Mysterybox

Sirius sighed.

“Why do you sigh so much?”

He glanced down at the five-year-old perched on the toilet seat, combing his messy hair to get ready for the day. Or rather, combing one strand of his hair over a dozen times and neglecting the rest. Sirius couldn’t blame him; it was a struggle to untangle every morning and he always ended up having to help him.

He looked back at himself in the mirror, where he’d finished shaving and all the while had been judging the size and shape of his nose, and his eyebags that seemed to get darker every day, and those lines that had appeared on his forehead …

He sighed again.

“Because sometimes I don’t feel pretty,” he confessed.

“Moony always says you are.”

He sighed once more and poked his cheek to make it look … different. To no avail, of course.

“Yes, but he’s biased so that doesn’t count.”

“What’s that mean?”

“Biased?” He looked at Harry for confirmation who nodded. “It means someone can’t be objective about something.”

“What’s objecive,” the boy tested the unfamiliar word and ending up slurring it.

“Objective,” Sirius enunciated more clearly. “It’s when …” He searched for a way to explain the word. “You don’t let your feelings get in the way of judging something. Making an opinion about something,” he added to be more precise. “It’s only looking at the facts. So, Moony is biased because, thanks to all of his feelings of love getting in the way, he can’t be objective about me. He’ll still think I’m pretty when I’ve lost all my hair and I’m old and wrinkly.”

Harry made a face at the thought of an old and wrinkly Paddy with no hair. Sirius beckoned him over to look with him in the mirror together.

“But you won’t let your feelings get in the way, will you?” Now, with Harry standing on the toilet seat and leaning against the sink, he took a breath to steady himself and said, “So tell me honestly, do you think I’m pretty? I can take it.”

Harry looked at him for a moment and then shrugged. “Ms. Bruhn thinks you’re sooo haaandsome,” he finally said, mimicking the slow and high-pitched voice of his pre-school teacher from when he’d overheard her talking to a colleague once, and swooningly put his hand to his chest.

“You think you’re so funny,” Sirius replied drily to the giggling five-year-old next to him before taking the brush and holding it like a weapon. “Here, you jokester, let’s untangle that mat.”

What followed was underlined by a lot of squealing, but finally they managed to make the boy look somewhat decent enough so other people won’t think he was being neglected.

“Am I pretty?” he asked Remus later who was standing at the kitchen counter making tea while Sirius was sat on the sofa.

They finally had some peace after the little one had been handed to Ms. Bruhn for safekeeping for the day.

“Very.”

“You’re not even looking.”

Remus briefly glanced up at him before going back to put teabags in the cups.

“I know what you look like, Sirius,” he replied calmly.

“Yes, but today. And be objective. Don’t let your feelings get in the way.”

Remus finally looked up at him and held his gaze with a raised eyebrow.

“You’re beautiful, Sirius. You know that.”

Sirius rolled his eyes and shook his head, unsatisfied with that answer.

“I said don’t let your feelings get in the way.”

“What are you talking about.” He shook his head. “Where’s all this coming from? Sirius Black not satisfied with his good looks?”

Sirius let out another long sigh in a series of many that day, letting his head fall back on the sofa. He didn’t really know what the problem was. Usually he was quite confident in his beauty but lately he just felt bored of his body and the way it looked.

“I don’t know. Maybe I’m getting old,” he finally relented.

There was a moment of silence before big hands cupped his cheeks from behind, leaning his head even further back so he could look at Remus’s face.

“I doubt twenty-five counts as old.” He stroked his thumb along Sirius’s cheek and lips and down to his chin. More gently, he said, “I don’t think I can be objective about you. But if it helps, I’ll still think you’re beautiful when you’re old and wrinkly.”

And he knew that, but somehow, hearing it, he couldn’t keep the smile from creeping up on his face and the warmth from spreading in his chest.

Maybe it didn’t matter that his feelings got in the way.