Briseis and the Piano Room of Requirement

A Story by BronteJade

She never saw the ghosts that came and went, quietly wiping away translucent tears as they listened to her soul-wrenching arias and odes. A short story from the Hogwarts world.

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I need a room with a piano… I need a room with a piano… I need a room with a piano…

Hogwarts had almost no music program at all. There was a choir with croaking frogs led by Professor Flitwick, but Briseis had needed something closer to her soul, and was miserable when she realised there would be no piano at her new school. She had spent much of her time at home on the old mahogany instrument that her mother and Grandmother before her had played.

There was something about sitting in the softly lit, warm piano room, with an old friend to keep her company for hours on end. Classical, Jazz, Opera, even Pop was sewed under her supple fingers on the yellowed ivory keys.

It had been when she was miserably pacing along the wall opposite to the portrait of Barnabas the Barmy, after uttering the open phrase desperately, she discovered a door opening to a high-ceilinged, candle-lit room draped with burgundy velvet curtains. The tall double-arched windows sent beams of light onto a raised section of the wooden floor which held a beautiful grand piano, much more majestic than any instrument she had ever seen. After her initial ecstasy and examination of the piano, she explored the rest of the room, which was resting place to rows and rows of cabinets, a near library of sheet music. Every song she had ever played, and far more than she had ever known had come to rest here, added to by generations of musically-inclined witches and wizards.

Her first day in “the room”, Briseis spent nearly six hours drooling over the treasure trove of un-tapped music, and only came out when her stomach told her she had missed lunch and dinner. After making excuses to her friends, she made up her mind that the room would be hers, and hers only. She moved the store of her favourite pieces that she had smuggled into Hogwarts into one of the many cases.

She never saw the ghosts that came and went, quietly wiping away translucent tears as they listened to the soul-wrenching arias and odes. She never spotted the nimble house-elves that dusted the drapes and hid to jive to her blues and jazz. Neither did she notice that many of the old portraits were crammed with visitors from other pictures who came to hear the scarlet-haired girl who had uncovered their room. And so the autumn holidays had gone, with happy hours in the piano room.