DREAM OF ME ── Sirius Black

i. Keeping up with the Patels

ONE KEEPING UP WITH THE PATELS

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     INA PATEL HAS ALWAYS BELIEVED THAT a look into a person's room is a glance into their soul. Everything—from the color, the layout, the sheets—tells a story.

     Ina's room, for example, is all blank slates and empty space. It's small, but somehow, she manages to make it look spacious. Everything is placed with a purpose, and not a single thing is ever out of place. It's so organized that sometimes her sister, Zera, jokes it's as if nobody lives in the room.

     (Ina dislikes that statement, because obviously someone does live in the room. She lives in the room.)

     If anything, it's Zera's room that is alien and almost uninhabitable. With pink splattered walls and a closet so big it might as well be another room, Ina thinks it's horrendous. While her room is immaculate, Zera's is—well, a nightmare, with clothes strewn haphazardly across the floor, her bed, even the windowpane.

     And then there's her vanity, which in itself is a horror. Innumerable pots of charcoal and pans of shimmery powders, tubes of shiny gloss and tubs of cleansers and creams, and absolutely no organization to it all.

     The thing about the Patel sisters that one will come to realize is that they are the picture of dichotomy.

     Yin and Yang, day and night, fire and ice... Zera and Ina.

     For every mess Zera makes, Ina is there to clean it up. For every night Ina stays in, Zera is there to drag her out. The two are halves of a whole, and yet—Ina, the dutiful older sister, finds herself (more times than not) getting her sister out of the sticky situations she manages to get herself in.

     And yeah, Zera can be a bit much, with her neglect for caution and absolute lack of common sense—but Ina can be too, with her obsession with order and preoccupation with organization.

     Ina has a heart of raging bumblebee yellow and black (because gold belongs to Gryffindor, and she is adamantly, through and through, a Hufflepuff), and she loves her sister through it all.

     At least, that's what she has to remind herself tonight, as she stares at Zera's empty and unmade bed for the umpteenth time, cursing her younger sister for sneaking out.

     It's currently half past eleven on August 29th — two nights before the start of term and Zera is nowhere to be found.

     Ina knows better than anyone why she feels the need to sneak out. Their parents are overbearing, strict, unreasonable, all of the above, and sometimes—for a free spirit like Zera, it can get a little bit too much. After sixteen years, Ina knows that she'll be fine.