Human Design | Sirius Black

xxix. Love is a Part of the Human Condition

THERE WAS A crack in the living room ceiling that Reece had never noticed before. 

He started to wonder whether it had always been there and simply so thin (not more noticeable than a single hair) or because he had never looked before (how many people really spent time studying the ceiling in their parents' living rooms) and then immediately after he rolled his eyes at himself for being so uninteresting that he spent time thinking about a crack in the ceiling at such length.

Yrsa was in the living room with him, though rather than melting into the sofa as he was, she was playing the piano. This alone wasn't all that shocking but the fact that she was singing in addition, for this was not something she would do in front of others without coaxing or blackmail ("love of my life, you've hurt me, you've broken my heart and now you leave me") and certainly not if their parents were only in the kitchen. 

Reece considered that perhaps she had simply forgotten he was there because it wouldn't be all that difficult to forget, considering he had said nothing for ten minutes and was quite literally blending into the furniture. 

For a moment, his eyes flickered from the hairline fracture in the ceiling to the clock on the wall ("love of my life, can't you see? Bring it back, bring it back, don't take it away from me, because you don't know what it means to me") so that he could check how much longer it would take for the puff pastry quiche to be done, which was five minutes. 

"Love of my life, don't leave me," Yrsa continued as his eyes returned to the crack. It was a surprise to him that she had come at all and not only not late but ahead of time. Now that all three of them had moved out, their parents wanted them all to eat lunch or dinner together at the house once a month ("You've stolen my love, you now desert me"); it was the kind of thing families did but he had expected her not to come. Erika, on the other hand, had yet to arrive which was shocking in its own right. She had just sung, "Hurry back, hurry back, don't take it away from me", when their mother's voice came from an unplottable source, "Yrsa, stop playing Muggle music," and her fingers pulled off the keys mid-note. She didn't move more than that, freezing into an uncomfortable position with her hands hovering only a centimetre away from making a sound, and then her hands crashed onto her lap.

"Do you want to go to the Quidditch Cup with me?" he asked hopefully, sitting up on the sofa as Yrsa turned to look at him blankly. "Cowley gave me a free ticket but he actually gave me two and he said I need to bring someone and he was probably joking but he's also my boss and I need to stay on his good side."

Her expression remained void of any response for long enough for Reece to get his hopes up but then she said, "No, when have I ever expressed an interest in Quidditch?" and her face screwed up in confusion. "And he probably meant like a date. And it'll be in August when my Auror training will have already started and the games can stretch days if not weeks – I can't risk being left behind right at the start." Even though this was a fair point, it took him great effort not to scoff or express his scepticism in any other way. She was going to be more committed to this than school when it was actually her choice, not to mention her ambition since childhood, but it was still difficult for him to adjust to the fact that she hadn't latched onto the first excuse she was presented with to skip class. But then she added pointedly, "And James and Sirius will be there and I am adamantly avoiding any potential interaction with them the best I can," and it was revealed that maybe classes weren't all that important anyway.

"Okay, yeah, but there are also thousands of other people so what are the chances you'd bump into them?" he said with a hint of a laugh echoing in his throat. "Minimal."