Human Design | Sirius Black

iii. Wallflowers Grow On Bronze Coloured Statues

FOR WHATEVER REASON even by the time it was ten in the evening and the Ravenclaw common room was full with everyone celebrating the success at the match, Reece was still not in much of a mood to join the festivities. 

The fact that the match had put them in lead of the Inter-House Cup seemed to have put everyone else in a near-annoyingly rhapsodic headspace, though it wasn't just that alone; the fact that it was the last weekend of November and all their teachers had set plenty of homework and tests for the last few weeks of term before December and this would probably be the last chance any of them had to really get drunk for a while probably fed into it too. Nonetheless, Reece found himself sitting on a windowsill, leaving him into more of an observer than a partaker.

It should be noted that Reece was not a wallflower. He was usually quite the opposite. He had been on the Quidditch team since his second year, first as a Chaser before he had become built enough to play Keeper at fourteen, and he had been made captain halfway through his fourth year when the previous one quit due to stress over N.E.W.T.s. 

He had also been on the Hogwarts debate team from his second to his fifth year and they had made it to world championships each year and won twice, and though this was 'nerdy' and may be considered lame by some, most students at Hogwarts would never complain about their school building up their reputation on an international level, especially since the Triwizard Tournament no longer existed to give them the opportunity to show off. 

The Ravenclaw was even in the Slug Club, though Reece wouldn't consider that much of an indication of anything. In addition, he had gotten nine O.W.L.s, all O's or E's, (if anybody asked him how he managed it all, and it was a question he had been asked plenty of times, he would tell him it was nothing more than good time management) and he wasn't all that bad looking thanks to exercising on a daily basis, and he was nice, which was rarer than anybody would like to think. Naturally, all this got him plenty of attention, rendering him as one of the more popular people at school.

As such, Reece was usually at the very centre of every party. But that day the alcohol was stubbornly refusing to take any effect and he still hadn't reached anything even near a nice buzz, and maybe it was because he hadn't had his best performance that day at the match, but he couldn't really be bothered with any of it. Thus, he was resigned to being a wallflower.

The body heat of the two dozen people crammed into the space with loud music and alcohol was enough to turn the place into a sauna even in November and Reece had opened the window of the sill on which he sat, allowing the cold winter air to blow against his back as he watched the dancing bodies blend into each other in the flashing blue and bronze light. The music painted everyone jubilant but him.

He would have just gone upstairs to his dormitory if Yrsa hadn't been there. She was far from sitting on the sidelines like he was, not to mention, her alcohol tolerance was much lesser, and Reece wasn't going to leave her there to her own devices. Even though she wasn't even a Ravenclaw, Yrsa had accepted the lights into herself so that they formed into a part of her being; each time the room flashed blue, she turned into some ocean princess going through her rebellion phase against the monarchy she belonged to, and when it was replaced with bronze, she took the role of a religious statue Britain had stolen from some other country and now put in their own 'national' museum. Reece was almost envious of the way she never seemed to care about anything, but maybe it was her defence mechanism.

She was dancing with Alexander, had been for the last few songs, and Reece kept his attention carefully on them. On occasion, they shared a few words, calling over the music, but mostly they were just dancing, dancing much too close to each other as far as he was concerned. Yrsa had left the Ravenclaw jumper she had been wearing to the match in her dormitory which left her in a white sportswear top that left most of her waist exposed, but other than that, she was still in the same get-up. She even still had the streaks of paint on her cheeks. And Alexander seemed to have read it all as an open invitation, at least he was if the way his hands kept lingering on her body was anything to judge by.