Closed Music is the Language of the Soul PV Logan Hughes

Logan had been walking through the seemingly endless hallways of Hogwarts for about 30 minutes, looking for the rehearsal room. She had heard from one of the girls in her dorm that people were allowed to go there to rehearse and she had decided that the perfect time to do so would be right before supper.
She stopped her walking at a sound. It was the sound of a piano. Being played beautifully. Logan edged her way closer to the powerful sound which she had assumed must have been coming from this said rehearsal room. She stopped outside a door and put her ear on it, listening to the song. Whoever was playing it was definitely a skilled and dedicated musician. The sound of the piano instantly brought her back to memories of the days when her sister would be around and her uncle and aunt would come over for dinner. After they had eaten, they would all gather in the living room of their small home and play a few songs. Her aunt would play her flute, her uncle his saxophone, her father his cello, her sister her piano and Logan would be playing her guitar although sometimes her and her sister would switch roles. They would always end by playing Danny Boy. This was the only song Logan would sing in front of other people and whenever she did, everyone else would stop playing, just to hear her voice.
With a brief shudder she came back to reality. She leaned on the door slightly, forgetting that it was already opened a crack and the door swung right open, resulting in Logan tripping herself and falling to the floor, right in side the room.

The doors to the Rehearsal Room were heavy, wooden, and terribly creaky. When they were being opened, an entire formal Ball could be happening within the room, music and all, and everyone would still stop and take notice. The same went for that moment. The doors creaked open and Simon paused his playing to glance over his shoulder, just in time to see the blonde falling to the floor.

"Are you alright?" Logan would be able to hear almost immediately as Simon now knelt down next to her, offering out his hand for assistance. A theoretic and actual hand up. It would have been too quick of that of a regular person but perhaps the shock of the fall would have made her not realize this.

"I swear, the school elves wax this floor. I mean, it's great and makes for a mean moonwalk but when one is just trying to enter, it came become a little problematic," he said and smiled kindly to her, hoping she wasn't embarrassed. There was nothing to be embarrassed about.

He then realized that the girl looked familiar and he placed it. He had seen her briefly a time or two, heading to or from her dormitory within the Hufflepuff Common Room and also during meal times at the Hufflepuff Table within the Great Hall. A fellow puff!

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She was breathing heavily, startled and slightly embarrased that she had been caught snooping. She took the boy's hand to pull herself up and off the floor. "Yeah, I am fine." She said with a smile in her strange accent, a mixture of Irish, English and Scottish. " thanks for helping me up. " She looked down at her two hands akwardly, just then realizing how confused the boy must be to just look over randomly and see a girl that was listening in on his music fall to them ground, right then and there. She decided instead to ignore the anti-social part of her brain by taking a leap of faith, extending her hand for a hanshake. "I'm Logan. Logan Hughes. It's nice to meet you." She said with a bright smile. " I've seen you around the common room before so I figure you are a fellow badger. " She blew a tuft of blonde hair that had been hanging in front of her face out of the way. She figured that she should try to make a conversation . "That was you playing, aye? You sounded good, thought it would be someone much older with how good and practiced it sounded." She stood there akwardly.

He caught onto her accent right away, mostly because he couldn't quite place it. In London, people had all sorts of accents because they came from all over - not even just England. Still, he usually could tell if they were originally from somewhere else in England, India, or the States just by their voice alone. This girl's - Logan as she had introduced herself - wasn't that obvious.

Simon smiled, glad that she introduced herself and didn't just run away. It made him think of the time back earlier that year in the corridor when he helped a first year get their book back from some stupid bullies and they thanked them before dashing off the next moment. He wasn't sure if he was late to get somewhere or just too terribly nervous to stay and talk. Simon was glad this situation wasn't the same.

"Pleasure to meet you, Logan," he said, always trying to make it a point to say the person's name right upon meeting them so hopefully it would stick in his mind. Still, he was pretty sure that he'd remember someone like Logan and wouldn't easily forget her name. She was blonde after all and his Aunt Maggie was CERTAIN that he had a thing for blondes.

"Yes, fellow badger," he confirmed. She had seen him in the Common Room, most likely either with his notebook out and open and jotting down either questions about the wizarding world or marking musical notes upon a staff as he made up a song. He'd either be doing that or playing his guitar. That's how he spent most of his time in the Common Room. "I'm Simon. Simon Kincaid."

He motioned for her to follow him as he led the way over toward the piano and further into the Rehearsal Room, welcoming her in. "Yea, it's a song I've been working on for awhile now. I've been playing the piano since I was four and had a lot of time to dedicate to the piano." A lot of time. Some could go outside and enjoy the sunshine after school or during the Summer months but Simon remained inside. Some slept every night and for approximately eight hours but Simon slept every third night, and even then only about four hours at a time.

"Do you play?" he asked and slid out the bench and invited her to sit down. "Sit down, my dear, tell me about yourself - what brought you here to the Rehearsal Room? How are you liking Hogwarts? Where are you originally from? Anything and everything," and he flashed her a big smile, hoping he wasn't going too far with this. For someone who was shy, Simon might be a lot to take in at first.

"Nice to meet you." She said with a smile, as she sat down next to Simon on the bench in front of the piano. She glanced down at the beautiful black piano, nothing like the battered and old stand-up piano that she was used playing on at home. "Well, I was coming here to practice my guitar." She pointed to the scuffed black case in the far corner of the rehearsal room. " I usually leave it in here because the girls in my dorm have no sense of personal space and I just feel like no one will bother her here. " She shrugged her shoulders at his question about liking Hogwarts. " I don't truly know, really. I guess that this, " she gestured to the room. "is about the only room here I feel comfortable and at home in. The rest of the castle is always so loud and bustling, sometimes I want simply some peace and quiet but you would have to give an arm and a leg around here for that. But I do like the classes and all. My favorite class is Transfiguration, how 'bout you?"
She thought for a second before answering Simon's final question. " Well, I was born in Guernsey but my family and I moved to Essex when I was about 4. Then we moved to Kerry, in Ireland when I was 7, then Buckie which is a small fishing town not far from Elgin, in Scotland, which is known for strong accents and then finally London. My mams family is Italian and Scottish so I get weird accents from her side but my dad's side is Pakistani-English and Irish so, yeah. Hardly anyone here understands me. "

"Wow," he said, after he had tried to let that all set in He tried to. Gurnsey to Essex, to Ireland, to Scotland....then of Irish, Scottish, and even Pakistani ancestry. Simon couldn't fathom it all. "Well, I can understand you alright. Time will tell if I understand you. ...Make sense?" Maybe. He understood her words but did he understand what she thought, how she felt? That's something that good friends did and maybe over time he could.

"Go on then," he encouraged her, looking over to the corner that she said she put her guitar. "Go get your guitar. You're welcome to practice if you don't mind an audience and if you do, well, I suppose I could give you the room. I'm a good audience though. Very supportive. As my primary teacher once wrote on my report card - 'is a pleasure to have in class.' I mean, I would think that would sort of apply to this situation." Perhaps.

"I've got my guitar up in my dormitory. Perhaps we should have a Hufflepuff duet sometime in the Common Room. Cheer up the badgers after a tough loss in quidditch or something." He thought that would be a good idea. Then again, he was yet to know if the girl minded performing in front of others or not. Maybe she was someone that just liked to keep her music to herself.

https://th.bing.com/th/id/R.17fd23e4e1e ... ImgRaw&r=0
She nodded and stood up from the bench nervously, hoping that Simon wasn't expecting her to be some amazing guitar player. She was just...decent. It was her mom and sister who had been the best guitar players of the family, but now that her mom had died, it was mainly just her sister who played anymore.
She picked up the case from its handle, being careful to hold it in place as the hinge was rusty and could fall apart at any given second. Logan sat back down on the bench but set the case down on the floor. She inflamed the case and took out her guitar, grimacing herself at how best up it looked. She looped the leather strap around her neck and shoulder. "Fair warning," she said as she readied herself for the first note. " I'm not very good so don't expect too much.
Logan took a deep breath and thought over the song in her head before starting to play.
As she played, her eyes drifted shut and she started to sing along to the ever so familiar song. It was the song her father always sung for her mom about where they met. Whenever her dad was feeling down, Logan would play this song for him to cheer him up.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=uqu5KmcGIIo

He didn't know the story behind the song, at least what it meant to Logan Hughes, his fellow Hufflepuff, but he could tell there was one. She sang it with such meaning, losing herself into the song as she carried it along. Both her skill at the guitar and voice was nice to listen to.

If it wasn't something that seemed to carry importance with her, maybe he would have tried to join her on the piano. Even if he didn't know a song, he knew music well enough that he could at least predict some of the nature of a song even if he hadn't heard it. Once you got past the first stanza and to the refrain, it was pretty predictable - no matter the song.

But he didn't. He let Logan have this moment for reflection and was glad she wasn't afraid to show him. If people didn't talk or share their personality like this, then two people would never be able to get to know one another and he hoped that perhaps they would become friends.

As the song slowly came to its end, he watched as she slowly opened up her eyes and smiled. "Very nice, very nice," he complimented her. "How long have you been playing?" He had been playing the guitar and piano since he was four. He had started dabbling a bit here and there with a couple other instruments - saxophone and drums. He was still far from fluent in those though.

She set down her guitar and thought for a second before answering Simon's question. "Well, I've been playing the piano, flute, cello and trumpet since around 4 years old or 5 years old and then the guitar since I was about 7 years old." Logan answered. " My mom was the music and theater teacher at my school and she taught outside of school so from an extremely young age I was in a house with a lot of music. I did singing and vocal lessons from the age of 4 to 8 but then I stopped because I had such a busy life, both in and out of school. What about you? How long have you been playing for? " She asked as she started to set her guitar back into its case. "And, you asked me about where I'm from but I don't know anything about you. Where are you from? do you have any siblings? Which are your favorite classes, what do you do in your free time around here; anything along the lines of that." Logan was already starting to warm up to Simon, mainly because she had just been vulnerable and opened herself up to him by playing a song that her family has used as a form of great expression over a large amount of years.