Mortem Obire

Chapter 2

Chapter 2: Making friends and influencing others is harder than it sounds

Laurel Woods and Alexander Woods were both three years older than her and twins to boot. They did many things together, including, but not limited to, playing instruments, shopping for clothes, and making friends who could stand the pair of them.

Harriet didn't quite understand why some people didn't like them, kind, cheerful, and oddly mature for their grand age of eight as they were. They were vastly more tolerable than any other child either their or her actual age.

"So you play the piano and the violin?" Laurel asked, the pair of them sitting with her for their lunch break. "You're lucky. Mom only allowed us to pick one instrument each," she remarked, grinning at her, even at the looks they got, both what with how they were somewhat ostracised. "I picked the piano like you, and Alex picked the cello!"

"If you played the violin we could do a three-instrument piece together," Alexander mumbled, his voice far quieter than that of his sister's.

Harriet could only ponder on whether or not that was an overture of friendship from the quieter boy. Not that he was that quiet. It was just that his twin sister was far more chatty in comparison, or so she had swiftly figured out within her first minute of meeting them before her violin lesson the other day. It was a nice change from the quiet for once. "I think," she said, thinking then of that strange vision and whether or not she wanted to make it come true. "I think I would like that." That melody they had made had sounded so wonderful.

A scene flashed before her eyes, a boy of thirteen years singing in Ancient Greek, a wound beneath his fingers healing in a golden light, and Harriet could only stir herself from her daze and wonder why exactly she had understood Ancient Greek in the first place when she had never heard it spoken before. And why what could only be magic had been performed without a wand in her imagination. It made so little sense, along with her odd newfound ability for a language.

Or was that a newly discovered consequence of her reincarnation?

She wasn't quite sure when the supposed aftereffects of such a thing would fully be discovered, given how she knew by then that reincarnation was hardly common to those lands. She was hardly an idiot, even if she wasn't a Hermione.

"Great!" Laurel declared, eyes lighting up in excitement. "But we'd either need to find a piece that has each of our parts, or create one of our own..."

Harriet blinked, feeling as though she had vastly underestimated the twins' love for music and everything else about it. "Wouldn't that be a bit... like, above us, or something?" she asked, peering at the older girl. She hadn't been having lessons for too long in the grand scheme of things, and she wasn't sure of the specifics about composing a piece.

Alexander shrugged at that. "Music... It just seems to come really easily to us," he said. "Mom said we get it from our father..."

"Huh," Harriet mumbled, pondering then on the fact that Laurel and Alexander, like her, didn't have an active fatherly figure in their lives. "Cool."

"You can help us make it too," Laurel prattled on, smiling so very sunnily. "I heard you practicing the other day, and it was brilliant!"

Harriet supposed she was the eldest there in the simplest sense of the word, even if no one there was aware of it. She thought she might as well help as best she could. It wasn't like she had anything better to be doing, friendless and alone as she would be without the pair of them at her side.

"Yeah, it was awesome," Alexander mumbled, no less enthused or sincere.

A hint of a blush crept into her cheeks. "I'm not that good," she muttered, ever uncomfortable with praise and admiration as she had been before. After all, it was only thanks to her unique circumstances – her achievements that was – in that life and the one before. It didn't feel too much like anything gained through hard work. It felt like cheating, and there was that adage which said cheats never prospered. Aunt Petunia had told her that one too many times, not that she was still her aunt as such.