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━━━ SIXhalloween
Raya paused on the staircase that led to the seventh floor, where the Gryffindor common room was.
Sirius had gone ahead, saying he needed to grab a few things━and bring Lily along. She needed a few things from Zonko's too, for her costume. "She wouldn't let me hear the end of it if I go alone," He'd said, before going up the stairs, climbing three at a time.
She crossed her arms, leaning against the balustrade on the landing, watching the portraits that were on the walls around the staircase. All of them were alive━vital and spirited in their own way, and all their noises blared into one in the back of her mind.
She needed the costume blood for Aylin's costume. She was looking forward to this party, and the enthusiasm on her face when she talked about the party and her costume had struck, somehow. Sure, her enthusiasm felt insufferable, but, Raya had been the same way when she'd first gotten an invite to a Halloween party when she was fourteen. But somewhere deep, she felt the slightest twinge of a feeling she couldn't place. I'll never be fourteen again. I'll never feel that way again. I grew up so fast. I never grew up.
Fourteen━when her rage was bristling and visceral, when she felt as if her head was held underwater and she couldn't breathe. She'd scream until her voice cracked in arguments, and her mother won each god-damned one of those. There were still those rose-tinted memories of childhood somewhere, beneath all that rage and festering of girlhood.
("What's your problem, Raya?")
(What's the problem, Raya?)
No, she'd never grown up. She just buried that rage inside her, sharpened it to a pointed razor, and coated it with venom.
She wondered how Aylin survived fourteen.
The bleak sunlight from the windows warmed her toes inside her shoes, making her shift her feet.
So Raya thought of Halloween again━of the red lipstick in her drawer that she planned to lend Aylin if she ever got to finish her costume. It'd go well with it.
Halloween, when she pretended like she was someone else.
(She'll think of anything rather than herself. She'll think of anything rather than her red-hot rage and her decaying heart).
