with you."
"Sounds great, we're making music," said the eldest. "Have you decided who you're sleeping with tonight?"
"Yes, Sev. Since I'm going to spend the rest of the afternoon with you and I'm going to stay there for dinner too, after dinner I'm going to be with Mum again and stay with her. Is that okay with you?"
"Yes, of course."
"It's because she has to work tomorrow and I won't be able to see her in the morning, so she can wake up with me."
"Okay, keep her company."
"I'll bring you the things you need, Sev, Deborah and Lily have already taken the rest. Do you need anything else?"
"Not at the moment, come whenever you want."
"Okay, Sev, then we'll hang up now, so I can say goodbye to Mum before Jack comes."
"Great, we'll wait for you here."
They hung up.
"Prince…" Hippolyta said to him. "Was it Ariel?"
"Yes."
"Is he going to sleep with you?"
"No, he's staying with my mother," he answered.
"Do you want me to come?" very shy and timid.
"I don't know yet, I haven't had time to think about it."
"So… what do we do?" she asked.
"Andrea, do you mind if I stop by your house after dinner? I have to talk to Hippolyta alone about something we have pending and I want to solve it before tonight."
"No, of course not," Andrea answered. "Of course you can come, even to dinner if you want. Philip will also love to see you and chat with you, you were only there for a short while on Wednesday."
"I really appreciate the invitation to dinner but it won't be possible, my brother is having dinner here and I want to be with him until he gets back to my mother. I'd better go to the after-dinner conversation if you don't mind."
"Great, Prince, whatever you want." And to his daughter, "Are we going, sweetheart?"
"I'm going to get my sleeping things in case I don't stay here tonight," said the girl.
"Come on, hurry up, let's not keep your Grandpa and your Uncle waiting, they're impatient to see you."
Hippolyta ran to get her things.
Sophie asked Sev, "Will you feel like continuing making music now that your brother is coming?"
"Yes, of course, I want to make the most of you coming, Sophie, and he will enjoy it too," he replied.
"Okay, then we'll wait for him to arrive so you can greet him and we'll continue, okay?"
"Great."
"I'm going to prepare the snack," said Violet.
"I'll help you, Mum," offered Petunia.
"Okay, honey."
They both went to the kitchen.
"Call Lily to come down," asked Sev.
"Wait for your brother, Severus," said Peter. "When we're all there, we'll call her."
"Okay. What else are we going to do, Sophie?"
"We could start with your first harmony lesson, but you'd rather do it with Valerie, right?" asked the pianist.
"Yes, because otherwise, when we meet her you'll have to repeat what you've already explained to me."
"True, and it's better with my books and scores, which I didn't bring today. Then I have another idea."
Hippolyta ran down. "Prince... Prince... can I have a peck goodbye until tonight?" she asked him.
"Sure, honey."
They pecked and he also said goodbye with a kiss from Andrea. They left immediately Apparating.
"What were you telling me, Sophie?" asked Sev.
"You have another instrument there, don't you?" she asked.
"Yes, a flugelhorn."
"Wow… We could play a blues together, that way you start improvising."
"Ugh… but I don't even know the notes," he objected.
"But, didn't Deborah bring you the method too, Sev?" asked Cecile.
"Yeah, sure."
"Then you just look at them there and that's it."
"Of course, of course, but let's take it step by step," said Sophie. "First I'm going to teach you the song on the piano, so you know what notes it's made of. I'll explain something about the flugelhorn, which happens with many wind instruments. The notes that sound on the flugelhorn don't have the same name as those that sound on the piano, it's a transposing instrument. When you play a C on the flugelhorn, it sounds like a B flat, and so on, one tone below."
"What a mess, isn't it?"
"Of course it is, but not for you, but for the pianists who accompany you. You play in a key one tone above mine and that's it, we call the notes differently but they sound the same."
"Oh…"
"So I'm going to play the blues in the key you would play it in, and then when we play together, I'll play it in the key I need to play it in so that both instruments sound the same," she explained.
"And that's not too much trouble for you?"
"No, it's not, classically trained pianists get used to doing it. And a blues is so simple that I can play it in any key."
"There's a reason the seven keys I told you about once exist, Sev," Cecile told him. "My mother reads all seven."
"Wow…"
"Also to change the key of songs and adapt them to the different registers of the human voice without having to rewrite the score," Sophie continued.
"Sure…"
"I'll explain how to improvise. Each chord has a scale, but many chords coincide in the same notes. Don't worry, you won't have to learn a different scale for each chord in the song. In fact, the blues are improvised entirely on just one five-note scale, the pentatonic scale. What you do have to learn are the notes of the chord, since they are the most appropriate to rest on while you improvise. Do you get it?"
"Yes, I do," he answered.
"Great, quick mind, yes sir."
Ariel arrived by Floo, ran to the dining room and threw himself into his arms. "Sev! I've missed you so much…"
"Oh…"
"Ugh… We have a bedroom there for the two of us and I was really sorry when Deborah emptied the drawers of your clothes to bring everything here for you, I want us to live there together…"
"We're going to do it, honey, but you have to give me a little time to get used to it and get over my anger with Mum," explained the eldest. "It's not even been twenty-four hours since I found out."
"You're right, you're right."
"Of course, remember when you found out I existed and you got angry with her too."
"Of course, of course... I was angry for months," said the boy.
"Of course, honey. For the moment I don't plan on coming back before Monday, so you'll have to keep going back and forth at least all weekend, I'm so sorry for you."
"It's okay, Sev. I don't have anything better to do, it's just that I wish the three of us were together and that you could have seen how happy Mum was when I arrived. That also made me very sad, that you missed that moment and the first time I called her Mum."
"True, now I'm also feeling sorry for having missed it, seeing you two so happy together at last."
"It doesn't matter, Sev, when you come back I'm sure she'll be just as happy. And me, it's going to be very special when the three of us are finally together, after almost fourteen years apart."
"It's true, I'm looking forward to it more and more. It'll be soon, don't worry."
"I'm going to put what I have in my backpack in our room for you, okay? It's almost all the clothes, which weighed the least. Lily brought you the books and sandals, has she given them to you yet?"
"No, honey, I haven't seen her," Sev replied.
"I'll go up to put them away and come back down, okay? Keep making music if you want, I'll listen to you."
"Okay, thank you very much."
The boy went upstairs.
Sev was on the verge of tears, Cecile hugged him. "Cry, Sev, come on, don't be shy, you've barely cried and you have a lot to cry about," she told him.
He cried. "Thank you, Cecile."
"Stop thanking everyone. If the rest of us spent our lives thanking you for everything you do for us, we wouldn't say another word. And let me give you some advice, don't get carried away by your brother's illusions, desires and needs, he has also been guilty of hiding it from you since he arrived at Hogwarts. You would have been together for three years if he had told you as soon as he found out."
"True."
"So, for once, be selfish and pay attention to what you need at each moment. Stop worrying so much about others and do it for yourself. Let everyone learn to take care of themselves, as you know how to do."
"You are absolutely right," he agreed.
"Apply the same with everyone, also with the calls you expect to receive in a couple of hours. If you are saturated, let others answer them."
"Okay."
"And the same with Hippolyta, if you don't feel like being with her parents tonight, don't go to their house and that's it," she continued. "Look out for yourself, not for her, she also looks out for herself."
"Of course she does, but then I might sleep alone."
Cecile bonded with him. "I'm staying with you."
"Not for what you expect, Cecile."
"What do you think I expect, Sev? I don't expect anything, just to keep you company, not to be alone and to be able to cry. You can't do it with your brother or Hippolyta, but with me you can. Believe me, I won't take a step that you don't take."
"Ugh… I'm in a mess, Cecile, you all give me so many options that I have no idea what I want."
"You're absolutely right, it's still five in the afternoon and I'm already asking you to decide what you want to do at bedtime. So just pay attention to what's immediate, Sev, whatever you feel like at any given moment, that's what the phone and the Floo are for."
"Okay, Cecile."
"Do you feel like playing more?"
"What most, very much."
"Come on, then when you calm down you can continue and don't worry about anything else for the moment," she recommended. "Enjoy the time we have left as much as you have been doing since we arrived, enjoying and making us all enjoy."
"I have one thing left to worry about."
"Tell me, Sev, let's see what serious problem it is."
"They're waiting for me at Hippolyta's house after dinner now. If I don't show up I'll be breaking my word."
"No problem, Sev. If the time comes you don't feel like going, call them on the Floo and tell them, and if you don't feel like showing your face, call me and I'll call them, remember that I already met them both yesterday."
"Okay, Cecile, we'll do it like this."
"Come on, honey, cry, cry, let it all out…" Cecile continued to tell him tender and comforting words as he continued to cry and even after he calmed down, she didn't let go of him until he did.
Then Sophie told him, "You are in the most appropriate time of your life to play the blues. One meaning of 'blue' is 'sad' and from that meaning the blues are born. I'm not going to stun you with musical theories today, not anymore, you must be saturated by now. We're just going to go with what we feel, I'll play chords, you'll improvise, first on the piano or singing, which is what you control, and later, if you feel like it, try the flugelhorn. Playing winds is a great physical and spiritual exercise, because it's about knowing how to breathe, like when you sing, and it's also very healing."
"Oh…"
"Your whole body and mind involved in creating something beautiful."
"Sure…"
"Let's sit down at the piano, come on."
They sat down at the piano. Sophie began to play with her left hand, very slowly, the harmonic sequence of a minor blues whose pentatonic scale included only white keys, and to improvise with her right. While she played she said to him, "Look how I swing the eighth notes, the first of the pair is longer than the second, almost twice as long. It's a ternary structure, if you divide the time into three, the first eighth note takes two parts and the second one, do you get it?"
"Yes, I do."
"But it's more about feeling it than thinking it. This is music from the depths of the soul."
"Sure."
"Are you keeping the five keys that I use?" asked the pianist. "Tell me them starting from A."
"A, C, D, E, G."
"That's a minor pentatonic. Tone and a half, tone, tone, tone and a half, and tone to get back to A. Do you want to play it?"
"No, keep playing a little longer, I want to soak up the feeling you put into it," he asked.
"Okay."
Sophie played blues in A minor for a few more minutes, until finally Sev said to her, "Here I go."
She stopped improvising and started walking the bass with her left hand and playing chords with her right hand while Sev improvised his first blues on the piano.
After a few minutes, Sophie said to him, "Okay, you've got the swing and the phrasing down. Have you learned the scale by ear yet?"
"Of course."
"Then stop playing. Sing, cry singing, let it all out."
Sev did it, he improvised singing like a lament, like flamenco had sounded to him the day before, he cried and continued doing it while he continued singing.
After twenty minutes he was exhausted, he suddenly stopped and without saying anything to anyone he went upstairs, to the bathroom, into the guest room, took off his trainers, drew the curtains, and just as he was dressed he got into bed, falling asleep almost instantly.
. . . . . . . . .
This part ends here. The next one, "The Year of Victory II. Muggle Holidays."