REECE FROZE ON the last step of the staircase from the dormitories as his eyes landed on a girl sitting alone at a table. She didn't look sad to be alone – in fact, she looked like the kind of person who would hurt anyone who would compromise her being alone, especially considering that she had a zippo lighter in her right hand and was lighting and killing the flame on it repetitively. He could talk to her, but maybe that would be rude.
"Fucking move over man, what are you doing?" somebody said behind him.
Apologising, Reece quickly stepped off the stairs into the common room to make room for the people behind him to get past him, though his attention quickly returned to the girl. Exams had ended. Since the Hogwarts Express wouldn't return to London for another week, the students spent their days relaxing around the castle or laughing with friends, and because the weather was good, the common room was almost completely empty, making it easy for him to spot her. Thick black hair that hovered above her shoulders, her nose was pierced, and her eyes rimmed in heavy makeup.
Because he was going to graduate in a week, Reece decided that if he made one more student dislike him in his remaining time, it wouldn't make much of a difference and thus set off in her direction.
He sat down on the chair opposite her. Instantly her dark eyes snapped to him and her right eyebrow twitched but her expression had already been so tight that her rise in displeasure by his appearance wasn't completely revealed on her face. Part of him wanted to just leave and pretend the whole thing had never happened. But he had gotten that far and what was she going to do, kill him? (Well honestly, he wouldn't have been surprised). "You're Hestia, right – Hestia Jones?" he asked, and then added, "My sister's mate," in case it had come off as weird that he knew her name. But she didn't look bothered.
"And you're Reece Cooper, our failure of a Quidditch captain." She ran her thumb down the spark wheel and a new flame flared up on the lighter, this one twice the size as the ones before it and his eyes widened as he watched it, attempting to answer in the affirmative but managing nothing more than a strange croak. On the front of the metal, she had written, Si tamen acta deos numquam mortalia fallunt. Hestia let the flame die again. "Don't worry, I think the fact that you're a failure is a good thing; it frees you from people's expectations. And winning only ever builds up men's egos."
For a moment, he became too preoccupied trying to figure out how Yrsa could possibly have managed to be friends with her to really remember what he was doing there, and the, "Okay," he said was dragged out as he tried to recollect himself. "Can I – can I ask you something?"
"I'm bored so if you're going to, you better get to it, Cooper."
His eyes were fixated on the flame that kept being lit only to be killed moments later. Then he glanced around the make sure that nobody was listening. "Um – you're – you're a lesbian, right?" he mumbled, leg bouncing quietly.
"Well I'm also an Antisocial Extrovert, Self-Proclaimed Social Pariah, Cynic, Vegetarian, Anti-War, Social Democrat, Atheist, Marxist Feminist, but that too, I suppose."
"Uhuh." Reece shuffled on the chair again. Considering she was rather small in size and didn't look particularly strong, she sure managed to be intimidating. "So how ...?" the question faded out.
Hestia arched an eyebrow. "How did I know?" she mocked. She sounded extremely bored and lit the flame again with so much aggression that he flinched.
"No," he said quickly. "I wasn't actually ... I was going to ask, how –? Um – I mean –"
"Get to the point," she interrupted.
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Human Design | Sirius Black
Fanfiction| Human Design | | OC x Sirius Black | | Maurades Era | | Harry Potter fan fic | In his final year at Hogwarts, Reece Cooper had two things he wanted to focus on: Quidditch and his schoolwork. He didn't have time for anything else, that was until Si...
