Piano Man.

1 : Oneshot

It's nine o'clock on a Saturday
The regular crowd shuffles in

“Back again, are ya?” Aberforth asked Harry. He swiped the counter down in front of him with the same grey dishrag he had every time Harry arrived in his pub.

“It’s Saturday,” Harry shrugged with a sheepish grin. In Harry’s opinion, Saturday was the perfect excuse to spend an evening in the one place that never felt overwhelming to him.

Since Aberforth’s pub was burned down during the Battle of Hogwarts, the entire village of Hogsmeade - along with a heavy amount of professors and adults who tended to visit the pub - pitched in to help rebuild the Hog’s Head. It was no longer a dingy and dirty pub, but a neat grey brick building with dark windows and a more inviting atmosphere.

It was also, oddly, no longer open to students. Aberforth had McGonagall help him set age-restriction lines around all the entrances to ensure that only those of age could enter.

That was one of the big reasons Harry first visited the renamed Hog N’ Bone. With no children allowed, Harry only had to hide out from adults, something he thought would be easy enough in a pub that used to see less traffic than the Chamber of Secrets did.

A wrong assumption, as Harry immediately learned.

On Harry’s first visit, he found at least a dozen or more blokes in the pub. With booths along the walls, gleaming red stools at the pub counter, and a few scattered and small tables on the floor, Harry was surprised to see that there weren’t a lot of places for a single person to sit by themselves. Harry had resigned himself to taking a seat at the counter and hoping to not be bothered, but he got distracted then by the same thing distracting him in the present.

“Am I bothering you? I can go... I just...” Harry sent a little longing look to the grand piano in the corner of the pub.

It was honestly beautiful, in Harry’s mind. It was old, a weathered black color, but it was in perfect tune. The first time Harry put his fingers on the keys, the entire piano seemed to be the one humming music back through Harry’s body.

Harry didn’t know where it came from, but Aberforth let Harry tinker on it before he opened one day and Harry had fallen in love with it. It became, what Hermione politely called, a ‘hyperfixation to avoid thinking about the trauma of war’.

Or something similar anyway.

It did help. Harry didn’t keep track or anything, but he thought his nightmares and unwanted fits of panic had went down since he found a little home at the pub. It was the piano, the people who didn’t ask Harry anything about the war, and the way that Aberforth had a strict rule against children, cameras, and Rita Skeeter being allowed in the pub.

“Have at it,” Aberforth chuckled, waving Harry off with a nod. “Nobody but you and Reggie ever touch that damn thing. ‘S pretty, innit? Makes me think I coulda taken up music once upon a time.”

Harry had never had much of an interest in music until he found the piano. It only took one mention from Harry to Sirius about liking the sound the keys had made before Sirius was inviting Harry over to his house every day to teach him piano.

It was a surprise to find out that Sirius even knew piano, but Harry supposed that he hadn’t had a lot of chances to get to know his godfather before the war ended. Sirius could play piano, speak French. Sirius once tattooed James’ name on his arse cheek on a dare and Sirius had a younger brother that grew up in Italy. Harry listened to Sirius’ stories while Sirius taught Harry to play and even if Harry would never be as good as Sirius, he rather enjoyed playing at Aberforth’s on his weekly Saturday visits.