Songs of the Self
The Black Lake had never been this quiet.
Even the giant squid seemed to be holding its breath as Wren placed the violin in his hands.
“You’re not going to make me play, are you?” he said, raising a brow. “Because I once tried to play the flute and nearly stabbed myself in the nose.”
Wren laughed — and Merlin, that laugh. It was soft and rare, like it surprised her too.
“No,” she said. “You’re not here to play. You’re here to listen.”
He sat beside her on the smooth rock. The moon painted her hair silver. She wasn’t like anyone else.
She didn’t need to fill the silence. She listened to it.
Wren adjusted his hand, letting his fingers rest lightly on the wood. “Feel it,” she said.
“Don’t think. Just... let the magic find you.”
James wasn’t used to sitting still. He wasn’t used to silence. But he obeyed. Slowly, under her touch, the violin began to hum — not with sound, but with warmth. Like it remembered her and trusted him by extension.
And when she took the instrument back into her arms and began to play — not for a crowd, not to impress, but for him — he forgot how to breathe.
The music wasn’t polished or grand this time. It was something smaller. Personal. A song that felt like secret places and hidden sadness.
James whispered, “What is this?”
She didn’t stop playing as she murmured, “It’s a song from a life I don’t talk about.”
That answer made his spine straighten.
He looked at her. Really looked.
Her eyes weren’t just deep. They were old.
“How old are you really?” he asked — half teasing, half serious.
She smiled, sad and knowing. “Old enough to remember how it ends.”
And then — silence.
James didn’t press. Didn’t demand an answer. He simply leaned back on his hands and looked at the stars.
After a while, he said, “You know… you could’ve been sorted into any house.”
“I wasn’t sorted,” she replied quietly. “I was placed.”
James blinked. “What? Why?”
“Too much magic,” she said simply. “And too many memories.”
She plucked at the strings of her violin absentmindedly, creating an eerie kind of lullaby.
“You ever feel like you don’t quite belong in your own skin?” she asked. “Like the world isn’t made for who you are?”
He was quiet a long time. Then: “I used to. Then I found Sirius. And Remus. And Lily. And… you.”
She froze for a moment — just a beat — and then tucked her violin away.
“Tell me about your first prank,” she said, deflecting.
But James saw the blush in her cheeks, even in moonlight.
And he smiled to himself.
She’s beginning to let me in.