Human Design | Sirius Black

ix. Painting on an Image

THOUGH HE MUCH preferred his Quidditch robes, a small part of Reece was always excited to put on dress robes. They always made him look older and more important and there was something very enjoyable about it on a lizard-brain level. He had been wearing the same set of admiral blue dress robes to Ministry events for the last two years but because, being a student in boarding school, he seldom went to more than two events a year, they were still in condition good enough to look brand new. 

So yes, maybe he did stare at himself a little too long on the evening of the twenty-seventh, but it was only because he liked looking like somebody else so maybe he wasn't staring at himself at all.

Once dressed, he walked down the stairs but then stopped at the landing halfway when he saw Erika standing against the wall beside the archway into the living room, scratching her left forearm with the nail of her right fingernail; an anxious tick she had always had, and he opened his mouth as he climbed the rest of the stairs quietly but he didn't need to ask what was wrong before Yrsa's voice came from the room in a long whine. "Ow, Mum, stop doing it so roughly."

"What's happening?" he asked in a whisper.

"She wore makeup again," Erika mumbled, continuing to scratch her arm.

Peeking into the room, Reece saw his mother with a damp handkerchief, rubbing at the painted skin on Yrsa's eyelids. "If you didn't insist on putting on your face, we wouldn't be here," she said, pulling away for a moment. Her other hand was holding Yrsa's chin in a predator grip. One of Yrsa's eyes was still surrounded with a light shimmering blue that paired with the colour of her dress robes, and a thin black line surrounded it to enhance her lashes, whilst the other was a little red, the skin tender from the colours being rubbed off with the wet cloth, a dark smudge still underneath it.

Yrsa was doing the best she could to scowl, though because she screwed her eyes shut when Natalie returned to cleaning the makeup, it wasn't as angry as she must have wished. "But I think it looks nice," she said as she did every year. "And I'm seventeen in a month."

"So that's another month that I get to tell you what you're wearing then." Finishing cleaning Yrsa's other eye, she moved on to the next. "You'll be lucky if every man who sees you doesn't start offering you a galleon for the hour."

"As if I'd be that cheap," she mumbled and instantly Reece grimaced turning away from the room and leaning against the wall on the opposite side.

Taking a deep breath, he prepared for the explosion but nothing ever came so he ventured to open his eyes again. Erika was scratching at the same line of skin, now at a more rapid pace and he stood up a little before whispering, "You're going to start bleeding."

She stopped instantly. "Right, sorry." Erika was the kind of person who apologised for everything.

"Is Claus going to be there, by the way?"

She shook her head, then mumbled. "He's travelling." Reece wondered if this was a lie. Claus Hillington was Erika's boyfriend of over a year now and still, she very seldom brought him around to any of their family gatherings and even though the Ministry party was far from a family gathering, he got the sense that she didn't mind his absence much.

"The only men at these stupid parties are forty-year-old and married; they're not going to be looking at anything," Yrsa continued, "and anyway, if your eyes cause you to sin, you're supposed to pluck them out; that's what Ashley says, so it's not my problem, it's theirs." The coils in Reece's stomach grew tighter and for a moment he was convinced his insides had been replaced by a constrictor boa that was ready to suffocate its prey but Yrsa continued before their mother could comment on not listening to Muggle-borns to derive knowledge. "And even then, the only thing anybody will be thinking with these dress robes you've got me is that you're sending me to a monastery where I'll have to take a vow of chastity and obedience for the rest of my life."