Human Design | Sirius Black

xxiii. As a 'Hufflepuff' Fairness Is All Sirius Wants

TO PERHAPS NOBODY'S surprise, least of all Reece.  Ravenclaw did indeed lose the match against Gryffindor on the last Saturday of May, no matter how good the reserves might have been, a week was not enough to get them to sync up with the rest of the team (had it been a Seeker or Keeper, it might have turned out fine, but Chasers and Beaters needed teamwork and group cohesion, which didn't just show up out of nowhere) – in fact, he was positively surprised by the fact that they only lost by fifty points and not more (which made he had only lost half of the bet he had made with Sirius).

But, needless to say, when he landed after Samir Assad had caught the snitch, he felt less than celebratory and didn't even have the zeal or ardour to give his team a well, we tried our best, good work consolation speech, retreating into the captain's room in the changing rooms instead and sitting down on the floor there until he was certain that everybody had left. It had been much longer than he had realised (how many hours had he managed to occupy himself with trying to shoot little bits of parchment into the rubbish bin with an elastic band? Many apparently) because he realised how hungry he was halfway across the grounds but a glance at his watch informed him that dinner had ended already.

He didn't even bother to change out of his Quidditch robes, thinking that he would just head to the prefects' bathroom (and possibly drown himself), but he was barely into the castle when he spotted a familiar face turn the corridor toward the west tower. "Black!" Sirius didn't seem to hear him and soon he disappeared up the spiral staircase, leaving Reece to run after him but it didn't matter how many times he called for him (eventually changing 'Black!' to 'Sirius!'), he didn't stop. Finally, he reached up to the drafty owlery at the top of the tower, only slightly out of breath, to see Sirius call one of the school owls down and start to tie a rolled-up letter to its leg. "Didn't you hear me call for you?"

"I did," he said, casting a grin over his shoulder, "I just wanted to make you climb up all those stairs," (he grinned again whilst Reece raised his eyebrows) "and before you ask why, the answer is because it's funny and I'm evil."

A laugh started out of his throat but Reece managed to swallow it back down before it fully escaped. "You're neither; you're just obnoxious," he corrected though Sirius only shrugged.

"You say tomahto, I say tomayto."

For a moment, all he could do was stare and physically bite down on his tongue to stop himself from pointing out that considering they both spoke, more or less, renounced pronunciation English, they, in fact, pronounced tomato identically (but he didn't want to say it as he thought it might make him unlikeable and perhaps too stuck-up or something along those lines). Instead, he said, "Whatever," as he dug out the punch of money he had prepared a week ago and held it out to him, "here's your money."

Sirius gave a quiet scoff and returned to tying the letter to the owl's leg. "I'm not taking that," he said. For some reason, this dismissal caused a flare of anger to shoot through him and he followed Sirius with a glare as he moved to the edge of the tower and send off the letter.

"I lost the bet; it's yours," he said irritably, stalking over to the bannister which Sirius was now leaning against.

"You only lost because two of your players were missing." A smirk flashed on his lips though he suppressed it quickly. "That's not fair and square and as a Hufflepuff –" (Reece cut over him to remind that he wasn't a Hufflepuff, but he was ignored) "– I care all about fairness."

"They weren't missing, I kicked them off the team fully aware it would cost me the Cup," he said. Placing the money onto the edge of the bannister, he pushed it toward him. "Don't worry, it's all in galleons."