His Mark
[Knowledge is Power]

16th September 2016
Friday

Cordelia

As usual, the room was buzzing with activity, stands being flown around with sheets of music and various instruments being summoned.

"If I were you, I would stick to the walls in the first five or ten minutes. I almost got flattened by a cello once." I advised as I lead Aileen to the wall.
"Right...stick to the walls..." I heard him mutter to himself as a chair almost made contact with his face.
"So, who organises this whole thing? I don't see any teachers around..." He asked me after a while of watching various instruments seemingly appearing out of thin air.

"Since Flitwick left, it became mostly a student organised thing...occasionally a teacher comes to supervise us, but Li Yao is the boss here. He's very...effective." I said selectively.

We head over to the grand piano,where a tall,Chinese Ravenclaw was scribbling on a sheet of music and murmuring to himself, occasionally hitting a chord or a key. I waited to be acknowledged before making a move.

After a few minutes of awkward waiting, Li Yao finished his pencilling and turned towards us, pushing his spectacles firmly in his nose.

"May I help you, Cornelia?" He asked in a polite tone.I sighed in resignation as he called me by the wrong name again.

"I've brought you a candidate for the piano. Aileen, this Li Yao, he prefers to be called Li. Li,this is Aileen. He came to audition."
"A pleasure to meet you Alien," Li offered his hand with a completely straight face. I quickly averted my eyes to the floor, concealing my twitching face.

Li was notorious for messing up other people's names,but this has got to be the worst (or the best) muck up for a name ever.

"The pleasure is all mine," Answered Aileen, his expression almost as blank as always if it weren't for the little twitch of his lips as Li called him Alien.
"Please just call me Ai..." He trailed off as he shook Li's hand in greeting.
"Maybe he won't mess that up..." Aileen muttered just loud enough for me to hear.
"Right, go on Bai and play something for me" Li gracefully pushed himself off the piano and waited expectantly for him.

Is he serious? How can you mix up Ai and Bai? Sure they rhyme, but really?

Aileen made his way over to the piano stool, a resigned look on his face as he sat down,
"I'll be playing Clint Mansell's Lux Aeterna in E minor..." He trailed off and let his long fingers hover over the keyboard.
He gently pressed two keys, then three more, then both of his hands were gliding across the length of the keyboard, his eyes half closed and it seemed that every single drop of emotion that he possessed was being placed into that single performance.
The music came from everywhere and filled every space in the Great Hall.

It was all too soon that the Great Hall became quiet again, as Aileen lifted his hands from the keys and looked down with an expression that indicated that he might flee the hall at any minute.

"Oh look there's a hippogriff," I said in a faux awe voice after my swift recovery and pointed out to the window in a pathetic attempt to divert everyone's attention. When no one listened , I added with as much steel as I could muster
"It's a hippogriff people, there's nothing to see here."

Under my unnaturally steely gaze,the other orchestra members slowly drifted their gaze from Aileen and eventually the noise level drifted back to the initial loud hustle and bustle.

Li turned to me, an impressed look on his face.

"A good find, Cornelia. Bai, are you happy filling in as the pianist?"
"Sure... As long as you don't call me Alien again, or Bai- I'm in."
"My apologies Kai. Now, since our conductor left, I have to fill his spot, which leaves you to play while I conduct. Accio!" With an abrupt jerk of his wand, a flurry of parchment flew into his hand.

"Our next performance is at Christmas, so here's Silent Night and God Rest Ye Merry Hippogriff. I'm not expecting you to play today, but have a look at these and practise. Right, everyone QUIET!" He yelled and the room immediately fell silent.
I quickly scurried to my position with the other violinists, hurriedly opening my sheet music.

"Ok! We have a new pianist everyone, Kai from Ravenclaw so I can fully take over the conductor position. We will be starting with Silent Night, and I hope you've been practising or I'll be handing out theory music sheets!"

I winced at the thought of excess music theory homework and placed my bow on the strings.

Aileen

Is this guy serious?
If he calls me Alien one more time I won't be responsible for whatever happens to him after that, I thought silently to myself as everyone scurried to their positions, and smiling slightly at the other students appalled faces as Li mentioned theory music sheets.

I glanced over at Cordelia, she was fully concentrated in her part, every single person in the orchestra played their part perfectly just like a well oiled machine.

They're just like bees- following the directions of their queen, It sickened me.
Little bees following their leader, what if he messes up? Will everyone have to do music theory homework? I thought as I averted my eyes from Cordelia and focused on Li.

Maybe I should just look through Li's mind without disrupting him - after all it won't do me any good if Cordelia gets extra homework... I thought and reached into his thoughts with my mind.
Well he obviously doesn't know Occlumency...
I thought as I slowly went through his memories, quickly dismissing things that were of no interest to me.
I came across a memory that radiated the feelings of annoyance and deep frustration and decided to look deeper into it.

I suddenly found myself standing in the dusty, book filled quarters of Professor Yvonne LaDuce, next to a very outraged Li who was caught up in a heated argument regarding the position of Ravenclaws prefect.

No wonder that he doesn't exchange more than two sentences with Xenon. I thought as I left that useless memory, venturing deeper into his mind.

I suddenly found myself in the middle of a traditional Chinese room lit only by the scarce flames of candle light, fine tapestry littered with- to me unrecognisable symbols, hung from the walls around me.
A slightly younger version of Li Yao sat hunched over some pages of parchment in a corner, with old books and drawings scattered all around him.
Li suddenly slammed the book he was reading onto the floor, ruffled his hair in frustration and started to mumble under his breath.

I walked closer to him, glancing at the open books scattered about the floor.
There was one particular book that grabbed my attention, it had a diagram of the human body with points on it called medians - it was also one of the few books that were written in english.

"Ni yao qingxing de tonou. You don't need your wand." Li murmured quietly to himself whilst scribbling something on a piece of parchment.

Wandless magic? I can already do that...well I can do some spells with wandless nonverbal magic...I thought to myself and looked at the open books and pieces of parchment scattered about the room.

There were countless drawings of the outline of the human body, with numbers and symbols that I couldn't quite decipher written on them.

"Daiti, jizhong jingli ni de dan tian zhaodao ni de taiyáng shénjīng cóng." Li's continuous ununderstandable muttering and scribbling were the only sources of noise in that otherwise dead silent room.

If only this wasn't a memory then I could read the name of this book... I trailed off in thought as I finally found another book in English, it mention something about a life force and great power, but the rest of the page was blank...meaning that Li hadn't finished reading it.

"Ai yah, this is really difficult!" Li cried out in frustration- this time in English which made me turn my attention back to him.

"Manipulate your chi...gives you great power...you can fight your opponents and gain victory..."

You had me at great power...I thought as I walked up behind Li and peered over his shoulder, just to realise that- the whole damn book was written in Chinese!

"...Yuhe ni de shanghai he ni de pengyou... control the elements..." Li continued to mumble and crumbled a piece of parchment.

Control the elements with what Li? Why can't you just think in-,

"...using your life energy and your life force..." Was the last thing I heard young Li Yao mumble, before I was ripped out of his thoughts by someone shaking me by the shoulder.

"Aileen...please don't be doing anything weird, Aileen, for Merlin's sake snap out of it before I do something drastic that we'll both regret..."
This was followed by a timid, but sharp kick to the shin.

"Ow! Damn it Cordelia, what did you do that for?!" I hissed angrily at her and rubbed my shin.
What ever happened to gently shaking someone? Why did she have to kick me?!

"I'm sorry! I shook you, I called your name Merlin knows how many times and you were still acting like you were confunded! Hang on-you're not confunded are you? You've been acting really out of it today," Cordelia's eyes met mine, worried and searching like a cancer diagnostic.
"No...your eyes are clear...Merlin, I knew this would happen," she muttered to herself .
"You knew that what would happen? Actually, no don't answer, I'm leaving- goodbye" I muttered in her direction as I placed the music sheets into my schoolbag.

I have to find out more about this chi manipulation, and the ability to control the elements that Li was researching- he mentioned a great power of some sort and I know just the place where to start researching it.

I stumbled out of the almost empty Great Hall with those last thoughts, and Cordelia hot on my heels.