The Search Is Over

Chapter 131

For the next several weeks, Kreacher was frequently occupied with the task of training his new elves. At first Regulus was disgruntled when at least half of Kreacher's waking time wasn't spent in his company, and instead was taken up with the rigorous training of four elves, who, to Regulus's mind already seemed quite competent.

When asked about this, Kreacher was more than willing to expound upon the fact that simply because they were trained, did not at all mean they were trained to his standards. He wanted very much for the elves to perform all tasks precisely as he would. Regulus had no idea that there was more than one way to clean a floor or dust portraits, but apparently he had much to learn if he cared to do so, which in all honesty he didn't.

In the end it was simply easier to leave Kreacher to it and hope he had the elves trained to his satisfaction soon. Then he and Regulus could live as they'd always wanted, free to pursue anything from private alone time to book shopping together without Kreacher having to bestir himself over the upkeep of the manor.

While he waited, Regulus busied himself with his music. He practiced old songs and learned new ones. There was one in particular that he discovered when browsing through a music shop with Kreacher in Knockturn Alley after an evening hunt. It was by a witch named Heather Alexander, and it moved him like no other he'd ever heard.

It gave him chills, because it felt as if it were written just for him. As she had no idea of his true situation, that was impossible, but it just showed how magically subjective music was. A song could very clearly mean one thing to someone and something else to another person and both were as true as it got.

The song was called Fallen Angel and every word resonated with Regulus's feelings on what he had gone through with Voldemort as well as the long aftermath before reuniting with Kreacher and the Lestranges again. It even had a line about three souls being the cost of his remaining in the hell of his situation,and how if he walked away their lives forever were lost. When in hiding there in the beginning, he was afraid to return in part, for fear of putting the Lestranges more at risk.

The song was raw and full of suffering, torn emotions and a need for mercy to be bestowed on the fallen angel who was doing the suffering. Of course Kreacher disliked it very much. He tried to be polite, claiming to love anything Master Regulus performed, but the set expression on his face whenever Regulus played the song told another story.

Though Regulus loved the song for how thoroughly he related to it, he began to delve into those songs to which he didn't personally relate as well. Mag said as long as he liked a song, not relating to it, yet still producing the feeling it portrayed to others was just as necessary. Music, for a bard, was all about feeling, and if he only projected the feelings of songs he had experienced personally, he was more limited.

A true bard could play the heart strings of the audience with any song he actually connected to even if he did not relate to it personally. He started with a song from one of the most magical times in music as he saw it, the nineteen-eighties.

It was by a group called, Cinderella, though they were all men. The song was about recovering from a bad break up, which of course he had never done, but the power and the magic in it made him feel alive and invigorated, as if he could do anything.

Customizing it and making it his own was an enjoyable process, and solidified the magic he could project when playing it. Kreacher actually seemed to appreciate that one, which was nice. They both decided it could be a very fitting song from Dora to Marius.

Then there were those other songs that he didn't fully relate to on their own, but with a little creative interpretation, they could mean something else. He could take songs like that and channel his own feelings into them easily.