What is normal to the spider,
is chaos to the fly
or
In which Antares Kelly knew he would get tangled in the web of the Order of the Phoenix.
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[THE ORDER OF THE PHOENIX]
[BOOK ONE]
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By all accounts, Antares should have been feeling better on a day like this, but instead, he stared blankly at the canopy of his bed.
The morning light filtered through the curtains, casting a soft glow across the room, not a warm, yellow hue but a cool white that brightened the stone walls. The air was still. His breathing didn't disturb the silence. Even Peri was calmy perched, her head and wings tucked in tightly as she lazily snoozed.
He closed his eyes, trying to settle back into the comfort of his bed. Today was his birthday, his nineteenth birthday, but he hardly felt like celebrating. Antares knew he would be regardless. Merlin knows what Vita had planned and how many people she roped in. On his seventeenth birthday, most of the sixth and seventh-year population was in attendance — and then some. That wasn't counting the giant squid, who decided to scare everyone with what he assumed was a "gentle" knock on the large glass window. How it knew what day it was remained a mystery.
But remembering his past birthdays didn't automatically make this birthday fun.
As of today, he is officially older than his father.
How do you even begin to come to terms with something like that? It was a depressing thought, one that threatened to swallow him whole if he dwelled on it for too long. But how could he not? How could he not feel the weight of his father's absence on a day like this when the absence was more tangible than ever?
There was some part of him that felt guilty. For what, exactly, he wasn't sure. Maybe it was guilt for having something his father never got to have. His life was cut short, a casualty of a war that seemed to have no end, and here Antares was alive and breathing. He was living another year of life while his father had been denied the chance. It didn't seem fair, didn't seem right.
Or maybe it was the guilt of feeling like he hadn't done enough to honour his father's memory. He spent eighteen years trying to distance himself from the Black name. Now that he finally had the guts to own up to it, he felt like all he could do was apologize for not doing it sooner. His conversation with Sirius put a lot of things into perspective. Some bad, mostly good. He promised to do better, and he would stand by it. But this morbid melancholy made it near impossible at the moment.
With a sigh, Antares pushed himself into a sitting position, running a hand through his tousled hair. When his fingers reached the nape of his neck, he squeezed, massaging the muscles to release the tension. He glanced around the room, his eyes lingering on the rustled sheets he kicked away in his sleep. He could stay in today, well, most of today. There was still a first-year Potions class he had to assist, but other than that, he had no obligations. Study Hall was optional, after all.
He would be quick, he decided. One class — in and out.
