#this is my last act of service before i lock in for final exam revisions wish me luck

[blue--ingenue]

Staircase Ballet ("Half Life" by Imogen Heap)

Turn your sound on, I promise it's worth it :)

the lovely @bawbawbridgie kindly informed me that all of the songs in the score are songs written by Imogen Heap. she also noticed that that most of the lyrics fit the scenes they belong to. so here's a little edit I made and some things that make me go feral about this sequence :)

everytime i listen to this i imagine the lyrics are Scorpius' thoughts

the NAMES. Staircase Ballet. they are literally dancing around each other, separated but remaining in each other's orbit. Half Life. they feel incomplete without the other. they've lived the last several years at school, practically inseparable, and now they forbidden from even being near each other

Scorpius' devastated confusion. it's the same expression he wears when he confesses "Sometimes I wonder if they're right. If I am the son of Voldemort." he's so tired that part of him wonders if it's him that wrong

the lyrics "the stickler is you played not one beat wrong, you never promised me anything" - i'm imagining Scorpius, not yet out, hanging onto whatever he can. he doesn't imagine that Albus returns his feelings, but he loves him so much that he'll bear anything to be with him in any capacity

the PINING

"there may well be others, but i still like to pretend, that i'm the one you really want to grow old with"

"will you ever slow down, will i ever come first?" - thinking of this as a precursor to the "Try my life" speech in the library

THE WHOLE TIME NEAR THE END WHEN THEY'RE INCHES APART, THE LYRICS ARE A REAPEATED "HOLD ME"

the pining and agony of "you know you'll never be lonely, you know you'll always be loved, and maybe you never need more than that"

poor Scorpius, whose only family is his father (i have a headcannon that he's disowned the blood maniacs he's related to) wishes he had a family as large and tight-knit as the Potter-Weasley-Granger clan

(thinking about the library speech again) even when everything else is horrible, Albus has people who love him

"maybe you never need more than that" - my translation: "Maybe you don't need me." Scorpius loves him despite the overwhelming belief that Albus will never love him back in the same way, and he can't help it

"but for the surplus that loves, what's to become of us? does it even register on your conscience?" is the lyrical equivalent of the library monologue's "Can you imagine what that's like? Have you ever even tried?"

the use of the word "surplus," as though Scorpius' love for Albus is an unneeded, unrequited excess