Marauder crack

Lonely nights no more

Nobody knows where the piano came from. When they began to frequent the Shrieking Shack, they discovered a pile of abandoned junk. Peter has the theory that belongs to Dumbledore, who uses the house as the school waste warehouse. There are shabby desks downstairs, where they used to chain Remus, several mattresses, and a bed with rickety springs. They pretended that someone had lived in the house. A murderer, a secret spy, a lone musician. There are chains on one of the walls to bind the wolf, so Sirius concluded that whoever lived there had to have either a very great or at least very interesting sex life.

Every time they go outside on not full moon nights, they go there to play cards, to drink a while and smoke a little, rummage and discover new things. A lute without strings, a few almost undone books, a lamp without fuel.

On Friday night, and by pure chance, while playing "Something You Don't Know " in the gramophone, they discover that Remus plays the piano.

- Come on- James passes the bottle of firewhiskey to Peter -never told us you know how to play.

-Nor had Peter ever told us that he had six toes on one foot and we have to discover that it is actually true - Remus argues.

Peter insists that he is willing to teach them if they don't believe him. But all of them - Sirius the first one - beg him NOT to do it.

- If you take off your shoe or worse, the sock - Sirius threatens - I'll cut your feet. I swear it on old Godric's balls.

Remus remembers the last time he played. In the old apartment of Bath, while Aurora turned the pages of the score to him. It was an old and poorly harmonised piano, and the pedal squeaked. His protests were heard more than the melody itself. Aurora promised to call the tuner and three days later that car crossed into their lives and her mother stopped teaching him forever.

Since then, he has not sat down in front of the keys and when he does, at the insistence of his friends, he cannot help but feel the ghostly presence of her mother indicating the correct posture. "Straight back, Remus. Loose arms. Like so, very good ". He is not sure if he is capable of touching a single key, but James insists "just a little" and Peter insists "I want to see how it sounds "and above all, Sirius insists, "do you know anything from the Beatles? " and maybe, somewhere remote, his mother is insisting. "You should play, Remus; I'd like to hear you play ".

So he plays.

The first notes are the ones that cost the most. Then Beethoven touches himself only.All Remus has to do is try not to kill him. The melancholy of those first notes. He has to concentrate. Feel that energy that comes from the bottom of the stomach, goes up the back, and shakes from there until he mysteriously energy covers him up from head to the tips of the fingers. He hadn't heard this melody for a long time, not even on the gramophone and that night, in the Shrieking Shack, the melody seems sadder. Like his mother, who is fading but doesn't die. When he first learned it once, it seemed to him that he had always known it. That those tubular bass were regrets for his own funeral. He thought maybe that Beethoven was also a werewolf and that's why the song hurts the moon so much.

- Why is it so sad, Mom?

-He wrote it for a student that he was in love with. But she didn't love him.

Her mother told him that Beethoven was deaf. Remus guessed that's why he was so sad.

-Couldn't he hear his own music?

-I'm sure he heard it, darling... I'm sure he heard it here.

She put her hand on his heart.

And as he plays, Remus reminisces about the touch of his absent mother. He crouches down to be closer to the sound, like if he stooped down to get closer to Aurora through the pain of Beethoven. At that moment, he plays with his eyes closed, so that he does not put anything between them. Keystrokes under the fingertips. His fingers warm her hands and the house is filled with the sound of an almost hopeless sonata, of a barren melancholy that announces death in the last, low, heavy final notes.

No one speaks when it ends.

All three look at him. Peter, who does not dare to speak. James, who doesn't know what to say. And Sirius, who is the first to recover and tries not to show the trembling of his voice.

- That wasn't from the Beatles.

- No it was not.

- Who taught you to play?

- My mother.

Sirius nods and Remus knows there is no need to tell him more.

Peter and James take a long time to be able to speak and they don't know why they have the feeling of having attended a funeral. They don't know that's exactly what just happened.

- As it is called? - James asks.

- "Moonlight".

Peter asks if it was composed by a werewolf. When remembering the photographs of Beethoven that appeared in his music notebooks, Remus is about to say that it was.

-Come on, Moony- Sirius orders, -Play something else.

- What do you want me to play to you?

- At this moment, just play the piano. Don't get excited.

Laughter serves to scare away sadness. Remus repeatedly plays a single key, -one, two, three, four bass hits, five, six, seven- and, as the whiskey bottle continues to pass from hand to hand, he begins with the first thing that occurs to him, the first thing that inspires that look of Sirius in which there are too many double intentions.

Remus plays the most rogue and hooligan thing he can think of.

Jazz, naturally.