While the Music Plays

While the Music Plays

Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 6: Pathetique pounded harshly in her ears as her lips parted slightly. She stared blankly off to the side ignoring the pain coursing through her.

Ignoring the world around her. Thinking. Just thinking.

How life is so complex. So detailed. So perfect.

Yet so tainted. So human.

The dissonant tones and discordant harmonies helped her to think. And she wouldn't turn if off. The silence and all its consequences scared her. The distraction of the raucous beat played through her mind and for the briefest of moments she forgot what had put her in this state. Forgot what had deadened her senses and killed her heart.

Warm trails slid down her face as she stood over the sink, watching mutely as the water poured from the faucet and swirled down, turning and turning as it disappeared in the drain. Falling into nothingness. Like her purpose. Like her life.

Her head stung and with a fresh wave of pain, the ache in her heart was renewed. She groaned and closed her eyes, subconsciously willing the headache to dissipate, but the pain was too great. The hurt too augmented to be ignored any longer.

He was gone. Gone from her, gone from the world. The tears came more freely now as long suppressed memories welled to the surface. The sight of his smile, that reached his eyes only for her. The sound of his laugh as they talked together during the day. The feel of his body, his hands, his lips, as they lay together in the darkness. Nothing was left now, and she was hollow from the loss of him, devoid of any will to live without the dragon that had claimed and protected her heart.

She braced herself against the sink, one hand on each side, as she stared impassively at the reflection in the mirror. The eyes of the mirror image were cold and hollow. Limp hair hung over pale bony shoulders and thin frail arms. The face was drawn and gaunt, with enlarged, distended, shadowed sections beneath the eyes and dark hollows at her cheeks. She was but a remnant, a fragment of the girl she had been previously. She found nothing recognizable in the likeness looking back at her. Nothing to be proud of. Nothing to want to save. Nothing.

She continued staring at her reflection and grimaced as she felt the sharp pricks at her wrists. But the water gushing from the faucet was no longer clear as it was sucked into the drain. Bit by bit, the water was being tainted. Tainted red. Tainted with evil, like her life had been.

Pathetique still played but it seemed distant, the accents and melodies muffled, only a small ensemble of woodwinds playing now. Tchaikovsky's symphony seemed as if it were being played in another room and not coming from the radio sitting on the toilet seat.

She looked on with vacant eyes, watching as the pure water in the sink was polluted. Her tears mingled with the thick, crimson liquid that oozed from her wrists and into the surging stream of fluid that came from the faucet.

The sight of crimson prompted the remembrance of the night he had left, the night she had broken in two. She had been the one to find him, his body mangled and bloody, his platinum hair stained red from blood. He was still alive as she went to him, and he was able to whisper the words she had so desperately longed to hear,

"I love you."

Then there was silence. His black robes billowed around his unresponsive form and her heart fractured as she stared at his serene face. He was so beautiful, even in death.

Her heart had died with him that night. There was nothing to hold her to this world, nothing for her to feel guilty leaving behind.

A small smile came to her face as her world darkened. No more pain. Soon it would all be over. Soon the burden would be lifted. The whole room was now in shadow, and all her eyes could see was her fading image in the cracked mirror. But the reflection was happy now, at peace. She fell to the floor as her eyes closed, her spirit drifting away.

Pathetique was almost nonexistent now; so faint she had to strain to hear it. Tranquil melodies and melodious combinations of instruments replaced the cacophony of disharmonious chords that had barraged her senses. Her body tingled and she soon realized she was no longer contained in a cage of skin and bone. Her spirit floated freely above her own dead body, and she stared at it where it lay. Her last expression had been a smile, lingering on the emaciated face of the girl she used to be.

She drifted backwards towards the ceiling and hovered there as the door opened and a worried face poked its way in. Her eyes fell as she saw the torment on her the young man's face. She saw the tears fall and splatter from the brunette's eyes on to the floor as the man she had loved as a brother, a confidante for so many years, dropped to the side of her dead body and gathered the lifeless form into his arms.

She heard the anguished cry as he called for their third. Saw the pain that contorted the red head's generally jovial face as he too dropped down alongside the dead body. Neither cared that their clothes were being stained red from the blood on the floor, they merely sat and cried over the body. Cried because she was dead. Cried because they had watched her wither away to this and done nothing.

She floated down next to them and whispered to their minds.

"Harry? Don't cry Harry. It's not your fault. Ron, don't! Crying won't do anything. Can't you see? I'm smiling! I'm happy."

And slowly they calmed down. Though still distraught with grief, their hysterics stopped, and the Harry stood to call the headmaster. The spirit was right. There was nothing they could do.

She drifted back to the ceiling and through it, soaring into the night sky and to peace.

Pathetique's melodies are barely a whisper now, the sound of a lone oboe carrying through. As her spirit disappears the oboist departs as well.

The music stops.