56 Resonate

The night before Halloween, I sat up thinking. Rodney was cuddled up with Tim, sleeping. With the recent events, I realised how close I'd gotten to Rodney over the last two months. It was hard for the idea of throwing him helplessly towards a thousand-year-old snake of death to be anything but cruel. I reread the words about the basilisk. (Basilisk flees only from the crowing of the rooster, which is fatal to it.) Even tho the text says the crowing of the rooster is fatal to it, it also says it flees from it. Which was it, fatal if exposed for too long, just believed to be fatal to it, would it even affect the thousand-year-old snake? 

I had a theory of why the rooster's crows are fatal, but without proof, it was just a theory. Roosters are loud, like ridiculously loud; the average crow is 80-90 decibels, but right next to their head, it's 140 decibels. A rock concert, for reference, is between 90-120 dB, so maybe a basilisk's hearing is so delicate that it can not stand loud noises like a crowing rooster and seeing how they are hatched, a chicken egg hatched beneath a toad, that they would flee the roosters because how loud they were, and maybe at a young age those loud noises could be fatal, giving the snake an innate fear of the rooster. But I had no proof and again asked the question, would it be fatal to an adult snake? 

Too many questions; I can't risk Rodney's life on too many questions. I sighed; I guess I could help the cannon on in other ways, but how? The first test would be to see if my crowing would make it flee; if that works, I could move on to killing it with my crowing Or maybe something else. I needed music for this. Placing my headphones on, I hit play on whatever cassette I had. It turns out it was •the Dark Side of the Moon album by Pink Floyd•, so I laid there listening to 70s psychedelia.

Tomorrow would be Halloween and a Saturday; I had all day to set up any plan I came up with. As the clocks struck when I hit the song •Time•, I had a thought: 'If I could make my guitar, if I had that and played a rooster crowing through it, wouldn't it work or at least do something?'. then I had another thought 'How do you play a rooster crowing through a guitar?" 

So new plan, make my guitar, then face the basilisk with my black-out goggles and make a magical sound that could kill it; I hope I just don't piss it off and get killed. It sounded like a dumb plan to me. Well, the part about getting the guitar was good; let's at least take that step.

So, how do I get the guitar? I flipped the tape and drifted into the music to think. The songs I sang to the tree were inside the tree, repeating, trapped, vibrating, resonating. I like that word 'resonate' that seemed the right word for what the songs were doing in the tree. Resonating. Maybe that's what it needs to do. Maybe that's what I need to do. 

In the morning, I stretched and went on my run; it was a damp, cold morning. Seemed like a storm was to come today. I finished up my exercises and headed for a shower. After that, I headed for breakfast, a simple affair of porridge and toast, which I ate while reading the paper. More raids on households to find dark magic; the ministry was stupid to publish this kind of information. They were basically screaming that they were coming after your Dark heirlooms, so get rid of them or hide them. Don't worry; If we don't find anything, we can't prosecute you. At least they could have set up some Aurors to stake out Borgin and Burkes or other dark magic artifact dealers. Hell, you could have an amnesty or something, hand it in and get a free pie. It would stop the circulation and give good press to anyone handing it in.

I sighed at the news and got up, leaving the paper on the table for anyone else to read and headed out to the yew. Dark clouds hung in the air; it wasn't raining yet, but it would you could feel the building storm. The cold was oppressive as I walked down to the lake. I was dressed in jeans and a warm jumper because it wasn't a school day, so a uniform was not required. A strong wind blew as I approached the lake, my hair whipping about and the spray of the lake hitting my face and eyes. I grit my teeth; what a bad day to do this.

I saw the tree; it was swaying in the wind, its large branches providing cover for the birds and creatures hiding within it. I ran to get under the tree; there, I found a sanctuary from the coming storm. Sighing with relief, I walked to the trunk of the tree. Placing my hand on it, I could feel the resonance of the songs I left in the tree, string the tree. That's not all I felt. I could feel the storm that was oncoming resonating in the tree. I sat down and put my back in the trunk. I could still feel the resonance, but it was weaker.

I sighed. 'This is going to be cold,' I thought as I stood up and removed my jumper and shirt, revealing my bare chest to the cold. "yup, cold", I shivered. I quickly sat back down. Now I could feel the resonance even stronger than before, the noise flowing through the trunk into my body; I closed my eyes to focus on that feeling. The cold slowly faded, or maybe my perception of it did as I focused. I definitely could feel the time was right; the storm was adding to the resonating music, making it more defined. But there was a missing factor. "my magic," I whispered in an epiphany. Focusing on my magic, I began to make it resonate in the same way the tree did. 

I was wholly focused on the tree, the storm and my magic. I was unaware of my surroundings and time. The resonance kept getting stronger and stronger. I could tell the storm had come as well because it was in full swing; my magic struggled to keep up, but it was working. I began to picture the guitar. The guitar the tree showed me, in great detail, how it would sound and how it would look, how it would feel in my hands, how my magic would flow through it. I could feel the weight of it as if I was holding it; my hands could feel the smooth wood. 

*Boom* loud thunder crashed over my head and woke me from my meditation. First, I was annoyed at losing the feeling of the guitar. But I didn't lose the feeling looking down in my arms was a stringless guitar made of polished wood; its grain patterns were beautiful. It was just how I pictured the guitar, from the weight to the soft feel of the wood to the smell of the guitar. I shivered. I felt tired, cold, and drained of energy. Quickly putting my clothes back on, I got ready to head back to the castle. 

Looking out from the tree, it was dark, and raining lights from the castle were barely seen through the storm. I sighed, pulling out my wand; I was barely able to cast the umbrella spell and walked back to the castle.