Revolution

Emmett stood outside a shop on Diagon Alley, one of the few that would let him stand outside their business. He had his guitar in his hands and he was strumming some light chords, staring forward even as people walked right in front of him, ignoring him, their eyes purposely averted. He stared forward with the same level of purpose, his chin up and his eyelids low on his deep eyes as his hair moved in the breeze.

It was cold nowadays, and Emmett was basically living out of his bag and guitar case. He got some money for working at the Leaky Cauldron, some money from his articles, but he was an artist and artists rarely prospered. He knew a hungry stomach, he knew frozen toes, he knew a weak body, he knew an aching soul, a soul aching for peace in a species that was destined to murder until it killed itself out.

But he had music, and he had words. At the moment he had two of his signs propped up on either side of him as he gently played his guitar. One said “If you ever had enough, would you recognize it?” The other read “Stop the War.” If people thought he just pulled out talk of peace for his articles, where he claimed everything had the underlying cause of the war, they were very mistaken. Emmett was used to destruction, used to hate, used to war, and frankly, he would do anything to get rid of it. He lived what he preached.

More people began walking on the street and he began to play one of his favorite songs, a song called Revolution. He began to sing, “You say you want a revolution. Well, you know, we'd all wanna change the world. You tell me that's it evolution. Well, you know, we'd all wanna change the world. But when you talk about destruction, don't you know that you can count me out? Don't you know it's gonna be all right? Don't you know it's gonna be alright? Don't you know it's gonna be alright?”

Emmett's eyes closed as he felt the power of the music. He played music for two reasons. To reach people and to touch that part of his soul that only music could tap into. ”You say you got a real solution. Well, you know, we'd all want to see the plan. You ask me for a contribution. Well, you know, we're all doing what we can. But If you want money for people with minds that hate, all I can tell you is is, brother, you'll have to wait. Don't you know it's gonna be alright? Don't you know it's gonna be alright? Don't you know it's gonna be alright? Don't you know it's gonna be alright?”

It was pretty obvious no one was listening to him. He had a guitar case open for anyone who would like to keep him alive, but it seemed that very act of being hopeful for money deemed him untrustworthy and unworthy of any sort of generosity. If he could afford to come out and sing and preach for his cause without asking for a little money, he would do it. But if he had tried, he would die. And he would rather not die for the cause of hunger. He would die for the cause of peace, but he still had things to do.

”You say you'll change the constitution. Well you know, we'd all love to change your head. You tell me it's the institution. Well, you know, you better free your mind instead. But if you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao, you ain't gonna make it with anyone anyhow. Don't you know it's gonna be alright? Don't you know it's gonna be alright? Don't you know it's gonna be alright? Alright! Alright! Alright! Alright! Alright! Alright! Alright!”

He finished the song and stopped strumming his guitar, letting it droop in his hands as he caught his breath. He heard a small clink and glanced down at his guitar case. A singular knut. He looked up and saw a woman striding away. “Thank you, ma'am.” She ignored her. Ah. Pity money. She didn't like what he was saying, she was probably a mother with a son about his age and did not want him to starve to death.

Any kindness nowadays was welcome.

He began to strum the chords to Revolution, looking down at his guitar and shivering in the freezing, cold air. The war didn't stop and neither did he. He did not plan to stop preaching for his cause until there was relative peace.

People had been staring again; as Nerissa had walked about Hogwarts’ hallways and up its many staircases, large eyes had watched and had passed whispered opinions from one student to the next. In fact, there were times when she could have sworn that they had written her story, rather than having had simply read it from the Daily Prophet; twisted versions of what the newspaper had published had been created by naive teenagers, and the whispering never stopped. These people… they ate tragic all up; it entertained them on a dull evening.

Her breathing had become shallow once more- as it always did when she felt she was in danger… when she felt that her fellow classmates were just waiting for the right opportunity to pounce- and so, she had fled. Nerissa ran and ran until she found herself on a train, which was scheduled to leave the Hogsmeade train station just minutes after she had found a seat near the door. The window to her right was smudged with the fingerprints of young, sticky children, and the air smelt of an air freshener that had gone stale long before, but she and the train’s staff were the only breathing beings on board, and that alone was all that Nerissa needed in order to feel safe once more.

That and the small white capsules that were rattling from within the orange prescription bottle they belonged to, which she held with curled, trembling fingers. The taste that the medication she had swallowed had left on her tongue was dreadful, but the relief that had washed over every inch of her body as soon as she had done made up for any and all of the prescription’s cons; no longer did Nerissa feel as though she were once again in the presence of a blood thirsty Ne’Os Emof, rather, she was just a small girl sitting along on a rickety train, which was headed towards Diagon Alley.

As the train made its way along its tracks, Nerissa stared towards the center isle with a content expression in place, as though she were imagining that vines had sprouted from the floor and had begin to twist and tangle around the poles that sat in front of each row of seats. Her lopsided lips parted slowly, curling into a small, innocent smile, her teeth glittering beneath those chapped, fleshy layers of pink, which had bite marks scattered about them from when things had been a bit too difficult for her to handle.

Nerissa had only been sitting there silently on her own for a short while when the giant metal machine that she had allowed to swallow her up and carry her away from her school, had slowed to a stop. She cast a glance sideways, allowing her eyes to drift out the window to examine her new surroundings. People were scattered everywhere. They were a disease that had been spread from one place to another and continued to dominate the whole of Britain. Nerissa had learned from first-hand experience that these ugly creatures- a category which she too, unfortunately, belonged to –hurt, killed, and destroyed, and she honestly wanted nothing to do with them.

Yet, they ruled the world at the time, and they truly were unavoidable; Nerissa had tried to cut herself off from them completely over the past year, only to learn that it made it far harder for her to handle them when she found herself cornered- in fact, she had learned that, after a bit, one could completely forget the way to communicate after time.

“Diagon Alley!” the conductor shouted from where he sat at the far end of train- Nerissa peered around the bench in front of her, but still could not locate the man who that raspy voice be longed to- which was her cue to make her way back towards Earth.

Voices danced upon the air, shouts traveled in zig-zag motions above her head, and the distant sound of an old guitar being played swarmed about Nerissa’s ears as she stood in the very heart of the Wizarding World, simply watching time pass by without her- watching and listening. She was knocked into by taller men and women, but she paid no mind; these people did not stare at her with wide eyes as the children of Hogwarts had…

Nerissa interlaced both of her hands, having slipped that orange container of hers back into her pocket, and swayed from her tip-toes to her heels. What was the name of that song? She could hear music somewhere close but just out of reach… she recognized the words that were being sung, but she simply could not place it. Her eyes danced about the crowd as she searched; for the first time in what Nerissa was certain had been years, she was curious.

“Don't you know it's gonna be alright?” She whispered softly, her voice drowned out by the noises of human beings.

As a musician, Emmett knew how to listen. It was one of the reasons he was so quiet. He had exceptional hearing and out in public like this, he heard bits and pieces of each conversation, all at the same time, all trying to beat the other, each trying to drown each other out. It hurt his ears but he could not drown them out. They were the melodies of life, and you never ignored the melody.

As he finished the song, he began to play the chords, playing the instrumental version of the great song to use as a bridge into another song. He looked up, pushing his Ray Band- knock off glasses up onto his hair really quick and using his eyes to supplement what he was hearing with his sight to. Sometimes it helped him a little bit, separating everything.

His ears quivered as they picked something up more pertinent than all of the babble and he strained them slightly and suddenly picked up the tune that he had just been singing and playing. He could have dropped his guitar. Someone... Someone had actually been listening to him, rather than listening to each other and themselves. Someone might have cared.

His eyes sought out the person who the voice belonged to, and they finally latched onto a small, wide-eyed girl who looked as though the crowd was about to bowl her over. Emmett blinked and made his way into the crowd, hefting his guitar with him and playing the tune all the while. He always preached reaching out to others and he was going to listen to his own advice.

He reached her, and noticed that he crowd sort of parted around him. It must have had to do with the fact that he was playing his guitar. He stopped his playing and held out a hand to the girl, saying in his quiet voice, "You look like you're about to be knocked over." He blinked, aware that he usually never approached people and noting how out of character this was.

Nerissa had been looking the opposite direction when the odd guitar-playing man had approached her, and, therefore, it had startled her when the soft music she had been listening for began to grow louder, and nearer. Higher notes were no longer so quiet that she had trouble detecting them with her mortal ears, but became far easier for her to hear than even the low, bold notes.

“You look like you're about to be knocked over.”

There had been no avoiding such a reaction from the small, startled girl- she did struggle with paranoia of being fallowed, after all, and a raggedy man with a guitar was no stranger than the other stalkers that Nerissa’s damaged mind had come up with in the past. She jumped backwards, cowering away from the voice, nearly stumbling over the feet of someone who had been walking past her at that moment. “No!” she squeaked, protesting against whatever horrible things the human planned to do to her…

It didn’t take long, however- just the time that it took for her heart to slow and for her mind to stop buzzing- for the redhead to realize that she was not actually in any immediate danger. The expression that the stranger wore on his face made it clear that he was not about to harm her, and though she was still somewhat skeptical, Nerissa straightened, uncurling so that she no longer looked like a small turtle cowering from within its shell.

“Oh…” she spoke quietly, as though the simple word would tell the story of a young girl who had been broken, and who now jumped at any abrupt change in her environment, not just abrupt changes who played music on the streets. “So you were the one singing then? I know that song…” She continued, attempting to obtain some sort of normalcy, though she was no longer really the type to strive for such things among others, “It is by a Muggle band, yeah?” She could recall her beloved uncle playing old muggle records whenever she had come over to stay, and they had danced to the music with smiles on their faces and laughter in their throats to match…

Oh, sweet memories.

The girl was frightened by him, which Emmett conceded was understandable. His hair was windblown and though he still looked young, he did have an aura of someone use to life on the streets. It was strange. He had a hardened delicacy about him. Emmett was gentle, he could not help himself in that sense. It would have been easier if he was hulking and large, but life was not meant to be easy for him.

She drew away and Emmett took a respectful step away though, because the girl looked sincerely frightened by him. She straightened up and drew a little closer. She asked if he was the one singing and he nodded, still strumming. Her wide eyes seemed to look through him and he looked down at his guitar neck, changing keys, before looking back up at the girl.

At her words, Emmett nodded slowly, halting his playing though the tune seemed to catch to the window and continue, ghostlike, in the air and the thick of the crowd around the, "Yes. It's by the Beatles. They are still quite well known, but wizards typically don't seem to pay much mind to them." He paused. "Are you okay? You look a bit frazzled."

Despite the fact that Nerissa had already once heard the young man’s voice (when he had startled her, of course), she was somewhat surprised by the tone that he spoke in; it was far younger than his appearance had lead Nerissa to believe he was. There was an expression in his eyes that made Nerissa feel as though he knew something she did not, but not in a frightening way, rather, it seemed his soul was far older than the rest of him.

Feeling slightly more at ease, she rid her eyes of the suspicious expression that had previously occupied them, and replied, “I’ve found they don’t pay much mind to anything…” her voice was quiet, as though she feared that the crowd would hear her and would attack. Nerissa knew of a few good magical beings, but they alone were not enough to change the way that she viewed the group; it was human beings in general that frightened her, not just the magical folk of which she spoke, and, therefore, two or so people could never be enough to justify the things that she had seen.

Nerissa stumbled a bit to the side when a shoulder knocked into her own, but once more, she did not direct her attention towards whoever had done so, for it was invisibility that she desired- something which she had achieved for a few moments, until guitar man had grown nearer...

“I am frazzled, I do not simply look it,” was the small mouse’s response to the stranger’s concern. She spoke in all honesty, for she was, after all, quite damaged in several places within her skull, yet, her words seemed to taste of sarcasm on her tongue. For a moment, Nerissa averted her gaze to look off into the crowd, listening with her eyes to the voices that seemed to buzz and rattle all about her; she was not interested in those who were creating such noise… it was the way that each fuzzy word danced with the notes guitar man was playing that she enjoyed.

“Can you hear that?”

Emmett found that his mouth twitched ever so slightly at her words, which for anyone who knew him well- so for no one- was a drastic show of expression. To see Emmett smile was something that had never been recorded. To get a mouth twitch was impressive. His eyes remained on hers, his face slack and unmoved by his environment. But he found he did agree with her.

She said she was frazzled and he watched her get jostled slightly. Another person came towards them set on knocking into either the musician or the small-framed girl. Emmett moved slightly, not enough to be seen as anything more than shifting, but enough so that the oncoming shopper had to redirect their path around the two and the girl was not sent sprawling into the street.

Emmett watched the person and found that at this new stand point he could get a better look at the girl. she was small but she did not seem to be too much younger than himself and somehow, he did not think of her as younger like all the other students. She knew a thing or two about the real world, that much he could tell, but he did not know why.

He looked back down at his guitar and began to strum the tune again, though he added in a few chords to make it more uniquely his. He looked back up at the girl and she seemed to be focusing on the crowd and she suddenly asked if he heard it. His ears were ringing from a long day of being overworked by the crowd so he blinked a few times before saying, "Care to clarify?"

Nerissa could have stood there, being knocked about for the entirety of what was left of the day, simply listening, and remaining unseen by the world. She had no where to be, no one expecting her, and no way of making it back to Hogwarts that evening, she noticed as the train that she had boarded only moments before pulled out of the station, its large wheels grinding against its tracks.

The smile that had graced the young man’s lips for a short moment did not go unnoticed by little Nerissa; she was, in fact, quite surprised by his change in expression when she had spoken in such a way. He too was a wizard, was he not? However, the stranger that she had been speaking to, and who continued to play his guitar near her may have smiled in response to her opinion, but her hopes of having come across someone similar to herself were dashed when he next spoke.

"Care to clarify?"

He could not hear the harmony that he and the frightening creatures around them were creating, Nerissa realized when he responded in such a way, and for a moment, Nerissa experienced an emotion which she was unfamiliar with; pity. “If you look at them, but you turn off your eyes and listen with them, it happens; their voices come apart from them, and they are no longer ugly,” she replied in the only way she knew how, “You only see the voices, and the sounds. I learned so when I was a wee girl.”

The damaged that the Death Eaters had caused her may have been a new addition to her personality, but Nerissa Hatts had been detached from her peers throughout her entire life. Perhaps it was a birth defect, or perhaps it was the result of too many hours spent speaking to the grass and the trees, but either way, she was more of a bit of nature than she was a human being, and if someone looked real closely, they would see it.

“You should give it a try sometime... you know, when they are at their worst.”

Emmett watched the girl. She was a lot wiser than her age and visage gave her credit for. She was a little mouse of a creature and yet she had some capacity for knowledge unbeknown to everyone around her. The world around her did not know that she knew their secrets. Perhaps she did not fully realize it either. But that was it. She understood all of them, she had tapped into the harmony of their inner selves, and she could read them like a book if she really wanted to.

"You're a soul reader, then," he said, looking at her as he continued to strum. "To look past faces full of hate, and to hear past voices full of bass and hear delicacy, to see beauty... You've connected to their spirit in a sense. You're apart from them, but you've worked your way into the melody." He blinked, strumming some more chords. How long had it been since he had been able to share his insights onto the way the world worked. He had never spoken so much.

He looked down at his guitar at his words, and stared at his strumming fingers. "My sight is much too rigid for that, I'm afraid. You have a gift, in that sense. I may have the musical ear, but I have the ignorant habit of not letting myself hear past them. The deeds they do seem more believable when I simply let myself think they are as evil and ugly as they sound and look." He shook his head in time with the chords, still looking down. How was it he had said all this to a girl he had just met? He slowly raised his head and met her gaze. "My name's Emmett."

A soul reader. They were two, simple words, and yet, they seemed to make a kind of sense that Nerissa could only remember remembering; a feeling that had been long forgotten along the road as she had rapidly grown further and further apart from humanity. Was it so that words had once clicked in such a way that conversation had not seemed forced, or nauseating? Yes, she could taste it like the flavor of a food that she had once favored, but could only… just… remember the smallest bit of a taste… it was almost out of reach. “Soul reader,” Nerissa spoke, her voice quiet amongst the scuffing of shoes along the ground and the chatter chitter of those around her; she was testing the pair of words out on her tongue, and it did not matter if her ears were the only that could hear her properly.

The man beside her- Nerissa’s thoughts argued with one another, questioning whether or not the mysterious man who continued to play chords on his guitar was to be considered human, for she herself often viewed herself as a different subspecies, one which she felt he would fit into perfectly- went on, speaking of Nerissa in such a way that suggested he had taken a little peek into her soul. The young mouse’s large round eyes darted in his direction, dull in color even as a spark of interest danced upon their glassy surfaces. The music that he played seemed to speak with him, outlining each word that fell from his tongue in a way that made Nerissa feel that she had been listening to voices incorrectly all of her life; the two harmonized effortlessly, as though it were his native tongue. (OOC: Have a stated this already while posting in this thread?) Not to mention the words that were being spoken, which did not seem to suit the man that was giving them life in the first place.

“-evil and ugly,” such words had been used by the stranger to describe the sworm of creatures that continued to move about him, as though it were possible for another living soul to see them in the same way that Nerissa Hatts did; it was at that moment when the broken little porcelain doll decided that the raggedy man was a con artist. Yes, she was convinced that he was using Legilimency against her in order to harm her, just as so many had in the past. “My name’s Emmet,” Nerissa Hatts took this pause as her opportunity to rid herself of the man who was invading her head, crawling through her thoughts in the same way one would sift through files, only, Nerissa Hatts was no longer a rational little girl, due to previous, torturous events. It was for that very reason that, to anyone that may have possibly heard of what had happened to the redheaded female in the past, it would not have come as a surprise when she'd taken hold of Emmet’s guitar, and had ripped it from his arms with every bit of strength she had, before taking off running at such a speed that, had she looked behind her, every living person occupying that noisy train station in Diagon Alley would have assumed a Dementor was after her.

“That aught to shake him out of my head,” she panted, failing to see the foolishness behind both her actions and her assumptions, and so, she continued to run along the traintracks that unfolded before her with each step, weaving through one human being after another.