September 2034
ELLA
That first week of classes passed quickly and Ella already had a mountain of homework to do, but all Iris and Kyrie wanted to do was plot how Ella could make the most of her apparently convenient partnership with Henry Parker in charms.
"I don't even know if I like him like that," Ella whispered, her face hot. Every time she'd so much as spotted him across the Great Hall, she'd broken a sweat, wondering to herself how on earth people dealt with this on a regular basis. She knew there were girls in her year who had kissed multiple boys, but they didn't start perspiring all over the place every time they passed by one in the halls.
"So this is your chance to find out if you do," Kyrie said wisely. "You can talk to him. And it's not like he can do anything but that, because it's class. So you'll know if you really get along or not."
Ella didn't particularly want to respond to this comment. It would only encourage them. She almost wanted to regret telling them at all, but she knew she'd feel so much worse if she had kept it to herself. The secret would have eaten away at her.
She sunk down low against the couch cushions, folded her legs criss cross applesauce, and looked around the common room. It was always busy on the weekends. A group of the new first years were sitting on the floor in a corner, because all the good seats had already been taken. They had an awful lot of books around them and every one of them looked lost. Ella would have given anything for that to be her main concern again. Hogwarts had been a lot easier to navigate as a kid.
"I think he really likes you," Iris was saying. "And he's trying to play it off like he doesn't, because you're aloof."
"I'm not aloof. I'm just shy."
"Well you probably seem mysterious to him anyway. But everytime he looks at you, he's smiling."
"Probably because he knows how uncomfortable he's making me," said Ella. But her cheeks grew, if possible, even warmer, because she'd thought way too much about his smile recently. It was hard not to when she shut herself behind the hangings of her four poster bed and thought back to that day less than two weeks ago where he had stood in front of her on the beach and called her pretty and kissed her. It didn't even seem real anymore.
There was a cuckoo clock on the mantelpiece with a little wooden bird that shot out and chirped every hour and it came flying out just then.
"Stop distracting me," Ella said. "We've got choir in an hour and I have so much work I haven't even started."
"O.W.L. year is going to suck, isn't it?" said Iris sadly, looking down at her own textbook.
And they all got to work for a little while.
—-
Choir met every Tuesday evening and every Saturday afternoon with the exception of Hogsmeade weekends. This was enough to put a lot of kids off joining, because they didn't want to give up their weekends, but Ella loved it. The Saturday rehearsals were always her favorite.
Professor Whitby had cracked a few windows that day, so a nice fall breeze blew in every so often and the air had that crisp, clear smell she always loved. The new seating arrangement had placed her in the very middle of the group, at the edge of the sopranos, but next to the tenors. She was seated in between another fifth year, a Slytherin boy named Logan Pickering who she didn't know all that well but who seemed nice enough, and a first year girl she didn't know the name of yet.
Professor Whitby was plunking out the notes for the alto section, on the piano, and she could see Kyrie and Iris struggling to follow along with the awkward jumps. There part was nearly always the most complicated and least intuitive. If it wasn't, they stayed on the same note for a very long time.
Sopranos were lucky to usually have the melody, although Ella usually sang the second soprano part, because Professor Whitby knew she could read music and hang onto a different pitch, even when everyone around her was singing something different. This, she thought, was also probably why he'd put her on the end next to the tenors, because she was less likely to be thrown off her own part than some of the others in her section.
"Alright, keep that in your ear. Don't listen too hard to this next part so you don't get confused. Sopranos, you're up," Professor Whitby said, flipping back a page in his sheet music.
Ella straightened up, watching the first years nearby hesitate and then do the same. They started to sing through the piece nice and slow, stopping every so often to revisit a phrase. The girl next to Ella kept getting lost — it didn't appear she'd ever attempted to follow a piece of sheet music before — so Ella started drawing her finger across her own music as they went along, smiling a little to herself when the girl's eyes drifted over.
After a few minutes, Professor Whitby moved onto the bass section. "How do you know when to get faster?" the girl whispered, sounding a little panicked.
So Ella showed her how there were different length notes and helped her practice counting the music. "See that double line? That means those are sixteenth notes," Ella said softly when Professor Whitby paused to go back over a part. "So they go much faster than some of the others. Like this is a whole note, so it takes up the whole four counts in that measure, but you can fit sixteen of these in that same length of time, so they have to go fast."
"How do you remember all this? It's like another language."
"You'll get the hang of it," Ella said. "Most people get by just by listening anyway. I just know how to read music, because my mum taught me the piano when I was little."
Logan kept glancing at her as she answered the girl's seemingly never-ending questions. She tried to keep her voice extra low, thinking maybe he was annoyed she was talking when they weren't supposed to be, but he never said anything.
Professor Whitby moved onto the tenors after a bit and Ella sat back in her seat to listen. She'd always liked listening to the tenor section. They had a nice full sound, and when they harmonized with the sopranos, it gave her goosebumps.
Music did that to her a lot. Sometimes they would finish, and their sound would echo off the rafters of the choir room, resonating right back into her chest, and she would find it impossible to stop from smiling. It was so cool the things music could do to you.
Logan had a nice voice, too. She'd never sat near enough to him to notice him in particular, though he'd been in choir as long as she had. He fumbled a few parts — she could tell both from following along with her own music and because he shook his head at one part and said, "Woah. That was not right." There was a key change written in beside the treble clef sign that had been tripping everyone up.
He raised his hand and asked Professor Whitby if they could go over that line again, and he played through it a few times. Logan seemed to get the hang of it, but when they went back from the top again, Logan blanked when he got back to it. He muttered something to himself about that note not sticking in his head. He wasn't the only one either.
Professor Whitby gave a little chuckle and stopped playing. "Let's go back to the top one more time, why don't we?"
This time when they reached the key change, without really thinking about it first, Ella began to hum his part.
He glanced at her, but he didn't stop singing this time.
"Thanks," he said quietly, when they'd reached the end of the section they were working on.
Ella just shrugged. "It helps if you focus on the transition. Just memorize these few notes and the few right after the key change and it'll stick."
But Logan didn't have time to answer her, because Professor Whitby had just announced they should try singing through it altogether once. Ella straightened up again.
It wasn't a perfect run through by any means, but it was much better than the first attempt they'd given it the other day, and Ella started to get that tingly, happy feeling she got when whatever they were working on started to sound like real music. Being in the middle of a choir was like being inside the song. You were singing it, but it was surrounding you too, all these other people, the harmonies wrapping you up, twisting in and out of one another. It was the best part of her week.
When they were dismissed a little while later, Ella closed her folder and wove through the other kids to get to Kyrie and Iris. It was nearly dinner time now. "Let's drop this stuff off before we go eat," Kyrie said. Ella nodded her agreement and started to follow them out of the room, but she got stuck a few people away from them in the funnel of people trying to squeeze out through the door. Logan ended up beside her.
"Thanks again," he said, a little sheepishly. "I don't know why that wouldn't stick in my head."
"Yeah," said Ella. "No problem."
She smiled a little and then ducked her head back down, and continued to try to work her way out.
She'd almost succeeded in catching up to her friends, who were waiting for her outside the door, when Logan said, "Ella." She turned back.
"You have a beautiful voice," he said, and he looked a little pink in the cheeks.
Ella forgot how to say thank you. She wasn't used to anyone ever admitting that they listened to her. No one was supposed to do that. She was just another voice in the group. She wasn't supposed to be noticed.
"Oh," was all she managed to get out. Her eyes felt as wide as saucers.
And then Logan, looking like he wasn't quite sure how to handle that response, gave an awkward wave and hurried in the opposite direction, even though there was really no reason she could think of for him to be heading towards the astronomy tower. Even if he'd meant to go back to his common room before dinner like they were, he'd have been heading the same way. The Slytherins were down in the dungeons, past the basement where her own common room was.
"What was that about?" asked Iris.
"And why are you bright red?" Kyrie added, a grin spreading across her face.
Ella shook her head miserably. "Sometimes I don't know how to use words," she said. She pressed her lips together in thought and then said. "Go ahead. I'll be right back."
And she jogged back in the direction Logan had gone, glad to find he hadn't gotten too far.
"Logan?" she said, stopping at the corner of the hall he was walking down.
He turned around.
"Thanks," she said quietly.
He smiled a little and her stomach did something weird. She smiled too and then she hurried back to catch up with her friends again feeling very odd.