Opus

Opus

The first time he laid eyes on a violin, propped upright against the back of the display case, he didn't realize it was an instrument. The varnish reflecting sheets of light, the slender curved body, the light airy strings almost whispering, singing into the silent air...he was entranced. He looked from it to the object sitting next to it. Pointed at the end, a gentle bend in its wooden construction, connected end-to-end by countless perfect white hairs, it could only be the thing with which one pressed to the strings, one drew across the strings, one elicited what could only be the most haunting and rawest sounds known to the human soul.

He asked the man behind the counter if he might hold it, examine it more closely. He cradled the instrument in his arms, rapping on its sides only to realize that it was hollow, and plucked a short staccato note. The man laughed and walked over to him, showing him how he was supposed to place it under his neck, support it with his fingers arched over the neck, and position the other thing above the strings. He stood there for what seemed like hours, straightening his back and hoisting the instrument aloft. He didn't want to put it down.

From that day forth, Dean Thomas was in love with the violin.

Oh, he couldn't play, no, of course not. His parents were busy enough as it was, balancing multiple jobs and overseeing their son's extraordinary talent, paying for art lessons and wholeheartedly encouraging him to let his artistic soul fly in the form of a pencil whizzing across a sketchbook. It would have been ridiculous to even mention the violin to them; they had sacrificed enough already.

Yet he came back every day after school, a thick pad of paper and pencil case in hand. He told the man behind the counter that he loved to draw, that instruments were something he had never approached before as still-life subjects - which was true, after all. There was no better place, Dean had said, to see musical things than in a music store. So the man came to expect the young black boy, the boy whose face was alight each time he pressed his feet into the store's deep carpet. A chair would be set out. Dean was quick to notice it would always be before a different set of instruments, and in the background would be playing music of those same instruments.

It was in this fashion that he experienced and recorded in his drawings the grand majesty of pianos, the chirping freshness of trumpets, and the angelic seduction of flutes. He learned of the brilliance of the masters, Mozart, Beethoven, and Bach, the lesser-known geniuses of Chopin, Debussy, and Scarlatti. Terms like "concerto" and "movement" became familiar, and Dean was soon able to request his favorites. Play the horn divertimento from last week, he would plead, or that Jupiter Symphony I really like. Could we listen to something different?

But always, always, he would return to the violin in the end, looking at it from a different angle each day, his eyes following how the light slanted against the thick mahogany color. He remembered its cutting voice, slashing its way into his heart until it possessed him, the gorgeous melody of the violin, climbing higher and higher before spiraling downward in a flurry of passion and resolution.

Then the letter came. Spells and potions filled his afternoons; gone were the hours of quiet contemplation over classical music. It barely frequented his thoughts now, the violin, and slowly, he forgot it, its quiet aura overshadowed by exams and a resurgent Dark Lord.

-

Dean strolled down the street, his hands tucked in the pockets of his jeans. Everywhere there was fear and worry - the Muggle sensed it too. He saw it in their withdrawn manners, their shifty glances. He reckoned he was the only one who had full knowledge of the source of such anxiety, but it hardly comforted him. He was as helpless as them all.

He continued walking, walking past the ruins of the store on the corner, the first victim of what Dean knew to be the wrath and sadism of the Death Eaters. Abruptly, he stopped and returned to the site, his gaze shifting from the burnt doorframe to the angled pieces of glass on the pavement. The smell of singed plastic assaulted him so strongly that he took a few steps backwards, still surveying the wreckage.

It caught his eye, the silver strings bent and curled over, shriveled and dead, the black fingerboard twisted.

"Terrible, wasn't it?" a passerby said to him.

"Yeah, it was," he replied, knowing it would never sing again.