Guitars under Willows PV Closed

What was he doing? The boy was walking, and writing. Writing in a little leather book hastily with a quill, clearly not worried about good penmanship. He was scribbling, but even so he was only writing every few steps, and just a little bit. He would look over his shoulder and all around as he walked, then scribble quickly, and look up. But although the vigil he was keeping was rather thorough, his blueish grey eyes still showed signs of major fatigue, dark shadow hammocks below, and heavy lids above. His skin was a sickly greyish white that belonged more on a corpse than a boy with black hair.

A grey scarf was wrapped around his neck, a blueish black splotched cape and a surprisingly large umbrella the size of a staff strapped to his back. His robe was patched and torn, matching his ragged hairstyle. His fingers, clearly seen clutching the quill, were long and thin, topped with long fingernails that came to a dull point. But he stopped looking everywhere as soon as he had something to focus on. Music. The ravenclaw loved music. A few seconds, and he had picked out where the sound was coming from. One minute, and he was close, moving softly across the grass.

He sat down on the grass by one of the bench ends, determined to figure this girl out before he said anything. If it was another death witch, he didn't feel up for fighting. He felt like he had enough strength to hold his own if it came to that, to be sure. But he didn't want to. Not now. So he'd sit, and listen, legs crossed, hands and book tucked away up his sleeves, still focusing on everything around him, as much as the music was capturing his attention.

Avery peeked out from under her bangs, glancing cautiously at would could have been a corpse if she hadn't seen it just move. While the wayward Ravenclaw was not her first audience, nor would he be her last if she achieved her goals, his dead fish eyed stare was more than a little unnerving. Avery, however, refused to allow herself to be intimidated by someone who wasn't even actively trying to intimidate her (though she did take comfort from her opa's jacket securely wrapped around her shoulders)! So she continued to play the enchanting song that she loved so much.
Her fleeting glances also drew her to the large umbrella on his back and his worn cloak that had a somewhat disturbing amount of stains and tears. She pressed down harder than she needed to on the fret board of her guitar, which made the note she strummed loud and angry.
Bollocks, she mumbled in between lyrics, quickly loosening her grip to a better pressure. Avery continued singing, waiting for a lull in the lyrics, and she then asked the sickly looking boy on the grass "Hey, if you know the words to the counter point, could you sing along?". There was no time to say more than that, though and she picked up the main lyrics again, which she crooned sweetly. ~Parsley Sage, Rosemary and thyme~

If he knew the words to the counter point? The heck was a counter point? Although he didn't know the meaning, the boy was still ready to guess at it. First clue was the word counter. That meant against, or contrary to. Like a deflection. A point was the tip of a sharp object. So was the counter point something that reflected a jab? If that was true, then it was incredibly useful, but he didn't know anything else about it. Or at least that would be true if he didn't include the context.

The words, and singing. Combine those two and there was only one option. A chanted spell to ward off jabs. She knew of something like that? And if they both worked together, it would protect him? Why was this not taught in DaDa? It seemed like one of the most defensive spells out there. Was there a version for slashing or biting? But that wasn't all. She started to list potion ingredients. He had none of them, did she have enough for both of them?

"Do you have all that? And I don't know this spell. Do you have the book?"

His voice was extremely quiet, as if he was whispering to ensure no one could overhear his end of the conversation. Or maybe it was just as if he was too hoarse to speak above the sound comfort level of the average mouse.

Avery blinked in bewilderment as she sat up, the ethereal melody on the guitar coming to an abrupt stop with her. A spell? A book? She scrunched her nose in confusion and furrowed her brow, giving the boy a weird look as the gears in her head spun furiously to understand the other kid's muted question. What had he asked her? The gears halted as understanding dawned on her. Oh... Well I do suppose counterpoint isn't a word you'd hear very often unless you're musically inclined as me I guess... Though the thought of counterpoint being some sort of spell amused her to no end, Avery refrained from giggling (though she had to hide her grin behind the over sized sleeve of her jacket while she regained composure).
"Well... unless there happens to be a spell that happens to share a name with counter point, I'm fairly sure counterpoint is a musical term." She said, leaning her back on the willow tree's bark as she lazily resumed strumming the chords to Scarborough Fair, swinging her right leg and letting her shoe thunk against the bench's leg as she hummed to the lyrics. The breeze whistled through the long leafed branches of the tree, as though the wind was joining her in song, her curly red hair danced in the wind with the leaves.

A musical term? What even did that mean? Did music have terms? Since when could you have terms for something you just felt? Did people have a universal method for making music, could you share music? How would you write down a melody even? How would you describe the rise and fall, the light and the heavy? It wasn't possible, at least not that he knew of. So what was she talking about. He searched the girl's body language, her face. She was restless, moving her legs. Was she expecting something, someone?

He scanned the horizon, tried to see something that could explain her uneasiness. He could hear her feet thump behind him, she was still swinging. It was reassuring to know that she probably wasn't sneaking up behind him. He even made sure to look up for someone riding a broom before he looked back at the girl in confusion.

Something was wrong. It may have just been the rising stress, the knowledge that he couldn't figure out what was happening, the knowledge that the girl's vocabulary and knowledge far exceeded his. But he was growing frustrated. Why was this world so confusing. The answers were always so close, and yet something stopped him, some wall kept him from just... getting it.

"...what?"

It took every meager ounce of self control in her body to not laugh at the poor confused Ravenclaw.
After he'd stopped staring at her with his dead fish eyes, he'd looked for something that he obviously didn't find, looking at her again with the perfect cross between utter confusion and sheer annoyance. Which was almost entirely too amusing to Avery for her to contain the snickers rising in her throat.
She cleared away the snark with a very quiet and deliberate cough and decidedly threw the boy a metaphorical bone as she cocked her head to the side innocently.
"What is a very very broad question, dear Watson! But I'll take the liberty in assuming you mean counterpoint and Music Theory in general." She cracked her neck in anticipation, Cheshire cat grin stretched from ear to ear. It had been too long since her last opportunity to forcibly expand her peer's minds about the depth and general magic of music!
"So the best way I can explain Counterpoint is that there's one song that's sung louder over another song, the other is sung quieter in counterpoint to the other song that's often called a canticle. It's a really cool technique that's underutilized now a days. Scarborough Fair, the song I was singing, is often sung with a canticle." She explained, leaning gently on the waxed and polished body of her cherry wood guitar as she rested her head in her heads, watching the strange boy closely. She wondered what he'd do with this new information, stars in her storm cloud grey eyes as they watched intently.

No. He refused, everything in his body refused, balked at the prospect. He couldn't have failed this badly, could he have? There was a third person somewhere here and he hadn't noticed them at all, not even a little bit. Unacceptable. This had to be a trap, he was being trapped by a coughing girl, probably sick with some horrible disease. Or maybe it wasn't a disease, maybe it was a curse. And what question had watson even asked, why couldn't he hear it, whatever it was?

What she was saying was interesting, but he couldn't really focus on the words anymore. Music was amazing, he loved music and he was horribly curious as to what she had to say. But the curious side of his mind, once on par with the scared, survival side, was long since weakened. His curiosity didn't even put up much of a fight, just a weak flicker of protest before his fear and need to survive overpowered it. His eyes widened, and his pupils surged outwards, an amorphous mass of black that was trying to reach the edges of his eyes. In a second, one of his sleeves was empty, arm have retreated within his robe. In another second, it was back.

His hand held a slingshot, aimed at the girl's forehead. He pulled it back, pupils still moving a lot, a surge and then a retreat, in time to his heart beat, moving steadily faster.

"Where is he. Who is watson and why can't I see him. Tell him to turn uninvisible or I will kill you."

The strange boy had started to wig out during her little lecture, pupils pulsating in an almost grotesque way. It had almost distracted her from his hand diving into his sleeve with startling swiftness for someone who looked so pale and unwell, whipping out a slingshot with practiced ease laced with panic, aimed at the dead center of her forehead. Avery's eyebrows receded into her bangs from shock.
"Woah there buckaroo banzai, slow down there. Maybe breathe a little. I don't know what's going on in that head of yours that brought you to the conclusion that Watson's actually here, but you should know I was referring to you by referencing John Watson. If it means anything to you, I swear on my magic that there's no-one here but us as far as I know." Avery soothed, opening up her body language in what she hoped was a peaceful and relaxing way with her hands and palms open, gently raised in the air in that universal sign for Don't Shoot!
'Bollocks', she thought,' really should've paid more attention to mum's rambling on psychology. ' She hummed thoughtfully, before snapping back to the present PR disaster on hand.
"Watson's only just a character from a book series, a very very interesting and famous one at that. I suppose you've heard of Sherlock Holmes right? Truly the best murder mystery novels I've had the pleasure of someone reading to me. My opa- er grandfather, had read to me from the vintage set that had belonged to his dad, but they're all in German and I'm not exactly fluent, so as it stands I can't read half the books in opa's library." Avery rambled informatively, partially for her own benefit and mostly to calm the deathly pale boy in front of her. Old memories soothed any fear in her heart from the current situation as thoughts of her opa's vast library filled to the brim with books of many subjects played in the back of her mind.
She smiled softly, eyes hazy with memory and tears that threatened to well up if she dwelled in the past any longer. She closed her eyes and sighed deeply as she hummed an old tune from her early childhood as she willed the tears to stop.
She stroked the cherry fret board of her guitar morosely, as the beautiful hand carved wood instrument a gift from her deceased opa. She swallowed back the last of her sorrow, falling back onto her normal good cheer and composure.
"Terribly sorry about that, I got lost in m' head again. Back to music. Would you like to hear the full version of Scarborough Fair, counterpoint, canticle and all?" She asked in a slightly shaky, but soft tone with a gentle and encouraging smile on her face.

He wasn't sure if he liked this girl. She made hardly any sense, and he hated that. He wanted things to be clear, to be laid out in black and white. The tests and tricks of his grandfather and the subterfuge of the fens gave the little ravenclaw a craving to understand exactly what was going on, to understand what was in front of him. And right now, he didn't know what that was. She claimed that she was talking to him by referencing someone else, which as a concept didn't make any sense at all.

While she explained it, she spoke to someone else, called buckaroo banzai. But if her last statement was anything to go off of, that must mean that she was insane, complete bonkers and just used random names from other people to refer to those who already had names. That was fine, he could live with that, as much as it bothered him. She didn't seem threatening, but he wasn't sure he cared.

He was only more confused on how he had any connection to a character from a murder book. What even was a murder mystery book? How to make a murder a mystery? How to get away with it? A book on a murder you had to solve? She supposed he'd heard of some book with a stupid title. What even was a sure-lock home? Just a safe home? Was the book an advertisement for some kind of security network?

The boy's pupils started to pulsate faster. The thing in front of him was a massive swirl of dangerous unknowns, and he was feeling like an idiot. He hated feeling like an idiot, hated feeling weak. He could just kill her, no one would care. No one ever cared when someone died here at hogwarts. Bodies were expendable, lives didn't matter.

But then, she offered something he wanted. He did want music, he liked music. A lot, actually. The black pools in his eyes subsided quite a bit, as he mutely sat down, laying the slingshot and stone on his lap as he waited, expectantly.