Encore, Encore! [tag: cait]

[isaac christopher emerson]

In the beginning there was a blackness, and indescribable nothingness. That wasn't entirely true; after all, he was there, although there was no physical evidence to support such. As much as the blackness surrounded his essence, he was the all-consuming void. The experience was not unfamiliar, although it certainly didn't make it any less strange. Each time that Issac Emerson was lucky enough to fall deeply into sleep (REM Sleep, as far as he'd once read in one scientific journal), his dreams began with this blank canvas, upon which the scenes would fall.

There was no difference now either, despite the implications that the dream would have on the boy's future. Slowly but surely, his presence was compressed, folded infinitely and sent into a tangible form. Fingers curled experimentally, but they were tight, and uncomfortable. They were slender and with clean fingernails, filed too perfectly to belong with his own thoughts. His small hands made their way to his knees, pale and bare under a tube of clothing. That wasn't right. A hand trailed through his shoulder-length golden hair to prove what he'd thought. This wasn't Isaac's body at all, but the hair wasn't foreign.

Arizona? Yes. The body he was in was most definitely his sister's, rather than his own. The idea had him chuckling mentally, as he released his hold on that body, and floated back up, this time quickly realising his own body sat just one chair to her left. Quickly catching a hold on it, Isaac was now snug in his own skin, all his bones and teeth and joints pleasantly at one with his thoughts. With his eyes only, he was able to finally observe the dream as it took shape.

There was a belief in lucid dreaming, a phenomenon when the dreamer is entirely aware of the dream for what it was, rather than what it appeared to be. Non-magical beings had the habit of believing a lucid dream to just be a strange occurrence possibly fueled by hormones or conscious effort of the parietal lobes. Strange brain chemistry terms that Isaac never really understood but could quote rather well. Muggle science was a lot more complicated than Magical Medicines. Always so determined to slice and cut and remove and stitch, rather than to attack the problem with a home-remedy in the form of well-brewed potion. Then again, they couldn't really know any better. His parents tried, with their cough syrups and ibuprofen. Isaac himself knew that under the best of intuitions, a lucid dream could come to be quite a tool of divination and insight.

There were rows and rows of chairs, and several columns to boot. Isaac was in the second row of the dead centre column. From his left and from his right, an equal number of chair streamed off, broken into chunks of twenty or thirty, so as to allow for aisle-ways up and down stairs. Behind him, an outlandish number of chairs were in rows similar to his own, only they were incrementally risen from the ground so as to provide a better view over the head of the man or woman in the row in front.

The seats were already beginning to fill up, each one occupied by a face that Isaac was unable to place a name on but seemed so well-known. A mental block seemed to be placed on their identities, but none of this worried him. Isaac knew them to be good people. To the left of himself, Arizona was smiling to herself with her perfect fingers crossed on top of one another in her lap. A bright-orange sundress was only serving to enhance the shine of her blonde, beachy hair that always found itself out of place at Hogwarts. She gave him an innocent glance which let him know that she wasn't aware of his possession of her body just minutes before. She signed a simple, but knowing It's going to start soon, before looking to her cell phone. The items weren't useful at all in the castle, but in the muggle world they were a lifeline. The inherent magic that the twins held was strong enough that they were somewhat glitchy, but generally the pros outwayed the cons. It was no surprise to see Arizona using one in public.

Just to the right of Arizona was a couple which Isaac did in fact know the names of. It was not his parents. No, they were not to be in the audience tonight, nor any such night. Instead, the couple to Arizona's right were commonly sitting there, since such desirable seats were often snatched up by the families of the performers. The woman who was elbow-to-elbow with Arizona had on a shin-length violet dress which she was obviously set on wearing, despite whether or not she filled it to the brim. A string of pearls off-set her peppery hair and tanned skin. A traveled woman, Mrs. Cornwell was well-traveled and her husband kept them perpetually on cruises and trips with the money he'd made from several patents for machinery parts unknown but integral to the success of the modern automobile industry. He sat holding his wife of thirty year's hand, trailing his thumb mindlessly over her soft palm. His suit was proper, although Isaac knew he wore only a few suits and cycled between them when he was at such events. A green tie and green pocket handkerchief would have been fitting of any Slytherin's closet, but paired with the man's grey eyes and weathered complexion... they didn't seem venomous at all. Instead, a sea breeze floated through Isaac's nostrils without explanation.

The retired couple were not happy though, and Isaac struggled to read their fast-moving, whispering lips. What he could gather was not concrete and he was frustrated. At seventeen years of reading lips, he should have been better.

”[...] hope Sarah's okay. [...] believe she had […] and her throat was […] shut!”
”I know! I came when I heard […]. Who will play the piccolo part? […] not the second chair, I hope.”

From what chunks and pieces Isaac could eavesdrop from the couple, their athletic, fair-haired daughter was ill. It was an event indeed. From all the years Isaac had been attending the concerts of the Philharmonic that his parents were members of, he couldn't remember more than a handful of days when Sarah Cornwell wasn't piping away. Of course, Isaac could never hear her, but the concentration on her face was evident that she was crossing quite the range and tonguing notes out like a machine gun would throw bullets. Just to the couple's right, a woman in large, fuchsia hair was glaring unhappily, possibly of relation to the second flautist who indeed would have supplied only a mediocre performance in comparison to the skills of Sarah Cornwell.

There was a oddity just to Isaac's left. The chair wasn't the same as the others, and it obviously stood out: there was no one in it. While classical performances were not everybody's thing, there was seldom a seat that was left unfilled, especially in such a great area of the Hall. Upon the grey seat of the chair was a triangular prism of paper, taped and with the words, “Reserved. Do Not Take.” printed on each of the two sides that were visible. This was very strange, for never were individual seats reserved, but instead the rows.

His mind wandered over who would come to sit in that seat, first he pictured the Prime Minister, but then it seemed lonely to have him there without his wife and two children. There was only just the one seat open, after all. Next Isaac imagined several of the professors at Hogwarts vying for the seat, each in a more wizardly outfit than the last. This idea of magical meeting muggle was unnerving to Isaac, however and so he quickly abandoned the idea.

The lack of comfort he was feeling must have called for a distraction, for the lights in the hall dimmed, and the players walked from behind stage and into their posture-aligning chairs, fiddling with the music stands' heights once they were seated. The first of Isaac's parents that were out on the stage was his mother. Her smile was fake, but it was always fake, as if conditioned from many, many such occasions. She knew enough to smile also with her eyes, but Isaac knew her well enough to believe that she was probably fussing internally over the condition of her double-reed. Maybe it was not up par. She had the habit of fretting endlessly when she was about to play for others. Soon the woodwinds, brass, and upper strings were all on stage and the lower strings worked their way onto the hardwood stage. The bassists were luckily very close to the end of the line and very close to the door from which everyone filed out of. To have had to drag such a large instrument around would have been intolerable. His father was just in front of Isaac now, easily spotted in the first row of cellos. The instrument was resting lazily on the peg beneath his legs, and his arms were moving the bow across the strings (as everyone was doing), warming up and testing the rosin before the music began.

Largely, these concerts were dull and lifeless to Isaac, as he was unable to enjoy them for what they were. Mostly, he sat watching many people move their fingers and hands in minute ways, supposedly putting forth very delicate and intricate tunes. Occasionally, a very boisterous bass drum would hit the drum head with a mallet so hard that the vibrations from the rebounding sound waves would travel through the floor in the Hall and make Isaac's feet hum with the perceptible vibrations. It wasn't hearing but it provided a nice surprise every so often.

The movements of the members were stopped, the orchaestra done with its warm up. His mother was stoic, her oboe lying protected on her lap. She was clearly doing her best to run through every phrase of music in her head: last minute reminders. Isaac's eyes traveled through the orchaestra, but was shocked when he found his father's eyes staring pointedly at him. When he was younger, the boy delighted in seeing his father glance at him while at a concert. It made him feel like he knew someone very famous. Now, though, Isaac felt unnerved. His father waited until he knew Isaac was looking at him, and then signed very infinitesimally.

Be on your best behaviour. What did that even mean? Without delay, the bow was back in Ezra Emerson's hand and the music began. After five or so minutes of visual silence (as he called watching things barely move), Isaac let his mind wander once more. He'd slipped easily out of his own body, fell into that of Mr. Cornwell, and felt his thumb move across his wife's hand still. He then floated up and out of the old body, and watched from above as a young girl made what was looking to be a Jacob's Ladder from some string between her fingers. She obviously was just as impressed with the music as Isaac himself. She turned her head upward, stared at his invisible figure with blue eyes, and then turned back scowling to her string.

Shivers slipped through his essence, and he found his body once more, falling into it like a tired man might fall onto a bed. He was happy to be back in his own body, although whether he was in it or not probably would not have mattered in this dream-reality. Anything he wanted could have happened. If he were so inclined, he might have had a herd of horses whinny and rush through the audience, thus providing a better entertainment. The urge to take the reigns, so to speak, of this dream was non-existent, however. He seemed relaxed and complacent enough to let things flow as the might.

So complacent, in fact, that Isaac hadn't noticed the peculiar seat next to his own having been filled until he turned his head with a shock. He would have been completely comfortable with the Prime Minister sitting there, for the elegant woman who was now in the seat had Isaac dumbfounded and unable to tear his eye away from her figure. Even in his dreams, never before had he seen one of the Founders of Hogwarts. Be on your best behaviour, he reminded himself and forced his eyes into a little bit less of a shocked appearance.

[helga elain hufflepuff]

For many hours, days, even, Helga had discussed countless possibilities and charms and everything that one needed to know about their proposed resurrection. Back in those early times, it seemed almost strange to her that they would need such a charm, for at the time she was fully alive, with blood and other substances running throughout her body and the school seemed almost untouchable. It seemed odd that Rowena had even perceived a time when they would no longer be around to protect their precious creation and a time where they would need to return in order to protect it and their students from harm. She didn't feel a need to question Rowena however, she'd learned that, of all the people she knew, her female fellow co-founder was one that exceeded the wit and intelligence of many. It didn't seem as odd to trust in her friend and help to create an enchantment which was in the best interest of everything and everyone who walked inside the school. But she hadn't imagined that she would be so close to regaining her physical body at this moment, she hadn't really expected that they would need to activate this enchantment. It partially saddened her, to an extent, that someone would damage or threaten Hogwarts enough to need the founders to return to help defend the castle. In her heart, she supposed she'd put too much trust in some of the students who demonstrated negative personality traits, but also she had hoped it would never be necessary to protect their creation from outside forces. But, if she were entirely honest with herself, she had suspected, in her mind, that she might require the ability to return to her previous material form.

As with most things, resurrection of a person who had been dead for a considerable amount of years was not a simple thing to understand unless considerably gifted in intellect, nor a simple thing to achieve. It required a student from each house, of which Helga had taken great interest in finding the student whom she believed was the right one to help her. As with her pleasant and social nature, Helga shared a deep appreciation for almost all of the students sorted into the house named for her, she was proud of all of them in different ways. But to find the student to take part in the complicated enchantment as proposed by Rowena, that seemed to be a different request to the usual. As such, she'd taken a long time, perhaps the longest of the four founders to select the student whom she felt was the perfect candidate for this task, a student that might not appear the obvious choice for some. But, as with each decision she made, Helga had faith in both her decision, but more importantly in the boy that she had chosen. While she was happy with each student sorted into Hufflepuff, she felt a somewhat strengthened connection to the seventh year boy. Of course, not being the one acknowledged for her superior intellect, she couldn't explain exactly what it was that had enabled her to see the right qualities in him, merely that it now seemed impossible that the student could have been anyone else.

Concentration evident in the face painted upon the canvas of her portrait, she'd set about drifting off to sleep, the first of the necessary steps to reach the boy. Existing merely as a portrait did limit her access to him, hence it was another brilliant idea that had allowed her to access her student in the only means available to both of them - through his dreams. When she awoke in the dreamworld, she found herself smiling good-naturedly at the figures that were present, although she was not completely certain that her presence would even register with them, her appearance was different to theirs in that she had purpose to invading his personal dreamlike state. She paced for a few moments, before she found herself staring at a chair that almost demanded her attention, almost as though it was meant for her, but she shook this absurd thought out of her head, dismissing it for its ridiculous nature. How would his unconscious mind have realised that she was going to turn up so unexpectedly? Still, it appeared that the chairs were filled, except for this one that so suddenly demanded her attention. Still smiling pleasantly, she seated herself down, turning to consider the boy beside her, turning her attention to that which was holding his. "What are they playing?" she asked quietly, her voice calm and gently appealing, as though she was waiting for him to trust her as a viable source of information, rather than believing her to be a simple by-product of his sleeping mind.

"I hope you'll forgive me for interrupting your dream, Mr. Emerson. It seems to be the only suitable method of reaching you, without complications." She transferred her attention back to the figures standing before them, not leaving their faces for a few moments, waiting for him to recover from any initial surprise. "I would not ask such a thing of you, if I did not believe it to be important. Myself and the three remaining founders require your help, if you are willing to give it." She would not attempt to bribe him, manipulate or force him into something that he did not want to do, although a small sense of disappointment might have been produced if he rejected her request, although she would never let the signs of this emotion appear upon her face. Her hands fell into her lap, considering the performance once more, before common sense found its way into her head. "Do forgive me, I should have thought of this before." She removed her hands, signing the last sentence gently, along with the remainder of the words she spoke to him. "My signing is not wonderful, Mr. Emerson, I hope you'll overlook the mistakes I may make?" She returned his confused with a warm smile, as though reassuring him of his sanity. "The important thing is that you know that although everything here may be irrelevant to the situation, although I would never claim that dreams are aimless or unimportant. Your dreams are always something to treasure. I must impress upon you that my presence is real, despite that you might believe yourself to be merely dreaming."

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