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Chapter Text

If Aurélie Collins had to choose one word to best describe herself, she supposed it would be, to put it as delicately as she could: "completely and utterly overwhelmed." Granted, that was four words, not one, but as she trudged down yet another unfamiliar corridor, she was simply relieved she could string together a coherent sentence at all; after the last few months of hell she'd endured, Aurélie wasn't her usual eloquent self, to say the least.

She hadn't always been this way; overwhelmed, that is. In fact, if asked only a few months ago to describe herself, she would've said she was dutiful, quick-witted, and, if not brave, then definitely unafraid of facing challenges head-on. She'd been a confident girl once: she got good grades, always did as she was asked and never stepped a toe out of line. Everyone — from her parents and teachers to her friends and peers — knew that Aurélie Collins would go on to achieve whatever she set her mind to.

Now, though? Well, nowadays she was too overwhelmed, too exhausted, too beset by grief to set her mind on much of anything.

— And this new school of hers certainly wasn't doing anything to improve her situation.

Bloody Hogwarts.

Of all places she'd ever imagined herself living, the freezing cold Scottish Highlands was absolutely not one of them. But, then again, she wouldn't have believed she'd be an orphan at seventeen either, yet here she was.

Hogwarts was famous, of course. Heralded as the pinnacle of magical education and arguably the top school in the wizarding world, most witches and wizards were honoured to attend such a prestigious establishment. But Aurélie was of the opinion that every bloody thing at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry was confusing, unnecessary, or just downright nonsensical. From the ever-changing floorplan to the myriad of talking portraits (all of whom gave her wildly conflicting directions depending on which ones she asked), nothing about Hogwarts made any sense.

She was almost in tears by the time she reached another dead end. It was simply impossible to find one's way around a school like this; there were too many floors to navigate, too many disused classrooms and far too many staircases that led to nowhere. Not to mention, beyond its confusing floorplan and unbearably draughty rooms, the ancient hulking castle was rather ugly — by Aurélie's standards at least; the monolithic Gothic castle was so far removed from the elegance and charm of Beauxbatons that it seemed almost cruel that she should be forced to endure it at all. She could almost hear her best friend Céleste's reaction if she were with her now: 'Ugh, it's so awfully medieval. Stone Gargoyles? And all those uncouth English boys? I don't know which I find more barbaric!'

She almost smiled at the thought. But only almost - for thinking of her best friend only made her sad.

Shaking herself mentally, she shifted the weight of her books from one arm to the other and cast a despairing glance over her gloomy surroundings. She did not like thinking about her old life, least of all while she was lost in a labyrinth of spooky corridors and dingy classrooms on her very first day of school. 

'Which Merlin-forsaken floor is this, anyway?' she muttered to herself in French as a group of first years rounded the corner, giggling obnoxiously. She knew them as Slytherin's not by the green and silver of their robes, but by the way they skittered around her, unwilling to help though she was clearly in need. 

Notoriously unfriendly was how her father had described the snakes. Unlike her maman, a Beauxbatons alumna — and later a professor of music — Aurélie's papa had attended Hogwarts in his youth, though he'd been a Hufflepuff: a badger, not a snake. 

He'd have helped anyone in need — even a Slytherin.

Her heart gave an awful, sickening lurch at the thought of him. Oh, her wonderful papa: patient and good-humoured and endlessly curious and —

Dead. He's dead, Aurélie. Stop thinking about him.

Swallowing the lump in her throat, she trudged on determinedly, taking what felt like the hundredth set of stairs she'd already descended that morning while disappointment and embarrassment roiled in her stomach; she wasn't used to failing — not at tests, not at taking care of herself, and certainly not at something as simple as getting to class on time. Even the first years knew where they were going, for crying out loud, and they'd been here for just as short a time as she had!

When at last she found herself facing yet another dead end, she finally conceded defeat. Trying very hard not to cry, she adjusted her unflattering black robes (oh, to be dressed in fine blue silk again) and began to seriously consider how much trouble she'd be in if she just went back to bed. Or, more tempting still, how badly she'd be punished if she fled back to France and never returned to Hogwarts again, graduation be damned.

Because what did her education matter when her future was so unsure? What did anything matter when everything she knew had been taken from her?

But no, she couldn't leave Hogwarts; it was the safest place for her since her parents had died, and Professor Weasley, the Deputy Headmistress, had evoked the power of Merlin himself to secure her a place here at such short notice; apparently, it had not been an easy feat convincing Headmaster Black to take on a student with her reputation.

Aurélie sighed and squeezed her eyes closed. 'It's just for one year,' she muttered under her breath, repeating the phrase that had become her mantra. 'Just one year, that's all.'

'Unless you're trying to break into the Slytherin common room,' said an unexpected voice behind her, 'I'm going to assume you're lost.'

Aurélie whirled around so fast she whipped herself in the face with her long auburn braid. She hadn't always been a jumpy sort of person, but losing both parents at the same time had a way of making one rather fearful of unexpected voices in unfamiliar corridors.

The boy who stood before her had his wand held up to her chest; its tip glowed brightly red in front of his face, casting an ominous-looking hue over pale skin and flaxen hair. Almost immediately, Aurélie saw visions of dark shadows and searing red pain, scraps and flashes of fear, the sound of someone crying —

Not again.

For one dreadful, heart-stopping moment, she thought he meant to curse her —

Her palms tingled; a telltale sign that the forbidden magic in her blood was very much alive despite her efforts to suppress it — and very much wanted to be used.

Not again, please.

She stumbled backwards, but the boy made no move to attack. Instead, he simply stared at her. — No, not at her but through her. It was then that she noticed his eyes; milky white and translucent, gleaming like pearlescent orbs in his angular face.

He was blind.

'S-sorry,' Aurélie said, feeling a little foolish. 'I'm trying to find Defence Against the Dark Arts, but I'm afraid I...' She swallowed hard. 'I have no idea where I am.'

The boy chuckled, and though the sound was pleasant enough, it was undoubtedly more incredulous than amused. 'Oh my, you are lost, aren't you?' 

Pinned to the breast pocket of his immaculate robes was a small badge engraved with the words Head Boy; even bathed under the red glow of his wand light, she could clearly make out the tiny snake etched onto its gleaming surface. Another Slytherin.

She'd known very little about the four Hogwarts houses before embarking on her unexpected stint at the school, but when the Sorting Hat had asked her if she'd had a preference, all she could think was that she didn't want to be part of a house whose emblem was a snake.

When Aurélie did not reply, he heaved an impatient sigh.

'You're the new Ravenclaw,' he said matter-of-factly. 'I must say, I didn't expect to find you all the way down here.'

The boy had a distinctly aristocratic air about him: haughty and vaguely displeased as all aristocratic types were loath to be, with fine, blonde hair slicked back from his face, high cheekbones and a sharp jawline that screamed of fine magical breeding. Aurélie wondered vaguely which noble family he was from, for she certainly knew a wealthy pureblood when she saw one; half of Beauxbatons was full of old ennobled wizarding families.
 
As she opened her mouth to ask him how he knew who she was, he cut her off —

'I recognise your accent,' he explained as if he'd read her thoughts. 'There aren't any other French students at Hogwarts.' His sharp, clipped voice was a stark contrast to his delicate features, and yet, there was something strangely unsettling about it that stirred something inside her. Something familiar. Something... unpleasant.

'Half French,' she corrected him, pushing the thought away. 'My father was English, mother was French. But - er, yes, I suppose I do sound different to everyone else.'

Having been bilingual all her life, Aurélie spoke both English and French fluently - but apparently, her French accent wasn't as undetectable as she'd hoped. She smoothed her clammy hands down the front of her awfully drab robes, acutely aware of how the boy's unseeing eyes seemed to pierce her with surprising intensity.

'Yes, well,' he drawled in a tone that suggested that he didn't particularly care about the finer details of her heritage. 'You're absolutely nowhere near the Defence floor. In fact, you're almost in the dungeons. Frankly, I'm baffled you managed to make it here from the Great Hall all by yourself. Why weren't you following your classmates?'

'Oh. I wasn't in the Great Hall. I came straight from my common room.'

Not entirely trusting that anything she ate would stay down for long, she'd opted to skip breakfast in the hall with the other students that morning and head straight to class instead. Though the few Ravenclaw's she'd met so far had seemed friendly enough, their interest in the new foreign transfer student made her uncomfortable. One particularly rambunctuous Ravenclaw boy whose name she couldn't recall had ogled her like she was an exotic beast and told her that Hogwarts never got transfer students — not ever.

'If I'd been made to be sorted in front of the entire school as a seventh year,' he had said, 'I would have died of humiliation.'

Inwardly, Aurélie had agreed with him, for she certainly didn't count the Sorting Ceremony as one of her favourite life experiences. Outwardly though, she'd only smiled politely and told him it hadn't been so bad before excusing herself to a quiet corner of the common room to sit alone.

She had no intention of making friends during her single year at Hogwarts. Given that she planned to head straight back to France the moment she graduated, the thought of making friends only to have to say goodbye to them was an ordeal she wasn't sure she could endure. But beyond that, she feared that should anyone find out the truth about why she'd transferred in the first place, well... It was better to be invisible than a source of gossip and speculation.

As a seventeen-year-old witch who hadn't achieved anything particularly extraordinary, Aurélie didn't think herself particularly interesting by any stretch. But unfortunately, having ones family murdered by dark wizards certainly was — and that was not something she wanted to be known for.

'So you're telling me,' the boy said with an impatient huff, 'that you managed to get yourself from the Ravenclaw common room, one of the highest points in the castle, to the very lowest depths of the dungeons, and didn't at any point stop to think that perhaps you were headed in the wrong direction?' His translucent pupils gleamed red under the glow of his wand light. 'Nor did you think it prudent to eat something before you start studying for your N.E.W.T.s, the most important and difficult exam in a witch's educational career?' He shook his head in exasperation. 'And here I was thinking Ravenclaw's were supposed to be intelligent.'

Aurélie didn't quite know how to react to this outburst, but rather thought she'd been right to not want to be in the snake house if it meant sharing it with the likes of him. When she made no reply, the boy heaved another heavy sigh, clearly annoyed.

'Very well,' he said brusquely. 'As Head Boy, I suppose it is my duty to help you, even though you ought to be old enough by now to look after yourself. Come along, then.'

With a final sneer, the boy turned on his heel and strode purposefully down the empty corridor. Despite her chagrin, Aurélie couldn't help but marvel at the way his wand seemed to act as a proxy for his sight; pulsing like a heartbeat, it lead him effortlessly through the maze of corridors that even she with her perfect vision couldn't seem to navigate. She hurried after him, silently chastising herself for being so useless that she had to be led to class by a blind boy.

'Ominis Gaunt, by the way,' he said once she'd caught up to him; he was rather a fast walker for someone who couldn't see where they were going.

'Oh, er — hello, I'm —'

'Aurélie Collins,' he cut in, pronouncing her first name the correct French way. 'Yes, I know who you are. Now, do pay attention, won't you? Defence Against the Dark Arts class is on the third floor, not in the dungeons. Even I can tell this isn't the third floor, and I'm blind.'

Aurélie grimaced. Perhaps the Sorting Hat had made a mistake putting her into a house whose members were valued for being clever.

'So... you're Head Boy?' she asked timidly.

'That is what I said, isn't it?' came his sharp reply. 'And I'll have you know that I've quite enough to be getting on with today without needing to rescue stray Ravenclaws from the dungeons.'

'I didn't need rescuing,' she muttered under her breath, but Ominis only ignored her, and after a very tense silence and several staircases later, they came to a stop outside the correct classroom on the third floor.

'Do try not to get yourself so embarrassingly lost again, won't you?' he said tersely. 'I don't have time to babysit seventh years, I've enough first year drama to deal with as it is.'

And with that, he was away again, muttering darkly about Ravenclaw's and incompetence as he went, leaving Aurélie standing dumbfounded in his wake.

Chapter Text

Aurélie knew it was too much to hope that a class dedicated to the Dark Arts in any capacity would be a nice, quiet sort of class, but she certainly wasn't expecting to walk into the middle of an all-out duel. For the second time that morning, she thought she was about to become the victim of an unprovoked attack as two boys — a tall, confident Slytherin and a nervous-looking Gryffindor — did their best to blow each other up in the middle of the cavernous classroom.

Aurélie by veinguin on tumblr < 3

Chapter Text

Sebastian Sallow considered himself proficient at a great many things; he was taking more N.E.W.T classes than any other seventh year, he was undoubtedly the best duellist at Hogwarts, and, if it wasn't too bold of him to say, he was quietly confident that he was the greatest Quidditch captain Slytherin had ever seen. But apparently, disarming a small unassuming French girl was not one of them.

Needless to say, his surprise at finding the elegant little thing in his advanced Defence class on their first day of classes quickly descended into downright alarm when he'd been unable to disarm her.

There'd been absolutely nothing about the girl to suggest she'd ever learned more than deportment and elocution at Beauxbatons, and yet somehow - unbelievably - she'd deflected, dodged and rebounded every one of his disarming spells with a proficiency that seemed to surprise her even more than it had him. She'd even skillfully jumped out of the way when he'd broken the rules and sent the Dancing jinx at her, for which Hecate deducted ten points from Slytherin.

In a vain attempt to protect his ego, Sebastian put his inability to disarm her down to a simple oversight on his behalf rather than a testament to the girl's skills; he'd simply underestimated her, that's all, and as a result, had let his arrogance stop him from taking what should've been a very easy victory.

Still, nobody had ever come so close to besting him in a duel before - not once in his almost seven years at Hogwarts.

He wasn't quite sure how to feel about it.

Of course, this was not the first time the petite redhead had caught him off guard; he'd been just as surprised as anyone when she'd walked into the Great Hall on the night of the Sorting.

Standing head and shoulders above the terrified-looking first years she was grouped with, with her long auburn hair shining like burnished copper in the torchlight, she had stood out as brightly under the enchanted ceiling as if she'd been set on fire; not a girl but a creature of flame; a brilliant beacon that inexplicably drew every eye toward her.

Upon seeing her, a sixth-year boy sitting across from him had leaned forward, his mouth slightly agape and his eyes wide, and declared, with all the eloquence of a troll trying to recite poetry, 'There's no way she's a first-year.'

The boy's eager look annoyed Sebastian so thoroughly that he'd had to fight back the urge to smack it clean off his smarmy head. But then again, most people thoroughly annoyed Sebastian - Slytherin or otherwise. In fact, his best friend Ominis Gaunt was the only person he could endure these days, and even he had his moments.

Well, that wasn't entirely true. Imelda Reyes, who was sitting so close to him at the Slytherin table that their shoulders were touching, was possibly the only exception to his general aversion to everyone - but his fondness for her went only as far as their intimate exchanges in the Quidditch changing rooms after practice. Beyond the impassioned moments they shared together both on and off the field, they didn't have much else in common.

'What's going on?' On his other side, Ominis had evidently picked up on the change in the atmosphere - though one didn't exactly need to possess the enhanced hearing of the blind to know that something unusual was happening. The ruckus that had ensued when the mystery girl had entered the hall was unlike anything Sebastian had witnessed at a Sorting before, including the time a first-year had somehow set the sorting hat on fire. Several people actually stood up in their seats to get a better look at her, stretching up on tiptoe and gaping open-mouthed at what was - really - just an ordinary girl.

Sebastian rolled his eyes. He, at least, had enough self-possession not to rise from his chair like an idiot at the sight of a new student.

'There's some girl with the first years who looks far too old to be one of them,' Sebastian explained in an undertone, casting a glance over the girl's willowy figure. 'A seventh year, by the look of her. Sixth year, at the very least. Must be a transfer student. Why did I not hear about this?'

It was unusual for Sebastian to be taken by surprise. Between his innate ability to get himself into trouble and Ominis's propensity for overhearing gossip whispered several floors away, the pair knew more about the comings and goings at Hogwarts than anybody else. And their extensive knowledge wasn't limited only to petty gossip and drama, either: their discoveries of secret tunnels, hidden alcoves and long-forgotten rooms rivalled even that of the Professors themselves.

'A transfer?' Ominis asked, his head tilted in consternation as if he were trying to will his vision to return. 'Who is she?'

'How should I know? Bet Weasley knew all about it, though.'

Scowling darkly, he glanced across the hall toward the Gryffindor table, craning his neck to catch a glimpse of Garreth Wealsey's stupid red hair among the sea of gold and crimson robes. Weasley's aunt was the deputy headmistress: if anybody had prior knowledge of this unexpected turn of events, it'd be her insufferable prat of a nephew.

Sure enough, Sebastian spotted him sitting at the far end of the table, nodding smugly up at the podium while a group of girls hung enraptured on his every word.

Sebastian made a small noise of distaste in the back of his throat. Of course, trust Garreth fucking Weasley to use his special insider knowledge of the new arrival to impress girls. Not that Sebastian wouldn't have done the same thing in his position, but it was far more distasteful when Garreth did it.

He paid little attention to the sorting of the first years as Professor Weasley began the long and arduous task of working through her list of names. Being a seventh year meant he'd seen enough of these things by now to last him a lifetime, but this year with the new novelty among them, the group of faceless first years seemed to blend into total obscurity. Like everyone else in the Great Hall that night, Sebastian's attention was so fixated on her that he was scarcely even aware of the newest members of his own house as they joined the ranks of the snake. He even would've missed the sorting of another Lestrange kid if Ominis hadn't groaned theatrically after the hat announced him a Slytherin.

'Fantastic, another Dark Arts enthusiast to follow me around all year,' muttered Ominis. 'You watch, he'll be seeking me out before the feast is even halfway through. On instruction from his parents, no doubt.'

'Could be worse,' Sebastian replied distractedly, 'at least it's not another potential arranged marriage candidate.'

Finally, when 'Collins, Aurélie' was called to take the stool, the new girl stepped up to the podium with all the grace of a ballerina taking to the stage, her head held high despite the clear look of anxiety on her face. Sebastian rolled his eyes again. She wouldn't last a day in Slytherin - not being as delicate as that. The snake pit would devour her alive.

'Aurélie?' mused Ominis, frowning. 'That's French. But Collins is English.'

'Must be a Beauxbatons transfer,' Sebastian muttered, watching as the girl shot a look of deep indignation at the filthy old hat in Professor Weasley's hand, apparently mortified that she was expected to touch something so disgusting.

Sebastian snorted. Definitely French, then.

'Great, a bloody frog eater,' Imelda interjected, casting a sharp-eyed glance over the newcomer. 'Looks about as prissy as they come, too. Bet she's never even touched a broomstick in her life.'

Though he secretly agreed with Imelda's astute assessment of the girl, her comment served only to sour his already foul mood. He offered an indistinct grunt but said nothing more; it was best not to disagree with Imelda Reyes whenever possible, especially not when he was so eagerly looking forward to their first training session later that week.

Though he had to admit that once the dirty old hat was placed gingerly atop the girls head, it did look especially offensive against her long, shiny hair. He wondered vaguely if the hat had ever been washed in its thousand-year-old existence, then decided he'd rather not know the answer.

Across the room, Garreth fucking Wealsey had the audacity to stand up to ogle her as if she were some new creature Professor Howin had dragged in from the forest. Sebastian resisted the urge to lob a bread roll at his stupid fucking head but ultimately decided that getting detention before school even started probably wasn't the best course of action. He was determined not to get himself into trouble this year - not when he had so much riding on his ambitions to become a Healer after graduation.

Since everything had gone so catastrophically wrong in his fifth year, he was determined to get his life on track; to do some good in the world for once, to make up for all the bad he'd done. He owed it to his sister, his uncle.

He shuddered away from thoughts of his family, fists clenching against the sudden intrusive thoughts. He wished he didn't shy away from thoughts of his sister; he wanted to think of Anne, wanted to remember her, to keep her alive through his memories, but the pain of her loss was still a raw nerve that staggered him whenever he remembered she was gone.

He'd take Crucio again over feeling the pain of her loss. He'd take it a thousand times and be glad for it.

Anne had been gone for such a short time - just barely a year - yet the distance between them felt like a gaping void that only grew larger and more impenetrable with each passing day. His twin, half of himself, the soul he'd come into the world with was now separated from him forever by the endless black chasm of death.

And it was entirely his fault.

Suddenly, the enormous hall felt small, cramped - suffocating. Sebastian wanted to run. His fingers gripped the edge of his seat, his knuckles white against the worn woodgrain as the first tendrils of panic slithered around his heart and squeezed. His eyes darted around the room, desperate seeking the nearest escape route should things get too much for him.

And then his gaze landed on her.

With enormous difficulty, he pulled himself out of his dark abstraction and focused his attention on the new girl's face. Hers, at least, was a face that didn't cause him pain. Her features - as twisted in fright as they were - weren't tied to awful memories. Her face was safe to look at. And what a relief it was to look at someone - anyone - and not be immediately reminded of how badly he'd fucked up. Some days he had trouble even facing his best friend, fearing he'd see the flash of accusation and betrayal that sometimes broke through Ominis's tightly controlled facade.

But the girl... The girl was safe. And so he kept his eyes glued to her as the Sorting Hat deliberated where she'd spend the next year of her life.

'Bet you a galleon she's a Ravenclaw,' Imelda murmured, leaning into him.

'Hufflepuff,' he whispered back.

But even as he spoke aloud, an absurd little voice piped up in the back of Sebastian's mind.

Slytherin, it pleaded. Put her in Slytherin.

When he was to look back on that moment that night in his bed, Sebastian would try to rationalise that this voice was only his curiosity speaking: he simply wanted to know more about whichever school she'd come from, interested in learning how foreign magic differed from his own. But what he absolutely refused to admit to himself - namely because it was utterly ridiculous - was that the sight of her face had actually made him feel better.

In that moment though, as he watched her in the Great Hall beneath the enchanted ceiling full of stars, she was just another girl.

Another -

"Ravenclaw!'

'Pay up, Sallow.'

With a bitter twinge of disappointment that had nothing to do with losing a bet, he fished a stray golden coin from his pocket and thrust it into Imelda's outstretched hand, too distracted to be irritated by her gloating.

So the girl was a Ravenclaw, then. The newest Eagle: brilliant, creative, aloof. A little bird who'd only fly away to her common room at the top of the castle, unreachable and distant, while he slithered down to the dungeons with the rest of the snakes.

What a shame.

'Shame,' said Ominis quietly, echoing Sebastian's thoughts in the uncanny way he so often did. 'I would've liked someone to speak French with.'

Neither one of them mentioned the girl again, but as Sebastian tried fitfully to drift off to sleep that night, he hoped that the Ravenclaw's were at least more welcoming than the likes of Imelda had been. Absurdly, the only thing that frustrated him more than the thought of someone calling her a frog eater to her face was the knowledge that he'd probably never know about it if they did - unlikely as they were to ever run in the same circles.

He was wrong, of course, because there she was the very next morning, staring him down in Defence class and challenging him to try her.

Her - with her safe face and delicate little brows pinched in worry. Her - with her eyes like the morning sky and hair like rubies.

Her.

The girl who'd lifted her chin to him in defiance and became the only person he'd ever been unable to beat in a duel.

For the first time in his entire schooling career, Sebastian had walked away from Defence class without the sense of glowing accomplishment it usually gave him. In fact, he felt rather out of sorts about the whole thing. For the first time ever, someone had challenged the beliefs that he'd clung to for so long: namely, that he was unshakable.

Unbeatable.

Invincible.

As he made his way to his next class in a daze, he decided that he didn't much enjoy the feeling of inadequacy - thanks very much - and that he absolutely had to right this most grievous wrong.

Sebastian Sallow never backed down from a challenge, and he had a feeling Aurélie Collins was about to become his biggest challenge yet.

Aurélie by Lyworth <3

Chapter Text

By the end of her first Defence class, Aurélie found herself overcome by several new revelations: the first — and certainly the least surprising — was that being a seventh year student at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry was going to be far worse than she could have ever imagined.

The second was that Sebastian Sallow hated her.

'Your Defence is strong, Miss Collins, very strong indeed,' Hecate had told her after she'd finally conceded their duel as a tie, 'but your offence needs quite a lot of work. Mr Sallow, you ought to know how to break through her defences. Miss Collins has demonstrated that not all opponents will attack you directly. Therein lies your weakness.'

Judging by the impressive scowl he'd given her, Aurélie had the distinct impression that Sebastian didn't appreciate being called weak - though she had to admit, the sight of him looking so put out by a so-called "pushover" gave her such a thrill that she'd had to fight to keep the grin off her face for the rest of the class.

After a hurried lunch in the Great Hall — over which she'd been enthusiastically congratulated by several people she didn't know — she was met by an equally enthusiastic Poppy Sweeting who had come to escort her to their first Herbology class.

'You're famous!' Poppy said in a tone that suggested offending Sebastian Sallow was the greatest achievement anyone could ever aspire to.

'Am I?' Aurélie grumbled, keeping her head low as they pushed through the giant greenhouse doors.

Overflowing with vines that wiggled and plants that chomped, and flowers that honked and strange little pollinators that whizzed about her head on iridescent wings, the Herbology greenhouses were undoubtedly some of the largest and most impressive she'd ever seen — but it was the smell that hit her the hardest: the familiar scent of warm, damp earth reminded her so forcefully of her father that she half expected to spot him elbows-deep in soil, excitedly calling her over to inspect whatever rare or unusual plant he'd managed to germinate.

Having spent countless hours in her father's gardens back in France, she'd come to associate nature with home — with peace.

But peace there was not —

Only him —

Him with his smirk and his freckles and his stupid sleeves rolled up to his stupid elbows.

Of course Sebastian took N.E.W.T Herbology.

No sooner had she taken her place at an empty potting station did he swagger past to knock a pot of fresh dragon dung onto her new school shoes.

Aurélie's palms tingled worse than ever, the magic in her veins flaring to life again as Sebastian muttered some vague half-apology and hurried back to his station.

Let me take care of him, her magic pleaded. I'll make sure he never does that again.

Taking a deep breath, she willed the surge of power to recede back to wherever it lived inside her. But it was like trying to force a vast ocean back into a tiny pond; eventually, it was going to overflow, and when it did -

'What is he, twelve?' she muttered darkly, glaring at the back of Sebastian's stupid head and imagining what it would be like to give him just a tiny zap of her power.

'Actually, he's already nineteen,' Poppy told her in an undertone as she magicked bits of dung from the floor back into the pot. 'Which just makes his behaviour even worse, to be honest. He's old enough to know better.'

The tall, infuriating boy was too busy studiously observing a large venomous tentacular to notice them, but Aurélie could tell he was smirking again.

'Nineteen? What, was he kept back a year?'

'What, Sebastian? Kept back a year? Merlin no! He's quite intelligent, gets top marks in all of his classes, believe it or not. Would probably be Head Boy, too, if he didn't hold the school record for most detentions in a row.' Under the pretence of checking Aurélie's shoes for any remaining dragon poo, she shot a quick glance at Sebastian before going on in a whisper. 'His parents died in an accident right before he was due to start his first year. He and his twin sister Anne had to defer for a year. I suppose the trauma was too much for them, you know?'

'That's... awful.' Aurélie's heart gave a sudden lurch as she eyed her new nemesis. Under the filtered light of the greenhouse, Sebastian's tousled hair was tinged with green, so dark in the dim gloom it looked almost black. Though it made her feel a terrible surge of guilt, she was strangely relieved to learn that she wasn't the only orphan at Hogwarts. At least somebody understood what she was going through — even if that someone was a giant prat.

'Yes, I suppose it explains a lot about his behaviour, though I don't think it excuses it.' A sudden hardness came over Poppy's small face then. 'He used to be quite nice you know, before everything happened. But now — well, you saw first hand what he's like. He's not the only student with a difficult past, you know. Some of us come from awful families and still manage to be polite.'

With a particularly vigorous flourish of her wand, she sent a large piece of dung flying across the greenhouse, where it hit the glass wall with a squelchy thud and slowly slid to the ground.

'What's his sister like?' Aurélie asked, hoping to bring her back from her dark place lest her enthusiastic dung-flinging shatter the greenhouse windows. 'Is she as bad as he is?'

Poppy's face softened and fell.

'Oh - no, Anne was lovely. But she... Well, she died last year.' She bowed her head and continued in a low voice. 'She got sick right before our fifth year. I'm not sure what was wrong with her, exactly, but she couldn't come to school any more. And then her uncle died suddenly — he was their guardian, you see, after their parents died — and she took it rather hard. Didn't survive much longer afterwards.'

A heavy silence settled between the two girls, broken only by the sound of her new Herbology professor lecturing the class on all the ways her students had been maimed by Venomous Tentaculars in the past.

The ache in Aurélie's chest grew stronger.

'So he... He's lost everyone?'

Poppy nodded sadly. 'And worse still, Ominis told me Sebastian did something awful in their fifth year that Anne couldn't forgive him for. But he won't tell me anything more than that.'

'You're friends with Ominis?' Aurélie was surprised; she couldn't think of a more unlikely pair of friends than the prim and proper Ominis Gaunt and the slightly chaotic Poppy Sweeting.

Flushing pink, Poppy fumbled with her wand. 'He's actually quite friendly once you get to know him,' she began, but she was cut short when Professor Garlick called the class to attention.

When Aurélie was fifteen, her parents had taken her to a Muggle zoo during the summer break. It had been her father's idea, of course — his love for animals hadn't been limited only to the magical kind — and she could still vividly remember his childlike excitement as they'd roamed the zoo together. But for Aurélie, the experience had been rather dampened by the cacophony of screaming children, shouting parents and irate French zookeepers.

The Great Hall at dinner time was not unlike that experience.

The exuberant shrieks and giggles of her fellow students served only to grate on her already frayed nerves as she sat alone at the Ravenclaw table; overhead, a never-ending stream of screeching owls added to the chaos, dropping deliveries onto the tables below with no regard to whose head might be in the way (twice Aurélie had to duck to avoid being smacked square in the face with someone's package of forgotten school books or extra socks), while across the hall, a frantic Hufflepuff was wailing for her lost toad and two Gryffindor's were challenging eachother to a food fight.

Above it all, the enchanted ceiling reflected an ominously dark sky; a perfect mirror of her own inner turmoil as she heaved a deep, lamentable sigh. Already, she was having serious misgivings that she was going to survive her year at Hogwarts unscathed; after only one day, her brain already felt oversaturated with information, her mind soggy and her limbs as heavy as lead. Much like Hecate, her new professors hadn't wasted any time throwing her in the deep end; being new didn't grant her any leniency. If anything, it felt as if her teachers were purposely assigning her extra work just to test her mettle.

Worse still, her Ancient Magic had been tingling so relentlessly that her fingers were beginning to feel permanently itchy. Never had it been so needy before, so desperate to be used — nor so downright annoying.

Silently praying to Merlin for inner peace, she pinched the bridge of her nose as another screeching, uncoordinated owl knocked over her untouched goblet of pumpkin juice.

One year, she thought dully, cleaning the spill with a weary wave of her wand. Just one year, that's all it is.

Sitting directly opposite her at the Slytherin table, his posture an almost perfect mirror of her own, Ominis Gaunt looked as if he was enjoying dinner in the Great Hall just as much as she was: that is to say, not at all. But if he was praying for patience, it wasn't likely to come — not with Sebastian Sallow whispering urgently in his ear.

Aurélie's stomach did a funny little flip at the sight of the freckled Slytherin boy.

Now that she'd spotted him, she wondered how she'd ever missed him to begin with; not only was Sebastian taller than most of the other students, but he possessed an innate aura that made him hard to miss, as if some divine being with a sick sense of humour had cast him in an ethereal glow to ensure she couldn't ignore him.

Aurélie snorted to herself: any higher power who cast Sebastian in light was definitely not the angelic sort.

She wasn't the only one paying him attention, either. A few spots down the table, a pair of Slytherin girls were trying rather tactlessly to divert his focus by twirling their hair and giggling so loudly Aurélie could hear it from where she sat. But Sebastian was oblivious to everyone else around him, apparently too preoccupied with whatever burden he was unloading upon the poor blind boy to notice much else.

That is, until he looked up and, with an empathic jab of his finger in her direction, met her gaze straight on.

Ugh!

'Tell me your day was better than mine?'

Aurélie jumped as Samantha Dale plonked into the empty space next to her with a hefty sigh.

'Wish I could,' she muttered back, making a show of picking an owl feather out of her food to avoid looking at the Slytherin table. She pushed her plate away with a sigh, her appetite ruined by both bird feathers and boys in green.

'Ugh, I'm sorry to hear that,' Samantha replied with genuine sympathy, piling her plate with two of everything in reach. 'Hey, at least you beat Sallow in Defence this morning! That's a win. I think that was the highlight of my entire life.'

'I didn't beat him, though. It was a tie.'

'Ha! A tie is as good as a loss to him. He wins at everything. I bet he's stewing on it as we speak.' She stuffed a dinner roll into her mouth and moaned with pleasure. 'Ugh, I'm starving.'

Aurélie shifted in her seat, uncomfortable with the praise. She hadn't beaten Sebastian. Not really. In fact, she hadn't even attempted to disarm him once during their stupid duel. Whenever an opportunity opened up, when his over-confidence left him wide-open and vulnerable to being disarmed, Aurélie just couldn't do it. It's not that she wasn't capable of doing so: disarming was easy, and she was certainly capable of casting worse than Expelliarmus, it's just that she simply couldn't bring herself to send any sort of offensive spell his way, not even after he'd made a wisecrack about her supposed propensity for eating snails.

And it worried her.

She couldn't make sense of her sudden hesitation to fight; of all people, Sebastian certainly deserved to be disarmed at the very least. And yet, she couldn't do it. Instead, she'd resorted to leaping about like some kind of bizarre circus act, dodging and deflecting his spells so thoroughly that he simply couldn't get past her.

With a growing sense of unease, she snuck another covert glance over at the Slytherin table. Sebastian still had his dark eyes trained on her, his brow furrowed as if in deep thought. He straightened slightly in his seat as he met her eye again, the ghost of a smirk playing about his lips as if he could actually see the blush on her cheeks from across the room.

She looked away and did not look up again.

Aurélie had no idea who the boy was, but given his affectionate pat on her shoulder as he passed, anyone might've thought they were best friends. She was beginning to learn that Gryffindor's were just as confident as their Slytherin counterparts, though thankfully much friendlier. They were also far less likely to chase you down and antagonise you on your first day at a new school.

'Hey, Frenchie!'

Even if he hadn't called her by her oh-so-endearing new nickname, Aurélie knew his voice before she even turned to face him. Still, she made sure her expression was one of perfect indifference as she turned to watch Sebastian jogging across the hall to meet her.

'Merlin, strike me down now,' she muttered.

A grin split across Sebastian's face. 'Wow, nice to see you, too,' he chuckled, smoothing back his hair as he came to a halt before her.

Aurélie narrowed her eyes at him. 'Come to drop more dung on my shoes, have you?'

'That was an accident,' he said, feigning innocence. 'Just like you drawing a tie with me today was an accident. A lucky fluke, don't you think?'

'Maybe I'm just better than you give me credit for. Or maybe,' she added before he could interrupt, 'you're just not as good as you think you are.'

Sebastian snorted. 'Doubtful, but that's exactly what I want to talk to you about.'

'If you're hoping for a rematch, I'm not duelling you in the middle of the entrance hall.'

Her tingly fingers disagreed. She ignored them.

'Well, I never turn down an opportunity to duel anywhere, but no, I'm not here to challenge you. Not yet, anyway. I've come with an offering.'

Aurélie uncrossed her arms and quirked a brow.

'What kind of offering?' she asked.

The corner of Sebastian's mouth twitched, suppressing a grin.

'I'll admit, I was surprised when I failed to disarm you this morning. Thought you'd be an easy win.'

Aurélie rolled her eyes, but he went on undeterred, 'But in saying that, I do think you'd benefit from a little extra training. That is —' he stepped closer and lowered his voice conspiratorially, '— if you're not afraid of breaking some rules.'

A little shiver ran down Aurélie's spine, but whether it was a reaction to his sudden proximity or his invitation to partake in illicit activities, she didn't particularly care to think about: Sebastian might've held the school record for detentions, but breaking the rules was not something that came naturally to Aurélie.

'I'm not sure that sounds as promising as you think it does...' she murmured, taking half a step backwards.

Sebastian raised his brows. 'It's nothing untoward, I promise. Just a group of duelling enthusiasts who meet up to practise new spells and defensive manoeuvres every so often, that's all.'

'Right,' said Aurélie with a healthy dose of scepticism. 'And where does the rule-breaking come into play?'

Smirking, Sebastian scratched the back of his neck in a move that made him look suddenly very young. 'Well, annoyingly, duelling clubs are not allowed at
Hogwarts - that's one thing your Beauxbatons has on us. But,' he lowered his voice further, his eyes trained on her like she was the only one in the castle, 'we get around that little technicality by meeting up in secret.'

Aurélie shook her head, exasperated. When Sebastian had come jogging over to her, she'd been expecting more taunts and wisecracks, perhaps a few more quips about her French heritage. But to be invited to join a group of what was likely a bunch of school-aged vigilantes was beyond her expectations. How much weirder could her first day get?

'I see. So it's an illegal duelling club,' she clarified.

'I prefer the term unsanctioned, but sure, call it what you like.'

'And what's the punishment for getting caught for something like that?'

He shrugged. 'Detention, I expect. Expulsion, at worst. But I doubt they'll expel you as a seventh year,' he went on hurriedly, correctly interpreting her horrified expression. 'Especially one doing as many N.E.W.T classes as you are. They do tend to go easier on final-year students. I think the teachers pity us a bit for all the stress they put us under.'

'How do you know how many N.E.W.T.s I'm taking?'

'I know a lot of things,' he said cryptically.

Aurélie considered him closely; beyond his cool disposition as he leaned against the stair balustrade, there was an obvious curiosity in his warm brown eyes as he regarded her: a silent invitation.

She chewed her bottom lip. Could she trust this boy? The one who dropped dung on her shoes just hours prior? Who taunted her for being a pushover? What if he was only setting her up? Tricking her into joining his stupid club only to get her expelled as some twisted form of revenge for their duel? Weren't Slytherin's known for being cunning and underhanded? They were the snakes of the school, after all.

It was Poppy's voice ringing clear in her memory that softened her suspicions:

I suppose the trauma was too much for them ...

If there was one thing Aurélie understood all too well, it was trauma. And clearly, Sebastian had been touched by it, too.

'You're not actually worried about a bit of detention, are you?' he probed, unable to hide his disappointment at her obvious hesitation. 'Thought you were braver than that, given how fiery you were in class today.' He tilted his head and fixed her with a look that made her heart rate accelerate. 'Maybe I was wrong about you.'

Aurélie rolled her eyes. 'Honestly, I can't believe you're nineteen; you're so immature.'

'How do you know how old I am? Been asking about me, have you?'

'I know a lot of things,' she said coyly.

'Oh, Sebastian!' A sharp, clipped voice cut into their conversation. 'Will you stop antagonising the new girl.'

Sebastian rolled his eyes to the ceiling.

'Go away, Ominis,' he scowled. 'This is not a conversation I want overheard by a Head Boy.'

Ominis's wand tip pulsed like a radar as he approached them; the red light glinted off his straw-coloured hair and fair skin, casting rather severe shadows under his hollow cheeks.

'Oh, please, you know I'm already well aware of every bloody misdeed you get up to. It's not like I haven't helped you get away with most of them for the last seven years.' Ominis sighed in a way that suggested he could recall every last one in excruciating detail but wished he couldn't. 'Whatever you're up to, do try not to get caught. I've only been Head Boy for a day, I don't want to have to cover for you already.'

'Relax, would you? I'm only inviting her to join the duelling club, not planning a bloody troll heist in the dungeons. Although,' his expression brightened, and a mischievous glint came to life in his eyes, 'that's not a bad idea, actually.'

'Stop it, Sebastian, before you get carried away. And are you sure about inviting her?' he asked, speaking as if Aurélie wasn't standing right beside him. 'You only just met her. You trust her so much already?'

'I'm inviting her to join a club, Ominis, not asking her to marry me.'

'Nothing would surprise me when it comes to you. But very well, I suppose there's no point trying to talk you out of it.' He rubbed a hand wearily across his forehead. 'When's the next meeting, then? And is that Hufflepuff prat still a member or did you kick him out like I asked? Because you know I find him entirely insufferable.'

'Wait,' Aurélie interrupted, 'Ominis — you're Head Boy and you're in an illicit underground duelling club?'

'Yes,' he replied curtly, looking affronted at being addressed directly. 'Who do you think founded the group to begin with?'

Sebastian laughed at the look of shock on Aurélie's face. 'Oh, don't look so scandalised. Ominis was only made Head Boy to keep him out of trouble.'

'No, I was made Head Boy to keep you out of trouble!' Ominis shot back. 'And by the way, new girl, don't get too cocky simply because you bested Sallow in one duel. He never backs down from a fight.'

'I'm not cocky.'

'She didn't best me!'

Ominis sighed deeply. 'I'm tired. See you back at the common room, Sebastian.'

Without waiting for either of them to reply, he turned on his heel and headed for the lower staircase, leaving Sebastian stewing in his wake.

'Ominis! She didn't best me, it was a draw!' he shouted after at his friend's retreating form, but Ominis was already too deep in the swell of chattering students to hear him.

'He heard me,' Sebastian muttered, narrowing his eyes at the back of Ominis's head. 'He hears everything.'

Beside them, a group of Hufflepuff girls milling about the bottom of the stairs broke out into a fit of obnoxious giggles. The nearest one, a pretty blonde, said in a voice loud enough to carry across the busy room, 'I'd let Sallow best me in a duel any day.'

'I'd let him best me all night long,' said another to uproarious shrieks of mirth.

If Sebastian heard their remarks, he pretended not to — though Aurélie thought his ears seemed a bit pinker than they had moments prior.

'Friend of yours?' she asked, hoping to distract him from the blonde, who appeared to be working up the courage to approach him.

'Who, her?' he said, throwing the girl a scandalised look.

'No, Ominis.'

'Oh! Ominis, right. Yeah, but he's more like an annoyingly omniscient brother, really.' He trailed off for a moment, a small frown creasing his brow. 'Been best friends since first year. Been through a lot together, Ominis and I. He's brilliant and I love him dearly, but bloody hell he loves a good whinge. Anyway —' He ran a hand through his thick, unruly hair and turned his attention back to her, '— don't change the subject. Crossed Wands, are you in or not?'

'Crossed Wands?' Aurélie snorted. 'That's rather a cute name for an illegal duelling club.'

Sebastian shot her a withering look. 'Don't look at me, I didn't name it. Besides, that's not — what's wrong with — look...' He heaved a sigh. 'Do you want to join or not? It'll give you a chance to improve on your dismal offence work. What was it that Hecate said? Your offence needs quite a lot of work? Let me tell you right now, you won't pass your N.E.W.T.s if you can't disarm me.'

Sighing in resignation, Aurélie swept a weary hand across her forehead. If it would help her overcome her sudden aversion to fighting, then perhaps it would be a good idea.

'Fine, yes, I'm in. But if you get me expelled, Sebastian Sallow, I will do worse than disarm you.'

Sebastian's answering grin was so suggestive that the entire group of loitering Hufflepuffs shot Aurélie a collective look of deep loathing. She did her best to ignore them.

'Brilliant!' Sebastian's face lit up. 'Knew I wasn't wrong about you. I'll be in touch, keep an eye out for my owl. Oh, and speaking of owls...' In one swift movement, he leaned forward and plucked a small white feather from the top of her head. 'That's been there all night,' he said, holding it up with a crooked grin.

'Wow, that's not embarrassing in the slightest,' she muttered.

But as he turned to leave, chuckling to himself, she called him back.

'Wait! What's Confringo?'

Sebastian blinked. 'Confringo?'

'In Defence class, Hecate specifically told you not to use Confringo. Is that some sort of spell?'

A wicked glint flashed in his hazel eyes as he looked her over again, appraising her with an intensity that made her insides squirm a bit.

Aurélie by the talented and sweet yoshi_tsuno

Chapter Text

TW: implied murder, parental loss.

-x-

The curtains were drawn.

Why were the curtains drawn?

Her mother hated having the house closed up in summer. She always made a point of leaving the windows open, welcoming in the summer breeze and the sound of cicadas singing in the fields beyond the house. Aurélie had always liked it that way, too. Sometimes, when the summer nights were hot and her bedsheets stuck to her skin, the sound of the nearby ocean would lull her to sleep.

Tonight was one of those nights. Hot and alive with pretty night sounds.

So why was everything shut tight?

The sitting room was thick with shadows. No light. No warmth. Cold despite the season.

Aurélie called out, but her trembling voice was swallowed up by the darkness.

'Maman?'

No answer.

Why?

Slowly, indistinct shapes began to take form in the darkness, revealing themselves through the gloom as nothing more than flat, featureless silhouettes.

A bookcase.

Her father's reading chair.

And two piles of blankets on the floor.

No. Not blankets.

Bodies.

Bodies?

The rustle of fabric drew her attention as two shadows peeled away from the others.

Not a bookshelf.

Not a chair.

Something else.

One was tall and lithe, the other staunch and hulking. She stumbled backwards as the tall one extended a long, graceful arm and turned to face her, his wand pointed squarely at her chest. The sound of his swishing cloak was magnified in the silence.

Rushing wings of death.

'Ah, dear Aurélie,' said the figure, pronouncing her name the French way as he politely inclined his head beneath his hood. 'Please do forgive us for the intrusion, but my brother here was rather impatient to make your acquaintance. You see, you have something we need.'

His voice was soft, musical. He spoke as pleasantly as if he were an old friend stopping by for tea.

The second shadow grunted, hatred and impatience clear even in the wordless exclamation.

She took another step back as something silvery shot out of her wand and took off through the nearest window.

And then there was red.

Only red and only pain.

Aurélie started awake, gasping. She did not fall asleep again for the rest of the night.

-x-

Aurélie's next few days at Hogwarts passed in much the same manner as her first. Thanks in large to her duel with Sebastian, which had already become something of a Hogwarts legend, she was still garnering far more attention than she was comfortable with. Stares and whispers followed her through the castle so persistently it was like having her own personal poltergeist whispering in her ear wherever she went. Of course, the actual poltergeist did the same thing, only he preferred to sing nasty limericks at her so that everyone within several floors could hear him teasing her about being French and red-headed.

But worse than the gossip and the open-mouthed stares and the rude rhymes about her heritage were the questions from the more curious students among them. Did she miss France? What was Beauxbatons like? Had she ever eaten frogs legs? And - worst of all - why in Merlin's name did her parents make her transfer in her seventh year?

So frequently were these queries sprung upon her that she'd invented a whole backstory to save her from reliving trauma every time she met someone new. As a result, the lies she answered with were becoming easier to repeat. Outwardly, she was quite good at pretending her parents were off gallivanting around the world for work and not lying six feet underground in a graveyard in the south of France. Inwardly, every time she told her falsehoods, she wanted to curl up and join them.

Her sense of direction did not improve. She got lost every time she tried to find her way to class, was rescued and subsequently scolded twice by Ominis - who seemed to have an uncanny knack for finding her whenever she was way off course - and was so late to her first potions class that her new potions master Professor Sharp took five points from Ravenclaw - a punishment she thought was so unfair that if Sharp wasn't such a formidable looking man, she might've argued about it.

Instead, she muttered a quick apology and headed for the only empty space at the nearest potions station, which was occupied the red-haired Gryffindor boy who'd stood up to watch her at the sorting ceremony - and her least favourite Slytherin. The latter of the two smirked at her as she approached like he'd planned the seating arrangements in advance just to grind her gears, while the Gryffindor offered her a sympathetic smile.

'If you prefer having hair on your head, I wouldn't get anywhere near Garreth's cauldron if I were you,' Sebastian warned in a low voice, his trademark smirk set firmly upon his freckled face.

Aurélie sniffed, putting as much derision into it as she could muster, but her hand flew up to shield her long braid as she came to stand next to the Gryffindor.

'Shut up, Sallow,' muttered Garreth, who turned to her with a smile he likely intended to look reassuring but bordered on being a little bit frantic. 'I haven't blown up a cauldron since fifth year, I promise.'

'Which means he's well overdue for a disaster,' Sebastian put in, crossing his arms over his chest and fixing her with a look that dared her to defy him. 'Truly, Aurélie, if you like the way you look, I'd stay on my side of the table.' His gaze trailed slowly down the length of her braid, his smirk growing ever more amused as he eyed her protective grip around it.

She'd hoped that Sebastian might've eased up on her a bit since she'd agreed to join his stupid duelling club, but no; if anything, he'd only become more insufferable. Like a poorly-trained, disobedient stray dog, he'd taken to sitting close enough in their shared classes that she could hear his every sigh, every annoying tap of his quill and shuffle of his restless feet under the desk as if he was just itching to jump up and duel her again.

But worse than his infernal fidgeting was the way he stared at her.

Relentlessly.

She caught his eye so often that it was beginning to make her perpetually flustered. After one such instance in Transfiguration class, she spilt a whole ink pot over her notes and had to endure an infuriating lecture from Professor Weasley about not flailing her limbs about in class - as if it had been her fault.

Aurélie wasn't entirely sure what it was about her that Sebastian found so chronically frustrating, but she couldn't seem to escape the attention of those stupid brown eyes no matter how hard she tried.

Eyes the colour of tea stains and musty old books.

'I'll take the risk, thanks,' she said stiffly, though she threw a sidelong glance at Garreth's empty cauldron with some trepidation.

'Fine,' he replied, rolling his English Breakfast eyes, 'but don't say I didn't warn you. It'll be a shame to see that lovely hair ruined by this moron's incompetence, that's all.'

She blinked.

Lovely hair?

She had little time to ponder this any further, for at that same moment, Professor Sharp loomed over them and threatened to take points from each of their houses if they didn't shut up and listen.

And shut up they did.

From that point on, even Sebastian Sallow took second place in her attention span as she tried to follow Sharp's lecture on ingredients she'd never heard of let alone brewed in a potion before. It was clear that N.E.W.T potion class was going to be akin to torture; Sharp's lecture - most of which was in Latin - was so wildly complicated that she had half a mind to quit school right then and there. Beside her, Garreth continuously rubbed his forehead in frustration, while across the table, Sebastian's expression of genuine confusion made him look like an entirely different person.

By the time the double period was over, Aurelie's brain felt as if it had been stomped over by a herd of furious Graphorn's then danced upon by a hundred exuberant pixies.

Thankfully, it was Garreth and not Sebastian who caught up with her in the corridor outside, looking just as relieved as she was to be free from Sharp's clutches; his swooping mop of strawberry-coloured hair was standing up in wild disarray from repeatedly running his hand through it, and there were splashes of dried potion and singe marks on his scarlet robes - apparent evidence of previous potion mishaps.

'Five points from Ravenclaw and you're being bossed around by Sallow? Lucky you,' he said with a wide, easy grin.

'Lucky me,' she repeated sardonically, earning herself a chuckle from her new Gryffindor companion.

'Don't worry about Sharp, he's alright if you do as he says,' he told her as they made their way to the Great Hall for lunch, their footsteps echoing around the dingy underground corridor. 'He's strict but he's fair. Sallow, on the other hand - '

Aurélie shivered, pulling her robes tighter around her body to ward off the chill in the air. The dungeons were undoubtedly the worst part of the castle: how the Slytherins could bear living under the cold, damp lake, Aurélie couldn't fathom.

'Weasley!'

Sebastian's voice reverberated around them, sending a jolt through her body that she felt right down in her toes.

Without preamble, he elbowed his way between them, forcing the two apart to accommodate his tall frame in the narrow corridor. He was much taller up close than she'd realised; she had to dodge to avoid copping his shoulder to her face as he angled his body toward the Gryffindor like a shield.

'Aurélie speaks French, not Troll,' he sneered. 'I doubt she understands the nonsense you're grunting at her right now.'

'I doubt very much she speaks Dark Wizard, either, Sallow, so why are you bothering?' Though she couldn't see his face beyond the Slytherin's broad shoulder, Garreth's voice had suddenly lost most of its mirth.

Sebastian snorted. 'Don't ever listen to anything this idiot says, Aurélie. Every word out of his mouth is utter drivel.'

'Oh, sweet, simple Sebastian.' Garreth reached out to ruffle Sebastian's untamed mess of curls. 'How I missed the sweet, dulcet tones of your pathetically predictable insults over the summer. Like whispering sweet nothings, they are. I could fall asleep to the sound of you trying and failing to hurt my feelings.'

'Stay away from this git, Aurélie,' Sebastian muttered, swatting Garreth's hand away. 'He's an arrogant git and a shameless flirt.'

'A shameless flirt?' Garreth snorted. 'Oh, that's right, Sallow, I almost forgot that you're the beacon of virtue and chastity against which we all aspire to model ourselves. How's Imelda, by the way?'

Sebastian's responding glare was almost fierce enough to set Garreth's hair on fire; something Aurélie was certain he might actually do given half the chance.

'Shove off, Garreth.'

But Garreth only laughed. 'Poor little Sallow. He's like this with all the pretty girls, Aurélie. Bit possessive, you know? He's like a child with a shiny new set of Gobstones. Doesn't want to share at first, but once the novelty wears off, he loses interest pretty quickly.'

To absolutely nobody's surprise, Sebastian Sallow was the very first student to get detention that year, because the moment he pointed his wand at Garreth's chest was the same moment Professor Sharp appeared behind them. The last Aurélie saw of him, he was being dragged down the corridor by the ear while Sharp scolded him with the all fury of a long-suffering professor who'd well and truly reached his limit.

'You're a seventh-year, Sallow, not a bloody child! Only three days into the school year and you've already earned yourself a week's worth of detention. Please, do take a moment to be proud of yourself, because at this rate, detention will likely be the only thing you achieve this year!'

'You should rethink your choice of friends,' said Garreth over the echoes of Sebastian's vehement counter argument, 'because that one is bad news.'

Aurélie's hurried to keep up with his long-legged strides as they took to a tightly winding staircase together.

'Bad news?'

Garreth cast her a sidelong glance, chewing the inside of his cheek thoughtfully.

'Well,' he began, 'let's just say there are a lot of... unsettling rumours about him.'

'What sort of rumours?' she asked, panting slightly as they finally ascended from the dungeons.

Garreth bent his head toward her, the vibrant shade of his hair made all the more vivid under the torchlight of the castle's upper floors. Now that they were free of the gloomy dungeons, everything suddenly seemed glaringly bright.

'Listen, I'm only telling you this because I think you should know who you're getting involved with before it's too late. You seem far too sweet to be caught up with the likes of Sallow.'

Aurélie scoffed, wondering which part of her new sleep-deprived, chronically-stressed-out, grieving-the-violent deaths-of-her-parents personality he found sweet. Maybe she'd been sweet once, but not any more.

'And who, exactly, would I be getting involved with?' she asked, rubbing a hand across her forehead. 'Not that I plan on getting involved with Sebastian, at any rate.'

They'd reached the enormous doors of the Great Hall, which stood open to allow the usual chaotic din of feeding time at Hogwarts to wash over them. Briefly, Aurélie closed her eyes and wished for Beauxbatons. Oh, to eat a meal while wood nymphs serenaded her with chamber music again. Oh, to have wine with dinner. Merlin, what she wouldn't give for some wine.

The sound of Garreth's scoff brought her back to reality.

'Sallow and his sister Anne used to live in Feldcroft with their uncle Solomon. At the end of our fifth year, Solomon died rather suddenly.'

'And?'

He glanced around surreptitiously and continued in a voice that was almost too low to carry despite how close they were standing.

'Well, Sebastian disappeared right after it happened. Didn't come to the end-of-year feast or anything, didn't tell anyone he was leaving - just left. No one knew where he'd gone or if he was ever coming back again.'

'So he took time away after losing another family member. What's wrong with that?'

After everything Sebastian had gone through, Aurélie didn't think it unreasonable that he should want to disappear for a while. She felt another twinge of sympathy that she wished she would stop feeling.

Garreth lowered his voice. 'Well, some say he wasn't taking time away to mourn so much as he was hiding from what he'd done.'

'What he'd done? Are you - what are you implying?'

'Look,' he said, gesturing at her to keep her voice down, 'all I know is that after his sister was cursed, Sallow went a bit... dark.'

'Dark? What do you mean, dark? And I thought his sister was ill, not cursed?'

'That's the story they gave everyone, but c'mon, he's a Slytherin, for Merlin's sake. They're sort of known for... Well, you know...'

'Actually, I don't know,' she said sharply, quickly losing her patience. 'I've just come from Beauxbatons, remember? I know nothing of these ridiculous house rivalries you're all so obsessed with.'

'They're all drawn to the Dark Arts,' he said in a tone that suggested she was a bit simple. 'Everybody knows that. Rumour has it that Sebastian was dabbling in Dark Magic and when his uncle found out about it... Well, let's just say that the death of Mr Sallow was very unexpected, to say the least.'

Garreth gazed at her intently as if waiting for understanding to dawn. When it didn't, he sighed in exasperation.

'I happen to have it on good authority that Mr Sallow's wand wasn't even checked with Priori Incantatem before they buried him. Strange, don't you think? A wizard's wand is always checked for their last spell after they die. It's protocol. It's almost as if someone was trying to cover something up. Some say that Ominis used his family's connections to keep it all hush-hush.'

'Ominis?'

'Ominis is a Gaunt,' he said as if this explained everything. 'A direct descendant of Salazar Slytherin, which means he's from one of the most powerful wizarding families in existence - and the darkest.' He ran a hand through his hair, his eyes darting around the room as if he expected Salazar Slytherin himself to jump out at them at any moment.

'Thankfully, Ominis isn't nearly half as bad as his brothers. They were both a few years above him and they were monsters. They've graduated now but let me tell you, I've never been so happy to see the back of anyone.' He shuddered delicately, his green eyes fixed on some faraway point beyond her head. 'Still, I'd keep my distance, if I were you. Being close to Sallow means being close to the Gaunt's, and I wouldn't wish that on anyone.'

Aurélie chewed her lip, unsure of what to say to a revelation like that.

'Look, I don't say all this to scare you,' he said, noticing her consternation, 'but you should know the truth.'

'The truth?' Aurélie's brows shot upwards. 'I appreciate that, Garreth, but you've told me nothing but hearsay and gossip - and the rather nasty sort, at that.'

'Fine, fine, that's fair enough.' He heaved a sigh. 'Believe what you will, but all I'm saying is be careful, alright? If you choose to align yourself with the likes of Sallow, he'll only lead you to trouble. And not the good kind of trouble, either.'

That night in her bed, Aurélie replayed the conversation over and over in her mind.

He'll only lead you to trouble.

She snorted into her pillow. Well, that much was obvious - the boy clearly thrived on being antagonistic.

But a murderer?

Hadn't Poppy had told her that Sebastian had done something terrible in his fifth year that not even his twin sister could forgive him for?

And yet...

Hadn't she also told her of his losses? His parents, his sister, his uncle...

Sebastian was undoubtedly a huge pain in the arse, but she just couldn't believe he was a killer.

He'll only lead you to trouble... And not the good kind...

She wasn't sure what the good kind of trouble was supposed to be, but as she rolled over, seeking sleep that would once again evade her, she couldn't help but think that if Sebastian Sallow wasn't the good kind of trouble, then she wasn't sure she wanted the good kind at all.

And that was the most troubling thought of all.

Aurélie by my most treasured precious German potato SleepyWitchLory

Chapter Text

Saturday dawned with bright sun and clear skies the likes of which Aurélie hadn't seen since she'd left France.

She stretched her arms above her head, stiff and exhausted after another long night of trying - and inevitably failing - to avoid the nightmares that made her palms itch with long-suppressed magic. Like most things in her life, peaceful sleep and pleasant dreams were a thing of the past.

Perhaps if the dawning sun hadn't been throwing brilliant squares of light through the diamond-panelled windows of her dorm, she might've stayed in bed, warm and cozy under her covers like the rest of her dorm mates. But since that great golden orb of vitality didn't often bless the Scottish Highlands with its presence - a fact she'd been inwardly lamenting all week - she thought it'd be poor form not to embrace it while she could.

Stretching and yawning, she dressed in an absent daze, clumsily twisting her hair into its usual French braid and pulling on one of the nicer outfits she'd bought with her from France. She didn't bother checking her reflection in the oval mirror that hung on the wall; her pallid skin and deeply shadowed eyes were not a comforting sight, her mask of grief that of a strangers.

Out in the common room, which was blissfully empty at this time of morning, she spent a pleasant half-hour perusing the well-stocked bookshelves. Ordinarily, her Saturday mornings were spent with her best friend Celeste, swimming together in the ocean or lounging about the magnificent fairytale chateau that was Beauxbatons. But those days had also gone the way of her sleep schedule. Now all she had to look forward to was reading alone at Hogwarts.

Finally, with a tattered copy of 'Hogwarts, a History' under her arm, she set off for the castle grounds with the sole intention of finding a nice, peaceful spot to whittle away the morning hours.

She passed no one on her way through the still-sleeping castle save for a few ghosts who cast her cursory glances as they floated by, and when at last she found her way outside to the transfiguration courtyard, she was rather pleased with herself for not having ended up lost in the dungeons. Again.

A great, towering oak grew in the far corner of the courtyard. As ancient-looking as the stone walls that surrounded it, its thick, gnarled branches bent right down to the ground like beckoning arms. She wondered if her father had ever sat under the very same tree in his youth; he'd always loved a good tree — being a Hufflepuff and all — and this one, still holding onto its summer greenery, seemed a very good tree indeed.

Settling comfortably against the thick trunk, she skimmed idly through the pages of her book until the gentle breeze swept her thoughts to the far-reaching corners of her mind. Careful not to dwell on anything painful, she kept her daydreams focused on more pleasant affairs, such as the letter she'd received from Celeste the day before last, and the look on Sebastian Sallow's face when Sharp had caught him threatening Garreth Weasley.

'Mind if I join you?'

Aurélie's eyes flew open.

As if her thoughts alone had conjured him, the touselled-haired Slytherin boy stood grinning over her, his tall figure casting a shadow over her long-forgotten history book. Without waiting for an answer, he flopped down on the grass beside her, propped himself up on one elbow and pulled a box of Every Flavour Beans from his pocket.

'Care for a bean?' he asked, giving the box a little jiggle.

Aurélie raised a dubious brow. 'Jelly beans for breakfast?'

'Hey, now, don't judge me,' Sebastian chuckled, shaking his brown curls off his face. 'Don't you French drink wine for breakfast?'

His eyes narrowed on her for a moment as if he half expected to spy a wine bottle stashed under her blouse.

'No,' she sniffed, adjusting her collar with indignation, 'we possess enough self-control to at least wait for lunch before we start on the spirits. Besides, I'm only half-French.'

'Ah, I see. So you don't drink wine?'

'Oh, I definitely drink wine. I just don't drink it for breakfast.'

Sebastian considered this for a moment, eyeing her with his head tilted slightly to the side. 'So you've the temper of the French with all the sensibilities of the English?'

'Something like that.'

'Huh. Well, suit yourself, but I'm having sugar for breakfast.' He threw several beans into his mouth at once, chewed enthusiastically, then pulled a face.

'Eurgh!' he said, swallowing with apparent difficulty. 'I think there was a grass-flavoured one in there.'

A laugh surprised its way past Aurélie's tight lips. She stifled it as best she could, wondering why on earth Sebastian Sallow was being nice to her.

'Sooo...' he began in a tone that was altogether too friendly for a boy who'd been antagonising her all week, 'how are you finding Hogwarts so far?'

'Um, well, it's a little... rougher around the edges than what I'm used to."

Sebastian laughed. The sound was surprisingly... pleasant. 'Is that a very polite way of saying you hate it?'

'No,' she said, swallowing back another accidental giggle. 'I don't hate it. It's just... Different.'

Sebastian's expression softened as he looked her over. For a moment, lying across the grass with his hair dancing in the breeze, he looked so unlike the jeering idiot she'd met in Defence Against the Dark Arts that she was overcome by a sudden, inexplicable urge to run.

'I imagine it doesn't feel much like home yet, does it?' His tone, which had taken on a quality that matched his soft expression, did very little to ease her sense of - well, whatever uncomfortable feeling was presently fluttering around in her chest.

'No,' she agreed, shifting uncomfortably. 'No, it doesn't.'

Sebastian nodded thoughtfully while Aurélie watched on, waiting for whatever well-meaning but ultimately empty gesture of reassurance he felt obliged to offer her.

It was clear to anyone who paid attention that settling into Hogwarts wasn't exactly going well for her. All week long, she'd been hearing variations of the same sentiment from students and professors alike: just give it time; you'll settle in eventually; everybody struggles when they first arrive. And though she appreciated these genuine attempts to bolster her spirits, their words only left her feeling like she was already failing at her new life.

But to her ever-growing sense of bewilderment, Sebastian didn't say anything of the sort, didn't smile and try to install her with false reassurances. Didn't lie. He simply nodded, thoughtful and a little sombre, as if he took her admission as a true and simple fact. Hogwarts wasn't her home - there was no point in either of them denying it.

'Speaking of home,' he said after a moment, 'I was thinking of going to Feldcroft today before Quidditch training, but I... I...' he interrupted himself with a great shuddering yawn, not bothering to cover his mouth. 'I'm too tired.'

'Feldcroft? Is that where you're from?'

Aurélie didn't know much about the hamlets and villages dotted about the Highlands, but she'd heard enough gossip about Sebastian Sallow to remember the name Feldcroft.

'Oh, I'm not from Feldcroft,' he shrugged, 'I moved there when I was young. I don't go there much during the school term. Actually, I don't go there much at all if I can help it, not since...' He trailed off, suddenly too preoccupied with extracting another handful of beans to finish his sentence. He did not speak again for several long moments, and it was in this brief silence that Garreth's words filled Aurélie's mind instead, his warning ringing clear in her memory:

Some say he wasn't taking time away to mourn so much as he was hiding from what he'd done.

She pushed the thought away, casting it deep in her psyche where it joined all the other things she was trying desperately not to think about.

'There's a garden, there — at the house, I mean,' he continued, not quite meeting her eye. 'My sister used to keep it before she died, but I've let it go some, and it... Well, it irks me whenever I think about how I've neglected it.' He glanced up at her then, a shadow of vulnerability transforming his usual confident expression into something... gentler. 'I don't know much about gardening and I feel awful for letting it, uh, go.'

'Oh...' Aurélie picked up a twig and twirled it absently between her fingers. 'Well, I know a thing or two about gardens if you, er, ever need any help. My father was - is a Herbologist. I spent most of my childhood helping him in his gardens.'

'Really?' Sebastian's eyebrows rose in disbelief, his lip curling up at one corner. 'Little Frenchie like you digging about in the dirt? I can't picture it.'

'There's probably a lot about me that would surprise you,' she said, shrugging a nonchalant shoulder.

'Is that so? So you're the daughter of a Herbologist?'

She nodded. 'Mhm. And a music teacher. They're, um, travelling abroad at the moment. For work.'

No need to tell him they're both dead.

'Hm.' Sebastian's eyes narrowed, but if he didn't believe her (admittedly unconvincing) lie, he made no mention of it. 'Well, I might have to take you up on that offer. Anne never let me near the garden after I accidentally pulled up all her tomato seedlings thinking they were weeds. All green things look the same to me.'

She knew he was only being modest; he took N.E.W.T-level Herbology with her, after all — she'd seen him prune the Venomous Tentacular with surprising finesse and tenderness, but she agreed nonetheless.

With a small smile playing about the corners of his mouth, Sebastian closed his eyes and turned his face skyward. Dappled sunlight danced across his skin, highlighting shades of light caramel and bronzey-gold through his messy hair. Much to Aurelie's surprise, she found it rather peaceful sitting under the tree together - now that he'd stopped munching on jelly beans, at least.

Though the school grounds were nothing like the manicured gardens of Beauxbatons Park, with its smooth velvety lawns, abundant rose gardens and magical fountains, Aurélie didn't mind Hogwarts on a lazy Sunday morning. Without the usual sounds of chattering students and intolerable poltergeists, she could hear nothing else but the breeze sighing through the old oak, the twittering birds, and, barely audible beneath it all, the sound of Sebastian's slow, steady breath.

When he unexpectedly opened his eyes and met her gaze, she startled out of her thoughtful quietude, cast a frantic glance around the courtyard and blurted, 'All those detentions must've really taken it out of you.'

A slow smile spread across Sebastian's face. 'Please,' he said playfully, 'I was practically born in detention. I've probably scrubbed every last inch of this castle by now - and all by hand, I might add.'

'You sound rather proud of yourself.'

He chuckled, clearly at ease sprawled out over the grass. But then again, he always seemed at ease. Not even being dragged off by the ear to detention had seemed to ruffle him much.

'Well, detention isn't all bad. You'd be surprised how many secrets you discover when you're left alone to clean out old forgotten classrooms for hours on end.'

'Secrets, really? Like what?' she asked, sitting up a little straighter.

'Curious little thing, aren't you?'

'Well, I am a Ravenclaw.'

'And I am a Slytherin,' he countered. 'Secrets are sort of our thing. And trust me, Hogwarts is full of them.' His eyes were alight with a sudden mischievous gleam that made him seem younger, somehow. Certainly less annoying. 'I'd wager that Ominis and I have discovered more about this castle than anyone else before us: forgotten rooms, secret tunnels, forbidden books. I even found a series of very erotic love letters sent between two Professors in the early seventeen-hundreds.'

'You're joking?'

'Would you like me to recite them to you?'

'I wasn't referring to the letters,' she grumbled, flushing warm about the ears. 'I mean the secret tunnels and hidden rooms. You really discovered all those things in detention?'

'Some,' he said, shrugging. 'Others I stumbled upon by accident. Some Ominis knew of already because his family, the Gaunt's, are -'

'- direct descendants of Salazar Slytherin - yes, I know. Garreth Weasley told me.'

Sebastian snorted.

''Course he did. I swear, that prat never stops talking about Ominis and me. I think he secretly wishes he was a Slytherin. What else did he tell you?'

'Uh... Well...' She twisted her fingers together in her lap, wondering exactly how much of Garreth's warnings she dared repeat. 'He told me to stay away from you, actually,' she ventured. 'Said that you'll only lead me to trouble. Thought himself rather noble for saying so, too.'

Sebastian threw his head back and laughed. 'Ha! And yet here you are. I take it you're not worried about me leading you astray, then?'

She smiled despite herself. 'First of all, you're the one who keeps seeking me out, not the other way around. If anything, I'd say I'm leading you. And second of all -'

'- Second of all, I don't think you like being told what to do, do you?' he grinned, his dark eyes shining with amusement. 'Least of all by a self-righteous Gryffindor like Weasley.'

'Second of all,' she said firmly, 'I don't let anyone lead me anywhere I don't want to be led. I'm not a pushover.'

His eyes sharpened on her, all warm tea and autumn leaves. 'I've never thought you a pushover. Well, not since our first Defence class, at least.'

'Yes, well. I just don't like being told who I should or should not be friends with, as if I can't tell for myself who's worthy of my time.'

'Hang on, are you saying that I'm worthy of your time, or that Garreth is worthy of your time?'

'Maybe I haven't decided yet.'

He leaned back, resting his weight on his hands. 'Ah, but surely you don't trust the intentions of a Slytherin snake over that of the noble Gryffindor lion? Don't you know we Slytherin's are all supposed to be dark evil wizards?' he said with a mocking air. 'I'm sure Garreth told you that, too.'

'He did. But if you must know... I don't believe the world is as black and white as those like Garreth seem to think it is. I believe magic is more... neutral in nature.'

Sebastian sat up straighter. 'Well, now I'm really intrigued. Do go on.'

Aurélie plucked a few dandelions from the grass, gathering her thoughts. 'Well... Magic doesn't care what your intentions are - it just exists, doesn't it? It's always there, ready to be wielded and manipulated whether you want to summon a book or, I don't know, hex somebody's eyebrows off.'

'I've done plenty of both,' he grinned.

'The same goes for language - you know, the very words we speak every day,' she went on, ignoring his interjection. 'There are endless ways in which we can express ourselves, but words themselves aren't inherently good or bad, it's the intent behind them that makes them so. In the same way, you could use just about any spell to cause harm if you wanted to - one wouldn't necessarily have to ever learn the Dark Arts to be a dark wizard, just as someone could know dark magic and never use it for evil.'

Sebastian stared at her like he was only just seeing her for the first time. 'So you're saying you don't believe there's such a thing as dark magic, only dark wizards?'

Apprehension bloomed in her stomach, twisting her insides into knots. Had she said too much?

'I suppose so,' she said carefully. 'What - do you think I'm wrong?'

When Aurélie's extra gifts had manifested at age fifteen, her father had sat her down and told her everything he knew about the strange new power that had awoken in her. Her gift - the Ancient Magic, as he called it - had run in his family line as far back as anyone could trace it, but none had possessed it in generations.

She could recall that fateful conversation with a clarity so profound it was as if it had happened yesterday: she and her father sitting in his sunny garden, nestled among the brightly blooming flowers and the chirping birds while inexplicable strands of raw magic danced over her hands.

'You can make plants grow,' her father had told her, his tone uncharacteristically serious. 'You can bring water back to barren land, bring life to what was once lifeless. But you - the magic - can also do great harm. Your great, great Grandmother was the last in our family to possess it. But Aurélie — it destroyed her.'

Driven by her grief after she'd lost her family in a tragic accident, Aurélie's great ancestor had used her gift to alleviate the crippling emotional pain of her loss, first by using it on herself, and then by experimenting on others. Through dangerous experimentation, she'd learned how to take away a person's pain — but the consequences had been dire. So dire, in fact, that her father had refused to speak on it further and had simply forbade his daughter from ever using it at all.

Yet that magic - the one powerful enough to heal and to harm, to create and destroy - was the same for each of those who possessed it; it was only ever the intentions of the wielder that differed. Aurélie herself was neither good nor bad for possessing it - not until she decided how to use it, at least, which was something she tried very hard not to do. Better not to take the risk, as her parents always told her. Better to play it safe.

'I'm starting to think that gardening might be the least surprising thing about you.' Sebastian tossed a jelly bean at her head, jolting her from her reverie. She caught it easily, surprised by her own reflexes.

'But I agree with you, actually,' he went on. 'I'm just surprised, that's all; not many people share that viewpoint. It's a very... well, a very Slytherin way of thinking. But I always did suspect you Ravenclaw's were a bit dangerous. Do anything for knowledge, you lot.'

'Knowledge is power,' she said simply, popping the bean into her mouth, which, to her immense relief, was strawberry-flavoured.

'Knowledge leads to power,' he clarified, leaning toward her now with an unwavering gaze. 'But it's what you do with that knowledge that matters, isn't it? Intention is everything, like you just said.' He ran a distracted hand through his hair, pushing the messy locks away from his eyes.

'Take Imperio for example. What if you used it to stop someone who was about to commit murder against an innocent person - say a child? Would you be considered bad for using a dark curse, or good because you used it to stop a bad thing from happening? And what about the killing curse? Would you be wrong in using it to defend yourself against someone who was trying to kill you first? Are you bad for defending yourself? For preserving your own life? And in that vein, how is it any different to carrying and using a knife or a weapon, like Muggles do? If you have no desire other than self-defence, what's the harm in arming yourself with a weapon to begin with?'

'I think the argument is that there are plenty of other spells one can use in situations like that, rather than resorting to using the unforgivables.'

'But what if there aren't?' He spoke with a sudden urgency, his eyes locked onto hers as if it was absolutely paramount that she understand him. Aurélie could almost hear the gears of his mind whirring. 'What if...' His voice lowered. 'What if using Avada Kedavra was the difference between losing someone you love or saving them? Surely that's worth the use of such magic?'

Aurélie was quiet for a long time. If she'd had the choice of using the killing curse to save her parents, would she have done it? She'd give anything to have them back - but would she do that? She didn't know the killing curse, of course, but it didn't matter; Ancient Magic alone was strong enough to kill, and she had no choice whether she wanted to possess it or not. She didn't need to learn the Unforgivables at all to do bad things if she wanted to.

Eventually, when she spoke again, she chose her words deliberately. 'I think the people who are vehemently against the idea of using Unforgivables have never been faced with such an awful decision before.'

They were silent.

'But you have, haven't you?' Sebastian's tone had suddenly lost its edge, his voice as soft now as the breeze that ruffled his hair. 'That's why you came to Hogwarts, isn't it? Something terrible happened to you. I can sense it.'

She shook her head almost imperceptibly. 'Something terrible happened because of me.'

He caught her gaze again and held it, his expression unreadable save for the small crease between his brows.

'Your parents aren't abroad, are they?'

Aurélie wanted to look away. She couldn't.

'No.' Though her voice was small, the impact of saying the simple word aloud rattled her to the core.

And then -

'Your sister wasn't ill, was she?'

Sebastian shook his head slowly, his eyes narrowed. 'Not exactly...'

He opened his mouth and then closed it, his attention shifting to a spot just beyond her shoulder.

'Ominis is coming,' he said with a frown. 'Don't let him hear you saying that magic is neutral. He'll have a fit.'

'Don't let Ominis hear you saying what?' said the impatient voice of the blind boy, whose wand was leading him across the courtyard with a sense of determined urgency.

'Oh, hello, Ominis. Care for a bean?' Sebastian's tone had shifted back to that of the self-assured Slytherin she recognised all too well.

'Don't let Ominis hear you saying what, Sebastian?'

'Oh, relax, would you? My new friend Aurélie here was just telling me that Garreth Weasley was prattling on about the Gaunt's again, that's all.'

'Oh. Yes, his usual drivel. I swear that boy is utterly obsessed with my family. If only my parents would consider taking him as a son instead of me. In more pressing matters, Imelda's looking for you.'

'Imelda?' Sebastian's smug expression slipped for a moment. 'Wants to grill me about Quidditch training, I expect. Best I find her before she finds me.' He stood up abruptly, brushing grass and twigs from his breeches as he did so. 'Oh, by the way, Frenchie -' he turned to peer down at her, hair flopping over his eyes. 'We're going to Hogsmeade tomorrow.'

'Uh, you and - Imelda?' she asked, not having the foggiest idea who Imelda was or why she ought to know about her weekend plans.

'No, not me and Imelda,' he said, wrinkling his nose. 'Me and you. And Ominis.'

'Not Ominis!' snapped the irate boy, whose wand tip blinked rapidly, mirroring its owner's agitation. 'Ominis is too busy being Head Boy to have any fun any more.'

'Oh, alright. You and me, then.'

'I -'

'Brilliant! I'll meet you by the front gates tomorrow morning at, say, ten?'

As he turned to leave, he glanced back at her over his shoulder.

'Oh, and if anyone else invites you, say no. Tell them you're going with me.'

Thank you to puridewart (tumblr) for bringing this scene to life.

Chapter Text

Idiot, thought Sebastian as he paced back and forth before the castle's gates, his steps cutting a track into the well-worn path that led away to Hogsmeade.

Big, stupid, tactless, dumb idiot.

He pulled a face down at his shoes; his relentless pacing had covered the once-polished leather in a fine layer of dust: evidence of his anxious thoughts manifesting as an inability to stand still. It had taken him an hour to finally decide on these bloody stupid shoes, and now he'd gone and ruined them.

Idiot, idiot, idiot.

Sebastian had always been a pacer. Unable to sit still even on a perfectly peaceful day, his pacing was a constant source of annoyance to the poor souls who had to endure it. Anne used to say that he must've been born with ants in his veins, to which he always countered that if there were ants in his veins, then surely she had them too, being born only five minutes apart. But Anne had not been a pacer; she'd never fidgeted or squirmed relentlessly. In fact, if she were still alive to bear witness to her twin's internal meltdown, she would've sat him down, given him a glass of water and instructed him to count backwards from one hundred. Then she'd have given him a fierce lecture about being a Sallow, for crying out loud, not an unfortunate member of the spineless Hobhouse family, and to please get a grip before she disowned him.

But Anne wasn't here, which meant there was no one to calm him down any more.

And so he paced.

Above him, the morning sun was playing hide and seek with the clouds, seemingly just as restless as he was. One minute, the rugged Scottish landscape was bathed in autumnal hues of warm gold and rich ochre, the next plunged into deep steely greys and cold blues. . A sharp breeze from the Black Lake bit at his hands and face, but Sebastian hardly felt it; he rarely did feel the cold any more.

It had been Ominis' rapidly waning patience that had forced Sebastian to take his pacing outside. Having endured as much anxious fidgeting and incoherent grumbling as he could handle, Ominis had fled the common room early that morning, muttering under his breath about needing some alone time before he, too, 'lost his bloody mind'. Sebastian, left alone with the memory of how he'd bullied the new girl into accepting his invitation to Hogsmeade, had also fled, hoping the sight of the wide open sky might help calm him down. It didn't, of course — very little ever did.

Idiot, idiot, idiot.

There'd been a time once when his best friend had, if not actively helped him with his problems, at least begrudgingly listened to them. But not any more; not since Anne, and certainly not since Solomon and the resulting fall-out from that particular mistake. Besides, Sebastian had a feeling that asking Ominis for advice on how to fundamentally change his entire personality overnight probably wouldn't go down well; not because his sharp-tongued friend would have any shortage of helpful suggestions he'd be willing to impart, but because Sebastian wasn't sure he was ready to handle that level of criticism.

And so he found himself outside, anxiously awaiting the arrival of a girl who was absolutely — without a doubt — not going to show up to meet him. And who could blame her? Who in their right mind would want to spend time alone with someone like him?

Cringing again, Sebastian checked his pocket watch for the umpteenth time. Had it really only been half a minute since the last time he'd checked it? He was losing his mind, his thoughts a tangled mess over a girl he'd known less than a week. If he were smarter, he'd forget the girl he inadvertently marked as his nemesis, who he'd bullied into joining his duelling club and whose shoes he'd accidentally ruined with dragon dung; if he were smarter, he'd simply write off every mortifying interaction he'd had with her as a loss and move on with his life.

But he couldn't.

Because that girl, whose talk of magic being neutral and the use of the Unforgivables being acceptable in the right situation, was the reason he'd been up all night. Despite himself, Sebastian was intrigued, and once the tendrils of his curiosity were wrapped tight around something, he was loathe to let it go again.

Another gust of bitter wind jolted him from his thoughts — and then, quite without warning, the sun broke free of its cloudy obscurity and cast its golden light down upon her; balletic and graceful as she crossed the sloping lawn to meet him, her arms wrapped around her middle in a vain attempt to ward off the cold. Beyond her, the landscape turned golden and bright once again as if summer had sprung upon them — but it was the colour of her hair that stopped his incessant pacing: unmistakable even from a distance, like she, too, was swathed in autumn, hair the colour of turning leaves.

'You came,' he said, unable to suppress his relief as she approached, small and calm and so fucking graceful that he felt like a great lumbering troll before her.

'You didn't give me much of a choice,' she replied, her tiny smile made brighter by the sun.

Sebastian chuckled nervously. Bloody hell, had his arms always been as thick as tree trunks? He shoved his hands into his pockets, wishing for the first time in his life that he was smaller.

'You didn't have to,' he said, shrugging as if he hadn't been awake half the night worrying that she wouldn't.

But I'm glad you did.

Despite having lived in the Scottish Highlands for much of his life, Sebastian rarely took its beauty for granted. When he'd first arrived after his parent's deaths, taken in by a resentful uncle who neither liked him nor wanted him, he'd spent most of his time outdoors: reading, exploring, sleeping under trees or crawling around in caves like some tiny wild creature with dirty feet and tangled hair. In a time when there'd been so little comfort in his life, he'd found solace in the untamed Scottish landscape, the wide expanse of sky stretching from horizon to horizon, the vast mountain peaks with their jagged outcroppings and blankets of heather and gorse. There was a sense of magic about the place, a deep and ancient power which, when he sat real still and listened extra hard, felt almost tangible, somehow: sentient and omniscient.

Sebastian drew comfort from it, and despite his turbulent beginnings in Scotland, had come to feel at home here. Comfortable.

What he wasn't comfortable with, however, was his complete inability to think of a single thing to say to the girl who walked quietly beside him along the winding road to Hogsmeade. Where the day prior he'd been brimming with his usual confidence, today the ants in his veins had evidently migrated to his brain, scattering his thoughts and rendering him mute.

By the time they reached the outer borders of the Forbidden Forest, Sebastian simply couldn't stand it any longer. Nodding toward the tree line, he opened his stupid mouth, turned off his stupid brain, and declared, 'I wouldn't even think about going in there if I were you. It's full of Acromantula.'

Clutching her cloak around her small frame, Aurélie peered into the depths of the forest. Even on the outskirts, the trees were so enormous that one could only see a few meters past them before the gloom choked out the sunlight. There was a certain beauty to the deep forest, melancholic though it was. Sebastian couldn't quite believe he'd once galivanted fearlessly through its depths with Anne steadfast by his side and Ominis trailing reluctantly behind them, three little outcasts looking for adventure. He hadn't been back since Anne had fallen ill; without her, the forest finally felt forbidden.

'Acro-what-ula?' Aurélie gasped, panting a little as she struggled to keep up with him.

Sebastian slowed his pace, absolutely hating that his legs were so bloody long.

'Giant spiders!' he said with an enthusiasm that was altogether inappropriate for something as awful as giant bloody spiders.

Her responding look of horror told him that this had indeed been the wrong thing to say. As if afraid she might be dragged into the forest at any moment, Aurélie took a deliberate step away from the tree line.

'Giant spiders?' she squeaked, bumping into him in her haste. 'Are you joking?'

'Uh — wish I was,' he stammered, surprised — but not exactly upset — by her unexpected touch. 'Um, there's quite a lot of them, actually.' — Stop talking, Sebastian. — 'The Ministry's been sending poachers out to get the problem under control,' — stop talking, Sebastian, — 'but they don't seem to be having much luck. Actually, there are rumours going around that Hogsmeade trips are to be cancelled if the infestation gets any worse.' — For the love of fucking Merlin, Sallow, stop prattling on about giant fucking spiders.

Shuddering visibly at the word infestation, Aurélie quickened her pace.

'That is the most disgusting thing I've ever heard in my life!' she said, casting a horrified glance back toward the forest.

'You don't have giant spiders in France then, I take it?'

'Non pas du tout!'

He didn't need to know French to translate that as a vehement no. Somehow, he managed to choke out a single, desperate chuckle, though internally he was screaming. 

'It's not so bad in there, really,' he said, wiping his clammy hands on his trousers and wishing for death. 'Anne and I first started sneaking in during our first year and nothing too horrendous ever happened to us. A few close calls, though, but that's part of the fun.'

Looking as if she very much wanted to challenge him on his idea of fun, Aurélie composed herself with a dignified shake of her head and expertly changed the subject. 'Your sister must've been as adventurous as you seem to be.'

It was a testament to how badly the conversation was going that Sebastian latched onto the subject change like a fucking life raft — as if talking about his dead sister was any better than talking about giant killer spiders.

'Ah, I see the Hogwarts rumour mill has wasted no time getting you up-to-speed with the Sallow family history. Let me guess, it was Weasley who told you about Anne?'

'Poppy, actually.' She offered an apologetic smile. 'I didn't mean to pry — she just sort of told me all about you.'

Sebastian returned her smile, hoping the gesture was reassuring and not as manic as it felt. 'It's alright,' he shrugged. 'It's not as if it's a secret. Besides, I don't mind talking about Anne.'

This, of course, was only half true; usually, talking about his sister made him want to march straight into an Acromantula den and offer himself up as their next meal; if the very thought of her not being here any more made his hands tremble, then speaking it aloud was near impossible. And yet, he missed talking about her: his brilliant sister, his partner in crime, his very best friend, but since Ominis refused to mention her existence any more, and her friends' were too scared of him to spare anything more than empty platitudes, Sebastian often found himself talking aloud to nobody as if his sister's spirit might hear him. Sometimes he wondered if she did, hopeful that somehow, in some way, their connection as twins remained intact, unable to be severed even after death.

'But, uh, to answer your question,' — Sebastian cleared his throat, hoping the hoarseness in his voice wouldn't betray his inner turmoil, — 'yes, Anne was rather a free spirit, if you will. In fact, she was the one who thought up the mischief in the first place. I was simply the one who implemented it.'

He cast the petite redhead a sideways glance. The fleeting sun caught a stray strand of her hair, and he wondered briefly whether it was as soft as it looked.

'So she was the brains and you were the muscle?' she asked, arching an inquisitive brow.

'Something like that,' he laughed. 'Though I have been known to use my brains, too... every now and then.'

She giggled at this; Sebastian immediately thought of birdsong.

'See, I'd argue that Anne was an even bigger rulebreaker than I am,' he went on, her interest bolstering him into animated conversation. 'Only she was smart enough to never get caught. She planned her misadventures down to the last detail, whereas I — erm...' He kicked absently at a loose stone. 'Well, I'm a bit impulsive, I suppose.'

Aurélie cast him a wry smile. 'Was Anne in Slytherin, too?'

'She was,' he nodded, smiling at the vivid memory of his sister sitting atop the stool, her toes just barely skimming the floor, half her face hidden beneath the too-large hat. 'She was almost a Ravenclaw, though. Came close to being a hatstall, actually.'

'A hatstall?'

'When the Sorting Hat takes five minutes or longer to sort a new student, that's called a Hatstall. Anne swore she was on that stool for over five minutes, but it was only two minutes and thirteen seconds. I was counting.' He was talking too fast — he knew it — yet he couldn't seem to slow himself down; he couldn't remember the last time someone had actually listened to him. 'Between the two of us, Anne took after our mother the most, and she was certainly intelligent enough for Ravenclaw, but...' He offered her another shrug. 'The hat declared her a Slytherin in the end. Mum was a bit disappointed, I think — you know, that neither of her children were Ravenclaw's, but she couldn't be too upset about it; she married a Slytherin, after all.'

'So your father's side are the Slytherin's, then?'

'Oh, definitely.' A hint of pride coloured Sebastian's voice. 'The Sallow's have always been in Slytherin. We've got snake blood running through our veins. Resourceful, loyal, proud — '

'— evil,' she interjected, grinning impishly.

'Misunderstood, perhaps,' he countered, smiling back.

Somewhere over the course of their journey down the winding path, they'd drawn closer to each other; every so often, their arms would touch, sleeves brushing against sleeves, elbows knocking lightly against the others. Hyper-aware of her proximity, Sebastian made sure not to move away.

'So, what were they like?' she prompted. 'Your parents, I mean.'

He sighed thoughtfully, casting his eyes skyward. 'Fine, I suppose. Determined, driven, curious, intelligent. When I was younger, I thought they were perfect... Though I suppose most children think that way about their parents, don't they?' He tried to smile again but found it suddenly rather hard to muster. 'But now that I'm older... Well, I can see now that they were a little...' He hesitated, blowing out a sharp sigh. 'Inattentive, I suppose. When they were present, they were fantastic, and I loved them with all my heart. But... Well, they weren't always living on the same planet as everyone else. They were both professors, you see, and they were often so consumed by their work that they'd get lost in their books and research for days on end. I taught myself how to fix dinner so we wouldn't go hungry whenever they were too absorbed in their studies. Anne and I learned to care for ourselves, and for each other. I used to put her to bed, read bedtime stories to her.'

'So you must be the big brother, then?'

'Yep. Older by five whole minutes. Never let her forget it either.' He shoved his hands into his pockets and sighed wistfully, his voice lowering. 'It's still unbelievable to me that she's gone,' he went on, unable to stop the pain from colouring his tone. 'I still wake up expecting to find her waiting for me in the common room each morning. I... I don't think I'll ever get used to it.'

'I can't imagine how it must feel to lose your twin,' came Aurélie's soft reply. The back of her hand brushed against his and he smiled a little, appreciating the gesture.

'It's like half of me is missing,' he said simply, and the pair lapsed into a deep silence, broken only by the sound of their footsteps as they walked on side by side, elbow to elbow.

By the time they reached the footbridge that led across the river into Hogsmeade village, Sebastian wasn't sure if he wanted to laugh, cry or scream. Either way, he was so close to the edge of a panic attack that he considered just throwing himself over the bridge and floating away downstream, forgetting Anne, forgetting vulnerability and giant spiders and dead parents, and the way his arm tingled with every little touch of her own.

He didn't, of course, because the look of wonder upon Aurélie's face was enough to keep his feet planted firmly on the ground.

'Well, here we are,' he said, motioning toward the village with a wide sweep of his arms. 'Welcome to Hogsmeade.'

Chapter Text

Like everything in the Scottish highlands, Hogsmeade village appeared to have grown right out of the earth itself, all mossy-greens and earthy-browns as if its architects had been garden gnomes and fairies. Rows of precariously leaning shopfronts lined the cobbled streets, their facades reaching toward the sky like twisted tree trunks, crooked and uneven. Aurélie would not have been surprised to learn that Hogsmeade hadn't been built at all, but grown from the soil up.

Where she'd come from, everything had been pink, not green. Her home of Toulouse, whose magnificent terracotta buildings had given it the nickname La Ville Rose, was a far cry from the rugged wilds of Scotland. Though, much like Hogsmeade, Toulouse was a maze of narrow streets, there was nothing organic about the Pink City; everything within it had been meticulously crafted, a living fairytale, a refined work of art that glowed pink and gold whenever the sun set over its stunning facade. A rose quartz city, her mother used to call it.

More starkly still, Beauxbatons had been clean and white, adorned with trimmings of gold and powder blues. Grand and imposing with its seven stories of gleaming alabaster marble, soaring windows and endlessly high ceilings, it had surely been built by angels, not garden gnomes. Taking in her surroundings, Aurélie was certain there were no Baroque carvings or gilded mirrors in the Highlands; no silk curtains or velvet sofas, no marble fireplaces or tapestries woven with unicorn hair, and surely when the sun set over the tiny magical village, there was not a shade of pink to be seen. And yet, for all its ramshackle structures and muddy roads, Hogsmeade was not without its charm; uneven and loud, yes - but alive.

The boy who walked beside her, who was just bending down to scratch a small brown cat behind its ears, was no exception; Sebastian, with his unruly hair and scattering of freckles, his green jumper and brown trousers, seemed as much a part of the landscape as if he, too, had simply sprouted out of the ground. There was nothing refined about the way he swaggered through the village, broad-shouldered and confident, but he wasn't entirely graceless, either. Like Hogsmeade, he had a certain charm that was hard to overlook, brimming with enthusiasm as he pointed out his favourite shops and landmarks. Aurélie's mother, who, much like Beauxbatons, had often been dressed in gold ribbon and blue silk, would've thought Sebastian a little too rough around the edges for the likes of her daughter (which was ironic given that she'd married a man who spent most of his time with his hands in the dirt), but Aurélie found that she didn't really mind it. Outside the confines of the castle walls, away from the attention of sharp-eyed students and worrisome gossip, Sebastian seemed... different. Grounded. Calm.

She studied his profile as they navigated the bustling village together, noting the smile that tugged at the corner of his mouth as he talked, and how his eyes darted constantly as if eager to take in everything all at once. How could someone who'd lost so much - his entire family - be so full of... well - life? Aurélie was barely hanging on by a thread, exhausted by the heavy burden of her grief.

'... And that's Tomes and Scrolls,' Sebastian said, pointing out a double-storey shop that leaned too far to the left not to be held up by magic. 'Don't bother going anywhere else for books, Thomas Brown is the best proprietor of literature in the country. And over there,' - he motioned toward the corner, where another precariously leaning shopfront looked in danger of toppling over, - 'that's Ollivander's - the wand maker, of course, but you knew that. And across the road is Spintwitches. Albie Weekes is immensely knowledgeable on all things Quidditch and Broomsticks should you ever find yourself in need of professional advice. Do you fly?' He paused just long enough for Aurélie to shake her head. 'Ah, shame. Perhaps I can teach you. What's your wand core, by the way? Wait, let me guess. It's unicorn, I bet, I've something of a knack for — whoa, look out!'

Being so focused on his face, Aurélie hadn't noticed the rapidly approaching carriage until Sebastian yanked her out of its path, his swift reflexes honed by years of chasing bludgers around a Quidditch pitch. He shoved her unceremoniously against the nearest shopfront, sandwiching her between the wall and his body as several sets of hooves pounded the spot she'd just been standing.

'Oi, slow down!' he shouted at the driver, but his voice was lost beneath the clatter and rumble of the carriage and the four great black horses that pulled it.

No, not horses: Thestrals.

Dread pooled in the pit of Aurélie's stomach at the sight of them; gastly and dreadful with sinewy wings folded flat against their bodies and hairless skin that gleamed midnight-black like oily leather. Cantering across the cobblestones, they might have been graceful if only they weren't so awfully skeletal; if only their eyes had pupils; if only they weren't a jarring reminder of everything she'd lost. She sucked in a sharp breath as they passed by, only vaguely aware that she was gripping Sebastian's arm as tightly as he was gripping hers.

Aurélie was no stranger to four-legged beasts; in fact, when it came to magical beasts, her dearest aspirations centred around studying and caring for those of the equine persuasion. Back at Beauxbatons, she'd spent every spare moment tending to the school's herd of winged horses: the giant Abraxon palominos that pulled the school carriages, the spirited Aethonan and speedy Granian that roamed the nearby forests. Sometimes, she even cared for the occasional Hippogriff or Centaur, though only when their equine halves were involved. Her greatest love, though, above all else, was the Unicorn; the most gentle of all creatures, symbols of innocence and purity, not death and suffering, whose coats weren't oil-slick-black but so white that even the snow greyed in comparison. Sebastian had been right about her wand core; it contained the tail hair of the first unicorn she'd ever befriended when she was nine years old - a gentle mare she'd named Neige.

But for all the time she spent among her beloved hoofed friends in stable and forest, she'd never once tended to a Thestral. In fact, until her parent's funeral, she'd never even seen one before.

Seeing them at a funeral service was one thing; after all, dreadful spectres of death were to be expected at such a sombre affair. But seeing them here, so unexpectedly in a place where she ought to be safe, brought forth every awful memory she'd fought so hard to suppress — a stark reminder that her nightmares were not just contained to sleep.

Suddenly, she wasn't standing in Hogsmeade pressed against the warm body of a boy who'd just whisked her to safety, she was back in France, following a procession of four Thestrals who were taking her parent's to their graves.

As it had done on that terrible day back in France, the world around her began to shrink, and shrink, and shrink, until it narrowed down to a singular point of painful memories and distant echoing screams.

A flash of red. Two dark shapes on the floor.

Perhaps it was Sebastian's presence beside her that drew her back to reality, but as the Thestral-drawn carriage rounded the corner and disappeared, Aurélie became aware of several things all at once: a slight ringing in her ears, a familiar tingling in her palms, and a voice.

His voice.

'It's alright, they're only Thestrals.'

Her sphere of perception widened just enough that Sebastian's calm tone cut through her anxiety like a perfectly cast Severing Charm. His hand lingered on her elbow; warm, somehow, even through her cloak and knitted jumper and the several layers of undershirts that kept the Scottish chill from her skin.

'Have you not seen them before?' he asked gently, gazing down at her with an expression as soft as his voice.

'They're native to France,' she babbled, dry-mouthed and trembling. 'But I... I've never seen... Not until...' Her words caught in her tightening throat, but her fingers remained fastened around his forearm: a silent plea to please not let her go.

'Your parents?'

She offered a short nod in reply, holding back not just tears, but the magic that flared in response to her fear. Magic that wanted to protect. Magic that wanted to destroy. She whipped her hand away from Sebastian's arm, afraid that he might feel it coursing through her palms.

'I'm sorry,' they said in unison before breaking apart half a step.

'It's fine,' she mumbled, rubbing frantically at the spot where his hand had just been. 'It's fine, I'm fine. Everything - everything is fine. Can we go?'

Not waiting for an answer, she tucked her hands under her armpits and headed on - where to, precisely, she had no idea, but the greater the distance between her and the Thestrals, the better. Sebastian stumbled along beside her, all his prior enthusiasm dampened by the tension that had settled around them, thick and heavy like a storm cloud.

'Were you born here?' she virtually demanded, desperate to steer the conversation into safer waters.

'What, in Hogsmeade?' he replied, absently scratching the back of his neck.

'No, um.' She let out a shaky breath. Distract me, she wanted to beg, please just prattle on about Merlin knows what until I calm down.

'In the Highlands, I mean.'

'Oh.' Sebastian shoved his hands into his pockets and slowed his pace until they were meandering deeper into the village. 'Um, no. I moved here after my parents died. Why?'

'No reason, really. You - you just seem at home here.'

She shot him a sideways glance, catching the edge of a smile on his face.

'Ah, well, my father was born here - in Scotland. I'm a halfie like you: half Scottish, half British. 'Spose the Highlands is in my blood.'

'Scottish, really? Do you speak any Gaelic, then?' she asked, perking up at the change of subject.

As if responding to her sudden interest, Sebastian launched into another emphatic spiel about all the languages he could speak, the list of which was rather impressive: Gaelic, Latin, enough Greek to get by and even some German as well.

'And a tiny bit of French,' he finished with a wink. 'But admittedly, I'm much better at reading languages than I am at speaking them. Oh, and I can say the word no in Parseltongue, too. At least, I think I can, it's hard to tell. Bit hard to distinguish words in a language that's entirely comprised of hissing.'

This revelation stopped her so abruptly in her tracks that a group of witches following close behind them almost bumped into her.

'How do you know Parseltongue?' she asked, eyeing him with renewed interest. She'd heard mention of Parselmouth's from her father, but she'd always assumed the language of the snakes was a myth; something the Slytherin's had made up to bolster their nefarious reputation.

'Ominis,' he replied with a nonchalant shrug of his shoulder. 'It's a Gaunt thing - you know, descendants of Slytherin and all that. All the Gaunt's can speak it. In fact, Ominis and his older brothers used to speak it together all the time. Drove me bonkers not being able to understand them, and half the time I suspected that Ominis was just whining about me, so I tried to learn it to spite him. Course, you can't just learn Parseltongue, it's an inherited gift that I, unfortunately, do not possess.' He rolled his eyes as if he couldn't quite believe something existed that he wasn't good at. 'But that never stopped me from trying.'

Aurélie laughed. Whether he was doing it intentionally or not, she was grateful for Sebastian's distraction. Above her, the storm cloud of tension dissipated a little, allowing her some room to breathe.

The pair had reached the town circle, a central point around which more crooked shops were grouped like a forest around a fairy clearing. The space was abuzz with activity; squealing children weaved through legs and carts, cauldrons bubbled and cats mewed, vendors shouted and witches gossiped. The sound of soft hooting drew Aurélie's attention to the nearby post office, where a number of nervous-looking owls were being eyed off by a small army of stray cats; beneath them, a man selling the Daily Prophet declared the latest headlines in a voice magnified by magic.

In the centre of it all, Sebastian turned to face her, grinning as he spread his arms wide. 'Good, isn't it?' A ray of sunshine touched his hair, igniting auburn undertones. 'So. Where to first?'

Aurélie glanced down at her feet, grimacing at the sight of her dragon-dung-stained shoes.

'Thérapie par le shopping,' she said. 'I need new shoes.'

Chapter Text

Though Hogsmeade was only a tiny little village, Aurélie had once again severely underestimated her ability to walk a straight line without veering off into the unknown. She was lost, pure and simple - and this time she doubted very much that Ominis was going to pop up with his blinking wand and perpetually fed-up expression to rescue her.

'What is wrong with you,' she grumbled to herself in French, grateful that she'd at least had the foresight not to wear her new shoes as she trekked aimlessly through the muddy backstreets.

Aside from having been almost flattened by Thestral's, there were several more things about her trip to Hogsmeade that surprised Aurélie. The first was that the quaint village boasted a fully stocked clothing boutique, which offered more than the tartan kilts and leather sporrans she'd been envisioning, and the second was that Sebastian Sallow's patience lasted as long as it had as she set about choosing a new pair of shoes.

Gladrags Wizardwear: London, Paris and - for some unfathomable reason - Hogsmeade was operated by a rather enthusiastic man by the name of Augustus Hill, whose love of fashion rivalled that of Aurélie's own. Upon learning that she'd transferred from France, Mr Hill had taken it as a matter of utmost importance to find her a perfect pair of shoes and impress her with his French. Unfortunately, the flamboyant shopkeeper was decidedly not fluent in French, but what he lacked in language skills he made up for with his enthusiasm for footwear.

'Sebastian, you really don't have to stay,' Aurélie had said as Mr Hill thrust yet another shoebox into her hands with some incomprehensible phrase he thought was French. 'I think I'll be a while yet.'

Sebastian abruptly put down the service bell he'd been fiddling with and gave her a sheepish smile.

'Oh! No, I don't mind,' he replied, eyeing the ever-growing pile of discarded shoeboxes with an expression only a boy could manage. 'What sort of guide would I be if I abandoned my new charge in the middle of such an important quest?'

Aurélie laughed, which made Sebastian smile.

'It's fine, I promise,' she said earnestly, glancing at the shiny leather shoe Mr Hill was waving in her face. 'Besides, I'm only buying shoes, not fighting off dark wizards.'

Sebastian quirked a brow. 'Do that a lot, do you?'

'What, buy shoes?' she grinned. 'In fact, yes, I do.'

Sebastian shook his head with a chuckle, and after a short, half-hearted disagreement - during which Aurélie threatened to throw a shoe at his head if he didn't please go and entertain himself for a while - he conceded to let her finish her shopping in peace.

'We'll meet at the Three Broomsticks in an hour. It's impossible to miss, I'll be genuinely surprised if you get lost,' he teased, to which giggled and threateningly held up a shoe.

Except that it had now been closer to two hours and Aurélie was no nearer to finding the bloody stupid tavern than she had been thirty minutes ago when she'd left Gladrags.

She'd had an inkling she was in trouble when the cobblestone road gave way to mud and muck, but it was when the pungent stench of trash and goat manure made her gag that she knew she was way off course. This was the Hogsmeade the locals didn't want visitors to see; hidden behind its charming facade were piles of rubbish and broken cauldrons, run-down houses with peeling paint and crooked doors, and, for some reason, an absurd amount of free-roaming chickens.

Aurélie hesitated on a corner, groaning with frustration as she scanned the empty street for a sign - any sign - that might point her in the right direction.

And there it was. Sort of.

Tucked away at the end of the narrow dead-end road, the tavern's hand-painted sign was weathered well past the point of legibility. And yet, it was unmistakably a tavern, readable sign or not, for the scent of ale was overpowering even from where she stood. With a sigh of relief, she hurried toward it, wondering if Sebastian would be very annoyed with her for taking so long to meet him.

But she never made it that far.

She was only half-way down the street when a hand clamped roughly around her arm and yanked.

Hard.

For a bewildered moment, she thought it was only Sebastian pulling her away from some unseen danger as he had done with the Thestral's. But then, Sebastian didn't stink of sweat and stale beer. Nor did he dig his fingers into her arm hard enough to bruise. No, this danger was not unseen but tall and strong with a stubbled chin and a toothless leering grin.

'Lost, sweetheart?' said the man whose grip was like an iron vice around her bicep.

Aurélie shook her head, too stunned to speak, but the man only laughed and pulled her closer, his putrid breath washing over her like waves of vomit.

'You sure about that? Pretty little thing like you heading to the Hogs Head?' His beady eyes ogled her face in a way that made her feel both very cold and far too hot at the same time. And then they widened, his awful bloodshot gaze falling to her chin.

'Hang on a minute,' he said, grasping her face with filthy fingers and tilting it up to the sky. The sun was gone, she noted dimly. A flock of geese flew overhead; white specks in a grey sky. She tried to pull away. He squeezed her chin harder.

'Well, well, well,' he said, chuckling mirthlessly as he traced a dirty finger along the three long scars beneath her jaw. 'I don't believe it. Three little scars just like they told me.' He tilted her face from side to side, appraising the marks like they were something valuable. Rare. Beautiful. 'It's a lucky day indeed when the little Keeper walks right into my hands. The brothers will be right pleased with me, they will.'

Several things happened all at once.

A loud crack rent the air. The man stumbled backwards with a yelp, wrenching his hand away as if she'd burned him. And then there was Sebastian, shoving her behind him, his grip on her wrist much less painful though no less jolting. His eyes were wide and his wand was out and he was saying something to her but there was a buzzing in her ears, a swarm of flies in her brain, and she couldn't hear him properly, couldn't think straight, couldn't, couldn't -

'Get the fuck away from her,' said Sebastian in a dangerously calm voice. 'Now.'

The man laughed; the sound was glass shattering on stone, sharp and pointy. 'Or what?' he sneered, baring his rotten teeth. His hand twitched for his robe pocket, evidently reaching for his wand, but Sebastian took a deliberate step forward, his own wand pointed squarely at the man's chest.

How funny that she should notice Sebastian's wand at a time like this, but she did. Dragonheart string, surely. Would else could it be.

'I know spells that will make you wish for death,' Sebastian hissed through his teeth. His hand did not shake. His gaze did not waver. Perfectly still, the way a snake is still before it strikes.

The Sallow's have got snake blood in their veins.

Aurélie tugged his sleeve. He ignored her.

'Big talk for a titchy little schoolboy,' sneered the man. But he was wrong: there was nothing titchy about Sebastian - not when his face was twisted into a mask of fury, not when he had his wand pointed threateningly at a man's chest. At that moment, Aurélie wasn't sure who was the more frightening of the two; the man who wanted to kill her, or the boy who wanted to kill for her.

She tugged at Sebastian's sleeve again, a little more urgently this time.

'Please,' she said faintly, barely able to hear her own voice over the incessant buzzing in her head. 'Let's just go.'

But Sebastian shook her off again, his focus solely on the threat before them, snake eyes boring into its prey. Hypnotic. He tightened his grip on his wand.

'Touch her again and I will kill you,' he seethed. 'Do you understand?'

The threat should have disturbed her, should have made her blood run cold and her feet take flight, for there was absolutely no mistaking the promise in his voice. But rather than cold terror, she felt - warm.

Tingly.

The magic in her blood hummed its approval, buzzing through her palms and her fingers and her veins.

Me, too! it said eagerly. Me too, me too, me too!

The man's expression soured as glanced between him, his red-rimmed eyes travelling first to Sebastian, fierce and unyielding, then to his wand, through which the threat of death was imminent, and then finally to Aurélie, cowering behind the lethal Slytherin, small and useless and scared.

He turned his head and spat.

'You can't hide behind your boyfriend forever, little Keeper,' he seethed, wiping the spittle from his chin. 'The brothers won't stop until they have you.'

And with that he was gone, disapparating with a crack like that of a snapping bone.

Sebastian was moving before Aurélie's brain could catch up to her body. She stumbled clumsily as he hauled her around a corner and down a narrow opening between two crooked buildings. When they were away from prying eyes, hidden deep in shadows, he rounded on her, opened and closed his mouth, then paced the narrow alleyway, fists clenched.

The space was damp and her palms were stinging.

Mud caked her shoes.

Water dripped from a broken drain pipe.

Drip. Drip. Drip.

Finally, Sebastian turned to face her again.

'Did he - are you hurt?' he demanded, his hands still balled into tight fists at his sides.

'No,' Aurélie squeaked.

'Are you lying?'

'A-about what?'

Drip. Drip. Drip. 

'Sebastian, I'm not hurt.'

He paced three steps away from her, then three steps back. 'What the fuck is a Keeper?' he demanded. 'Who are you?'

Chapter Text

Drip , drip, drip.

Sebastian was pacing, sloshing through the mud as he marched back and forth across the narrow space. Aurélie watched his progress as went: three steps one way, three steps back, muttering furiously under his breath with every squelching step. Admittedly, there wasn't much room for pacing, wedged as they were between the crooked houses of Hogsmeade's back streets, but somehow Sebastian managed it with ease.

'What the hell are you doing all the way down here, anyway?' he demanded, running a hand through his unruly hair. 'What were you thinking? The Hog's Head? Really?'

From somewhere behind him, the incessant drip, drip, dripping of water from the broken pipe kept up its maddening rhythm, mimicking the pulsing thrum of her magic:

Drip, drip, drip.

Pulse, pulse, pulse.

Aurélie grit her teeth. 

'I — I didn't know!' she said, wringing her tingly hands. 'I got lost!'

Sebastian's constant back and forth was beginning to make her dizzy, but he never slowed his pace; where stress evidently spurred him into action, it only made Aurélie freeze up, every muscle locked tight to keep both her magic and her panic from spilling over. If he only realised how close he was to danger, that the power inside her rivalled anything a dark wizard could manage.

Sebastian stopped long enough to glare at her. 'Bloody fucking hell, Aurélie! Only you could manage to get lost in a village the size of a postage stamp!'

'You said to meet you at the tavern and I —'

'Yes, at the Three Broomsticks!' he exclaimed, throwing his arms out to his sides. 'Not the fucking Hog's Head!'

'I don't know what the Three Broomsticks is!' she shot back. 'You didn't tell me there are two taverns in Hogsmeade!'

'It was right in front of you!' Sebastian's voice reverberated so loudly between the stone walls that Aurélie wondered if the inhabitants inside could hear their heated argument — and if they could, whether they'd even care. 'All you had to do was walk out of Gladrags and cross the fucking village square, but instead, you went gallivanting off by yourself to — '

'I was not gallivanting!'

'Then what? What were you doing? Looking for trouble?'

Aurélie bristled with indignation. 'I told you!' she spat, pointing a finger at his chest. 'I was lost!'

Sebastian groaned, running both hands through his hair until it stuck up in wild disarray. 'You're lucky I found you! Before that scum — before he —' He cut himself off with another grunt of frustration, but his unspoken words were as loud as if he'd shouted those at her, too:

Before he killed you.

Drip, pulse. Drip, pulse.

'Who was that, anyway?' Sebastian demanded, gesturing emphatically at the street behind her. 'That — that man?'

'I don't know!'

'You don't know?' he repeated, incredulous.

'You think I keep company like that?'

'Well, he certainly knew you! Little Keeper? The brothers? What the fuck is going on, Aurélie?'

Drip, pulse. Drip, pulse. Drip, pulse.

Aurélie frantically rubbed her forehead. The combination of barely contained magic and looming panic attack made her eyes prickle and her throat tighten, but she wasn't sure which would be worse: accidentally blasting a hole through the wall she was leaning against, or crying in front of Sebastian Sallow.

'Just...just calm down, alright?' she pleaded, squeezing her eyes closed.

Sebastian whirled around to face her, flinging mud up his trousers.

'Calm down?' he shouted. 'Calm down? I just saved you from a fate I'm sure we're both trying very hard not to think about and you want me to calm down? No, you —' he jabbed a finger in her direction, making her jump, '—owe it to me to explain why a dark wizard was practically salivating over getting his filthy fucking hands on you!'

'Stop shouting at me!'

'I'm not shouting at you!'

A sudden flare of magic had her slumping weakly against the wall. Sebastian rushed toward her, wand raised.

'You're hurt. I knew it, why didn't you tell me? I can help, I know Healing Arts, just tell me where it hurts and I'll —'

'No, no,' she said, gently pushing his wand away. 'I'm not hurt, Sebastian, I'm just...'

If the situation weren't so dire, Aurélie might've laughed at the absurdity of how, in the space of a single afternoon, she'd been almost flattened by Thestral's, tracked down by the same people who'd presumably killed her parents, and subsequently rescued by a boy who may or may not have murdered his uncle. Death, it seemed, had stalked her from France, lurking around every corner with icy breath and long itching fingers.

Casting a distraught glance at the state of her muddy shoes, she curled her fingers around the end of Sebastian's sleeve and held on. He was close enough now that she could just catch the edge of his scent beneath Hogsmeade's overlying stench of farm animals and stale beer; a faint hint of wood smoke and soap and something fresh that made Aurélie think of the outdoors; like swaying trees and sun-warmed grass.

'You just need to breathe,' he said, more gently now.

'No, you just need to breathe.'

Sebastian's lips twitched.

'Fair enough,' he said, clearly suppressing a smile. 'We'll breathe together, then. C'mon, three deep breaths. Ready?'

Filling her lungs might've been considerably easier had the buzzing of her magic not been squeezing her from the inside out, but Sebastian's soft breath on her face made it somewhat easier to bear. He was pleasantly warm. Or perhaps it was only that she was very cold.

'Better?' he asked.

'Not really,' she replied with a weak smile.

For a long moment, neither of them spoke. Sebastian was the first to break the charged silence.

'Sorry,' he mumbled, shuffling his feet in the mud. 'I just...' He raised his eyes to meet hers. 'Aurélie, please tell me what's going on. If you're in danger, I can help.'

Help.

The word stirred an ache in her chest that was somehow more unsettling than anything that had transpired so far.

Nobody but Aurélie's parents — and, much later, the Auror's who'd handled their murder case — had ever known the truth about her magic; not her professors at Beauxbatons, her extended family, her friends. Not even Celeste, who'd been her best friend since their first day at Beauxbatons, had ever suspected that Aurélie was different.

Her parent's murders had been reported across the nation as a random killing, a senseless act of violence carried out by enemies of goodness and love and light: Dark Wizards who killed for sport. For fun.

For why else would anybody want to destroy the well-loved Collins family?

All around her, those who'd known them — and even those who hadn't — had lamented the untimely deaths of Albert and Eleanor Collins. How could anybody harm the good-humoured Mr Collins, the skilled Herbologist who was kind to animals and spoke words of endearment to his plants? Or his elegant wife, whose beautiful face was succeeded only by her angelic voice, who believed that music was a gift to be enjoyed by all?

And why?

And why?

Aurélie knew why. The Auror's knew why. And now a select few of the Hogwarts staff were in on the secret, too, prewarned of her special condition lest trouble follow her to Scotland. But beyond that indifferent circle of strangers and Ministry officials, there wasn't a single soul with whom she could share her heavy burden of truth.

On the awful night it had happened, after Aurélie herself had been narrowly rescued from a fate much worse than that of her parents', Celeste had held her close and cried into her hair, 'Thank Merlin you weren't home, Aurélie. Thank Merlin you were spared.'

But Aurélie couldn't tell her that she shouldn't have been spared at all. That they — whoever they were — had come looking for her.

That it was her fault her parents were dead.

You have something we need, the tall cloaked figure had said, before crucio had made Aurélie blind and deaf to anything but soul-splitting pain.

As if sensing her pain, Sebastian reached out and laid his hand on her shoulder.

His touch was warm. Very, very warm.

'Trust me,' he said simply.

But she already did.

It was one thing to trust another with the knowledge of her gift, but quite another to explain it.

'I'm... not normal,' Aurélie began, somewhat anticlimactically.

It was admirable that Sebastian fought so hard not to laugh, but despite the gravity of the situation, he simply couldn't stop the grin from spreading across his freckled face.

'Yeah, I know, but what's that got to do with anything?'

How absurd that he should make her laugh at a time like this, but there it was: laughter. Breathless and shaky and utterly ridiculous, but unmistakably there, squeezing itself into their narrow hiding place, worming in between the suffocating moments of fear and doubt, and, somehow, making its way into her heart.

'Oh, shut up,' she said, lightly shoving his arm.

And then she took a deep breath and began the arduous task of telling him — this strange boy she'd known less than a week — her deepest, darkest secret.

'I don't know what a Keeper is,' she said, all the laughter gone from her voice. 'I've never heard the term before, but I'm assuming it's the name they've given me for... for what I am.'

Sebastian's expression remained impassive, but his eyes never once left hers. 'What do you mean, for what you are? Aren't you a witch?'

'Of course I'm a witch. But I'm also a... a...' She threw her hands up in exasperation. 'I told you, I'm not normal. What I can do goes far beyond the abilities of a regular witch.'

Sebastian slowly raised an eyebrow.

'And what is it that you can do, exactly?'

'I can wield ancient magic.'

'You - I - what?'

She told him all she knew; that the gift was passed on through her patrilineal lineage, that her great-grandmother had been the last to possess it, that her parents had encouraged her to suppress it, deeming it too dangerous, too powerful to control. By the time she was finished, she was rather out of breath.

'I come from a long line of them — these Wielders or Keepers or whatever it is they call us, but I'm the first who's possessed the ability in a very long time. At least, the first that I know of. There might be others, I don't know.'

Sebastian blinked at her several times. 'But a Keeper is for Quidditch,' he said thickly. Aurélie had to bite her tongue to keep from laughing again.

'It's got nothing to do with Quidditch,' she said, suppressing the mad urge to pinch him. 'I hardly think anyone would come after me because of my exceptional skills as a Quidditch Keeper.'

'You'd be surprised.'

She rolled her eyes before delving into thoughtful contemplation again, pondering how best to explain something that came as naturally to her as breathing.

Finally, her eyes settled on Sebastian's wand.

'Witches and wizards use wands to cast magic, right?' Sebastian nodded, his gaze trained so intensely on her face that it made her cheeks feel hot. 'Well — um...' she cleared her throat. 'Well, our wands themselves aren't magic, are they? They're just conduits for power.'

She took a deep breath, teetering on the precipice of truth. And then she plunged.

'I don't need a wand to channel power. I can tap into the source directly — into the ether or wherever it is magic lives. I am a conduit.'

Sebastian opened his mouth, closed it, and then opened it again. 'I still don't understand.'

'My father used to call me a fountain, or — or a spring. I can tap into magic, draw it up from wherever it lives and... Well, use it, I guess,' she finished with a half-shrug.

Sebastian's frown deepened.

'Watch,' she said, interrupting him before he could start banging on about Quidditch again. She cast a covert glance around them, making sure the coast was clear before raising her hand and plucking a long, silvery strand of magic from the very air between them; liquid metal, silvery water.

Sebastian's eyes widened. He leaned closer as she held it up for him, its light casting his face in sharp relief against the gloomy backdrop of the alleyway. She wondered if he could feel the charge in the air the way she could; that awful prickliness like hundreds of bugs crawling over her skin. She'd always hated that feeling.

'What is that?' Sebastian whispered, his eyes trained on the undulating ribbon of light in her fingers.

'Magic,' she said simply. 'In its purest form.'

Something flickered across Sebastian's face; a fleeting glimpse of some expression Aurélie couldn't quite place — a gleam in his eyes that didn't come from the swirling magic in her fingers but from somewhere within him.

Then he blinked and it was gone.

'I've never seen anything like it,' he said, awed. 'What can it do?'

'Anything I want it to.'

Her lack of experience using her magic didn't mar her ability to wield it. It was an inherent part of her, after all — an extension of her will. Even now as she conjured it into existence, the process was as effortless as blinking.

'Watch,' she said again, and Sebastian's bewildered gaze followed hers to where the broken drainpipe was still drip, drip, dripping away in the background.

Alright, she told the magic, off you go, then.

The thread of silver expanded, flared, then shot away from her fingers, zipping toward the broken drain pipe with the enthusiasm of a newly freed caged animal. It wrapped around the pipe several times, shooting up and down and up again. For a blinding moment, the entire length of it glowed white-blue, blinding and brilliant — and then...nothing. The pipe was mended, the drip silenced, and the light gone.

'That dripping was driving me insane,' she said by way of explanation.

Sebastian gaped at her. 'You can control that?'

'Yes, but I don't like to if I can help it.' Though the tingling in her hands had finally stopped, there was an unsettling feeling growing in the pit of her stomach.

'Don't like to? Why not?'

'It's extremely volatile, and using it drains me, and it's — it's — dangerous.'

The clouds shifted and suddenly Sebastian's face was bathed in midday sun. — And there was that look again, the gleam in his eyes that had little to do with the sudden onset of sunlight.

'Dangerous?' He stepped forward, closing the small space between them. 'Aurélie, you possess an incredible gift.'

Aurélie raised her brows. 'Incredible?' she scoffed. 'Oh, yes, how lucky I am to be blessed with such a wonderful ability!'

'Yes, you are!' he argued back. 'Well, granted, fixing a drainpipe wasn't the most exciting display of magical prowess I've ever seen.' — Aurélie rolled her eyes at this. — 'But if, like you say, it can do anything...'

She pushed off from the wall, forcing him back a few steps. 'You don't understand! This incredible gift,' she said, injecting the words with as much acidity as she could muster, 'is the reason my parents were murdered.'

Murdered.

My parents were murdered.

Those four awful words exploded into the air between them like they were visible, like the muggle fireworks her father had once taken her to see, whizzing and sparking and unable to be stopped once they'd been released. She'd never said that terrible sentence aloud; the simple act of doing so tore a pain through her so intense she had to wrap her arms around her body to keep from breaking apart.

'Murdered?' Sebastian gripped his wand with white knuckles, panic clear in his eyes. 'You mean that man was going to kill you? And you did nothing to defend yourself?'

'No, I... I imagine he — or whoever sent him — would've liked to keep me.'

'Keep you?'

'I'm a magical spring, Sebastian! I'm no good to them dead!'

Sebastian paced five long, squelchy steps away then spun around to face her.

'But why your parents? Were they —' he waved his hand in her general direction '—like you, too?'

'I told you, it was my great-grandmother who last possessed the ability! Do you even listen?'

'Of course I listen!' he said through gritted teeth. 'But that doesn't explain why they killed your parents!'

Aurélie groaned in frustration. She was not going to discuss this — not when she was ankles-deep in mud in some dingy back alley, and certainly not with him. She whirled on her heel, flicking up more muck as she made for the street beyond the alleyway. Sebastian overtook her easily.

'Tell me,' he said, blocking her path.

'Isn't it obvious?' she hissed. 'They came for me but I wasn't home! I was supposed to be there — I should have been there — but I went out last minute. If I'd just been at home when I was supposed to be, my parents...' Pain constricted her airway and she fell silent.

'But then they'd have taken you — these brothers, whoever they are.'

'Yes.'

'No,' he countered immediately. 'That's never going to happen.' He moved closer, his imposing height and anger crowding her against the wall.

Aurélie couldn't look him in the eye. 'I'd rather they took me! If I could swap places with them, I —'

'Don't be ridiculous! What are you saying? That you wish you were — that — that you — '

'I'm just saying that it was me they were after, not them!'

He vigorously shook his head. 'If someone is after you, that's all the more reason to use your magic!'

'I don't want to use it! I want it to go away!'

'Are you daft?' he scoffed. 'So you'd rather be hunted down, would you? Rather sit pretty and wait for the likes of that man —' he gestured angrily toward the street once more, '— to come back and — and what? Torture you?'

'Of course not, but —'

'You're wasting time! We need to get back to the castle.'

Without warning, he grabbed her by the hand and dragged back toward the road.

'You should have told me!' he seethed, checking the coast was clear before slipping back onto the quiet street beyond. 'I wouldn't have let you go off on your own!'

'I just did tell you!' she snapped, wrenching her hand out of his grasp. 'And what was I supposed to say? "Nice to meet you, Sebastian, ever heard of Ancient Magic?"?'

Sebastian ignored her. 'Do not go anywhere near the Hogs Head again, understand?' he said, not slowing his pace as he stormed back toward the village proper. 'And do not go walking about by yourself!'

'Ugh, you're annoying!'

'And you're infuriatingly stubborn!'

Aurélie didn't bother dignifying this with a response, but as they stomped back to Hogwarts in angry silence, she fumed the entire way: if either of them were stubborn, it certainly was not her.

Chapter Text

Anne? Anne!

Though three years separated Sebastian from the worst night of his life, his sister's cries of pain pierced through the veil of time as clearly as if he were hearing them anew. Even now, as he stalked back to Hogwarts with a grumbling French girl by his side, it was the echo of painful memories that he heard the loudest.

Anne, look at me! What happened? What did he do to you?

By the time they reached the castle, Sebastian knew he was beyond reason; that no amount of breathwork nor counting backwards from ten thousand was going to block out the resounding echoes of fury in his head.

I should have been there! Anne, I'm so sorry, I should have been there!

Sebastian briefly squeezed his eyes closed, fists clenched against the swell of pain that threatened to engulf him as they stomped across the sloping lawn toward the castle.

Somewhere between Hogsmeade and Hogwarts, the sporadic sun had given up its futile battle for dominance over the encroaching cloud cover. Now, in place of bright golden light, there was only flat grey dullness; instead of warmth, only a permeating chill that settled in his bones.

And wasn't that just fucking typical.

When it came to warmth, Sebastian only ever got the fleeting sort.

Being a Sunday, the castle was a veritable hive of chaos of which he himself had once been an active member of: laughing with his friends, stuffing himself full of sweets, causing mayhem. He'd been normal once — happy. Now though, it was a very unfortunate soul indeed who dared interrupt Sebastian by laughing while he was in the throes of misery. Those with the audacity (or the sheer stupidity) to so much as look in his direction were met with the blunt force of his foul mood as he stormed through the castle. He didn't need magic to inflict fear into the hearts of his fellow students, his expression alone was fierce enough to send them cowering in his wake — and Merlin help him if he caught so much as a glimpse of Garreth Weasley's ugly fucking mug at a time like this.

At the junction between the upper and lower floors of the school, Aurélie turned for the staircase that separated snake from bird. But Sebastian had other ideas.

'No,' he grunted, tugging her away from the stairs, 'come with me.'

Her answering barrage of angry French would've amused him had he not been on the brink of a meltdown.

'If you going to insult me,' he said through his teeth, 'at least do it in English.'

With a groan of indignation, Aurélie wrenched her arm from his grasp and glowered up at him, hands on her hips, her red hair serving to accentuate her anger. Where was that strength when she'd been literally accosted by a psychopath? When her life was in danger? How did she have the gall to shout at him now but couldn't lift a fucking finger to save herself an hour ago?

Anger flared between them, charging the air with heat.

'I am not a rag doll!' she hissed in English, her French accent more pronounced than ever. 'If you want something from me, say please!'

Sebastian groaned, dislodging a chunk of dried mud from his hair as he ran his hands through the tangled mess. How he managed to end up with mud in his hair, he didn't have the foggiest, but if Aurélie's dishevelled appearance was a reflection of his own, they must've made quite a spectacle.

'Fine!' he seethed. 'Come with me, please. I need to show you something important.'

With very little grace, Aurélie allowed him to guide her through the crowd of students, whose carefree jubilance felt like a personal insult. Surely, they were being happy just to spite him, grating on his already frayed nerves for a laugh.

Though Sebastian knew plenty of secret nooks and hidey holes throughout the castle, there was only one place he deemed safe enough for a situation as dire as this. Ominis wasn't going to like it if he ever found out, but Ominis hadn't set foot in the Undercroft since Anne had died.

To hell with Ominis.

'You need a safe place,' he said, dodging around a group of giggling Hufflepuff girls. 'If people are after you, you need to know how to defend yourself.'

'But I don't —'

'Look out!'

Moving with surprising grace for someone so tall, Sebastian stepped in front of her in time to intersect something small and green before it could collide with her face: an enchanted apple, of all bloody things, chased on by a rather flustered Ravenclaw boy. The apple's poorly transfigured wings flapped furiously in Sebastian's grasp as he brandished it in the boy's face, his patience wearing thin.

'This yours?' he snarled, feeling every bit the scary Slytherin the Hogwarts rumour mill liked to pin him as. The Ravenclaw shook his head, wide-eyed and trembling like a rabbit caught unawares by a snake.

'That's what I thought.' Sebastian pocketed the piss-poor example of transfiguration and stalked on, baring his teeth at the boys' frightened-looking friends as he passed.

Little footsteps hurried after him.

'Sebastian!'

'As I was saying...' He ignored the interruption. 'You need somewhere safe to go should anyone come after you again. Somewhere you can practise wielding that magic of yours in private.'

'What are you talking about? I don't want to practise wielding anything!'

Around a sharp corner and out of view, Sebastian stopped so abruptly that Aurélie almost slammed into him. He turned to face her, his expression so dangerous that she visibly swallowed back her protests.

'After what I just saved you from, what you want is irrelevant!'

'Oh, well that's very nice!' She glared with that same look of defiance she'd given him in Defence class, her chin raised and her little nose scrunched up. Had it really only been a week since she'd challenged him in Hecate's classroom? It felt like a lifetime had passed since that day.

'I'm not here to be nice!'

'Well, perhaps you'd be less miserable if you were!'

Sebastian scoffed, undeterred; he'd faced off with far worse than the wrath of a singularly tenacious girl before, ancient magic be damned. And besides, he wasn't miserable.

'Are all French girls as stubborn as you, or are you just an extra special exception?'

'Half French!'

'What's the bloody difference? Merlin, you're infuriating! Just listen to me, will you?' He shot a quick glance over her shoulder, wary of prying eyes and meddlesome ears. Or worse: the sightless yet alarmingly omniscient gaze of Ominis Gaunt.

'Whether you like it or not, somebody wants what you've got and they'll kill you to get it — or worse.' He held up a finger, silencing her protests once more. Had he not been so beyond humour, he might've found the sight of her struggling to stay quiet rather endearing.

'Don't let your parent's deaths be for nothing! You're powerful. Or you will be with a bit of training.'

'Training?' she wailed. 'I don't want to train!'

'Don't be ridiculous!' He turned on his heel, heading for the concealed entrance to the room that had been his sanctuary since his first year at Hogwarts; the only real safe place he'd ever known.

'For a Ravenclaw, you're being incredibly dense!'

'Well, you're right on brand for a Slytherin!'

He ignored her, gesturing instead to an impressive grandfather clock tucked away in an overlooked corner of the Defence floor. The clock was broken to those who never bothered to pay attention, but something else entirely to those who did.

'Now, watch closely. To access the Undercroft, you need to touch here and here with your wand.'

'What the heck is an Undercroft?'

'Are you watching?'

'Yes, I'm watching!'

'Here — and here.' He repeated the demonstration, strategically touching his wand to the old clock until, with a soft click and a whoosh of cool musty air, the magically concealed door popped open.

Sebastian ushered her inside.

The Undercroft hadn't changed a whit in the seven-odd years since Ominis had shared its whereabouts with him and Anne, save for a single overstuffed sofa which Sebastian had transfigured out of an old crate in his fifth year. The room had quickly become an escape for the three of them, a welcome refuge from homework and rules where they were free to be themselves, to play gobstones and skip curfew and practise restricted magic.

Discovered thanks to Ominis's direct connection to one of Hogwart's founders, nobody other than the three mischievous Slytherins had ever stumbled upon it.

And its secrecy was absolute; over the years, the trio had quite literally blown things up in its depths (Sebastian in particular, who, according to Ominis, had a "worrying fondness" for fire spells), while above them, the school remained oblivious.

All this he explained to his new accomplice as the rickety old lift rattled into the pitch darkness below, trying to ignore how tightly she clutched his arm, and how soft she felt pressed against his side, and the smell of her hair —

The enchanted braziers flared to life as the grille clattered closed behind them, casting the vast room in firelight and shadows. Aurélie released his arm with a little sigh of relief, but the sudden absence of her warmth left him feeling strangely lopsided.

'Sit.' Sebastian gestured at his lumpy excuse for a sofa as they crossed the room.

The Undercroft was always much larger than Sebastian's memory allowed; the vaulted ceiling, held up by huge stone pillars, was so tall it was swallowed by shadows that not even the crackling flames could illuminate.

'I'm not a dog,' griped Aurélie, but she sat anyway, wincing at the cloud of dust that puffed up around her.

Sebastian grimaced, realising too late that bringing the French girl to his filthy half-abandoned lair probably wasn't the best idea he'd ever had, and it was with some hesitation that he approached the collection of books he'd haphazardly stacked in a dark corner. Mercifully, the book he sought sat right on top, vibrating subtly as he wiped the dusty cover clean with his sleeve.

Most of the books he'd nicked from the Restricted Section over the years were rather vocal about being stolen - apparently, even books full of unimaginable evils were indignant about being left to rot in the Undercroft - but he was thankful this particular tome wasn't the type that moaned or shrieked. This one only hummed with a faint energy that was as familiar as it was unsettling.

'Read this,' said Sebastian, settling beside her on the sofa.

As curious as any good Ravenclaw, Aurélie took the book from his grasp. — Then she promptly dropped it.

'Beurk!' she yelped, wiping her fingers over the musty cushions. 'Yuck! What's wrong with it? It's all oily!'

Shit. That was the book made of human skin. He'd forgotten about that.

'Um, it's just... really old,' he mumbled, scooping it up before she copped a closer look.

Unbothered by oily human skin covers, he flipped through the nefarious book of horrors until he found what he was looking for.

Aurélie recoiled as he held it up, her nose wrinkled in disgust.

'What is it?' she asked, eyeing the pages like they might come to life and possess her soul. Which, to be fair, they probably would if they were able.

'Consequences.'

At that moment, the enchanted apple he'd pocketed earlier wiggled free and took to flapping lazily about their heads.

'This is what happens when you suppress your magic for too long,' Sebastian explained, swatting at the apple as it bonked against the side of his head.

Though the ancient book was written entirely in Latin, the ghastly drawings needed no translation: human forms depicted in unsettling detail, their faces twisted in agony as they were transformed, contorted by the suppression of their own magic. No longer witches or wizards, but creatures of destruction.

'Obscurials,' he said simply.

Aurélie blinked at him.

'You know what an Obscurus is, don't you?' he asked.

'We don't all read Bedtime Stories for Slytherins like you do!'

He disguised his laugh with a very put-upon sigh.

'If magic is suppressed long enough, it becomes unstable, volatile,' he told her. 'The longer you deny its natural state — that is, its desire to be active — the more likely it is to turn on its wielder. Which means,' he impressed, 'explosions, destructive surges of magic. And worse...' His fingers traced over a particularly horrific drawing of a figure writhing in agony, something halfway between a human and a swirling dark mass. 'It's parasitic. If left to fester long enough, it can consume you completely.'

Despite her prior reservations, Aurélie leaned closer, studying the page with an impassive expression. A long moment passed, then another, and then she said, 'Well, that's stupid.'

Sebastian blinked. 'Wh— it's not stupid, it's serious!'

She leapt to her feet. 'No, it's stupid!'

He followed her. 'It's not!'

Merlin, and here he was thinking that Anne had been the most exasperating girl he'd ever met.

'What rubbish!' she snapped, suddenly sounding very French again. 'You can't seriously believe that nonsense! I'm not going to turn into some soulless creature of darkness just because I want to keep my magic under control! What kind of ridiculous concept is that? What sort of Dark-Arts-loving nutjob wrote this book, anyway?' — Sebastian tried really, really hard not to laugh at this. — 'Why should I believe what's written in some crusty old book, anyway? You know what, just forget I told you anything about this whole stupid magic thing! I don't want to talk about this ever again! And don't you dare tell another living soul, Sebastian Sallow, or I swear—'

'Please,' he scoffed, 'who am I going to tell?'

'I don't know!' she burst out. 'All your girlfriends probably!'

Sebastian choked.

'Girlfriends?' he spluttered. 'What girlfriends? You think I have girlfriends? Plural?'

'I don't know!'

'I don't even have one girlfriend, let alone several!'

'Well, you seem...' She gestured at him, visibly flustered, 'popular!'

'I'm not popular!'

'Well, I don't know, do I? I don't know anything about you, but you know all these secrets about me and I don't even know if you—'

'—have a girlfriend?'

'No! I mean — that's not — I don't care if — that was just an example!'

The laugh he had suppressed for so long finally burst free, dissolving the tension in his posture.

'No, you're right, that's not fair, is it?' he chuckled, shaking his head. 'Fine, very well. Since I know your secret, it's only fair I tell you one of mine.'

'Oh, no, no.' Aurélie's eyes went wide. 'Please don't, that's not what I meant.'

She backed away from him, palms raised in supplication as if he were baring down on her with weapons rather than secrets. And perhaps he was; perhaps his secrets were dangerous.

'Please, Sebastian,' she implored. 'Please don't tell me, I don't want to know your secrets.'

Sebastian knew he should probably heed her pleas, spare her the responsibility of shouldering his pain, but the words were already burning the tip of his tongue with their desire to be spoken aloud and Sebastian had never been good at holding back.

'Anne wasn't ill, she was cursed.'

'Urgh!'

The back of Aurélie's knees hit the sofa. With a resigned groan, she slumped against the moth-eaten cushions with her face in her hands. Sebastian didn't understand the mournful string of French that came muffled through her fingers, but if he were to take a stab, he'd have translated her little Parisian lament as something close to bloody fucking hell.

'It was my fault,' he began with a sigh. Aurélie didn't lift her head when he sat beside her again, though he supposed that was for the best; it was hard enough looking her in the eye from a distance let alone when she was mere inches from his face.

'My uncle Solomon, he was an Auror for as long as I could remember, but shortly before my parents died, he quit — and rather abruptly, at that. I found out when I was older that he'd seen or done something that had upset a group of notoriously vicious dark wizards, so he left the Ministry altogether. Moved to Feldcroft. Became a farmer. Wanted nothing to do with the life he'd left behind, the awful things he'd witnessed.'

Choosing to take her silence as a sign of encouragement rather than the plea for mercy it probably was, he continued, speaking to his shoes, 'Solomon and I - we didn't get along.' Bitterness tinged his words, and he wondered if she could feel the tension radiating from his body. 'Whenever I was home, we argued constantly; he didn't like that I was — well, me, and I didn't like that he was... him. But a few years ago, after a particularly heated fight, I stormed out. Left the house. Didn't come back for hours. I was too angry, and since it upset Anne whenever we argued, I stayed away until late into the night. Thought about not coming back, but...' He sighed, regretful.

'By the time I came back, it was too late.'

The apple knocked feebly against the side of his head then fell to the floor with a resounding thunk.

'What happened?' Aurélie breathed.

Sebastian pushed his hair away from his eyes. 'There was a trial approaching. The same group of dark wizards my uncle had upset were facing the Wizengamot for torturing a family of Muggles, and Solomon had been called to testify against them. Well, they didn't like that, did they? Couldn't have a well-respected ex-Auror standing against them in court. So they came to Feldcroft to send him a very clear message to keep his mouth shut.'

'They cursed Anne?'

He nodded solemnly.

'I should have been there,' he said, quieter than he'd intended.

'But what could you have done against Dark Wizards?"

'Back then? Nothing. But I would have made sure they'd cursed me and not her.'

'But then you'd be—'

'No, I wouldn't,' he said fiercely. One thing Sebastian knew for certain was that he never would've allowed himself to succumb to the curse that inflicted his sister; not with all the knowledge he'd armed himself with, not with the lengths he was willing to go to for a cure, and, most importantly, not so long as Anne needed him to survive.

'It would've been far easier to cure myself than to force a cure onto someone who didn't want it. Anne, she...she was resistant to exploring all her options. My uncle, too. They both believed there was no hope for her.'

'But you didn't share that belief?'

'There is always hope.' His jaw tightened, making his next words difficult to get out. 'If perhaps my uncle hadn't interfered, if Anne had just listened to me... But none of that matters; it's my fault she died.'

'Sebastian—'

He stood up abruptly, pain launching him back into action.

'I was supposed to protect her and I failed. I'm her brother!' His voice echoed throughout the cavernous room, bouncing back to him from the vaulted ceiling, the cold stone walls. Those walls had once echoed with laughs and lively conversation. Now, they were just a sounding board for his pain.

'It's not your fault someone evil decided to curse a child, Sebastian.'

'And it's not your fault they took your parents.'

Aurélie made a small noise of dissent, her hands clasped in her lap, fingers twisting the end of her sleeve. Her small frame was dwarfed by the oversized sofa cushions, her feet just barely scuffing the dirty floor, and for the first time since they'd met, Sebastian realised how very desolate she was; a little doll someone had set upon the sofa long ago and forgotten about.

He felt himself soften.

'Listen,' he said, his tone gentle as he settled next to her again, their shoulders touching. 'I'm sorry for getting angry at you earlier. I just — I tend to act first and think later. It's a habit I thought I'd grown out of, but... evidently not. I'll do better, alright?' He gazed across at her for a moment, but her eyes were hidden beneath long auburn lashes. 

'Aurélie.' He leaned a little closer. 'You must learn to wield this power.'

'I can't.'

'You can. Listen to me.' He shifted closer until their knees were touching. 'Anne had choices that she refused to consider. But you? You're different. You have options — you have power — and you're choosing wrong by denying that part of yourself.'

He gestured briefly at the book in his lap. Bedtime Stories for Slytherins, as she'd so aptly called it.

'This magic of yours is an inherent part of who you are. If you keep suppressing it, it will become a curse. And you'll be no better off than Anne was.'

And then you'll die. One way or another.

Chapter Text

'Well, that was your first mistake,' said Poppy Sweeting, who was so small in stature she had to stretch up on her toes to reach the Thestral she was hand-feeding. 'Never share a secret with a Slytherin.'

Dusk had settled over the school grounds, all melancholic blues and gloomy purples. Three weeks living in the Scottish Highlands had taught Aurélie not to expect the ruby-hued evenings or rose-gold sunsets she'd loved so dearly in Southern France. In fact, it felt to her as if winter had arrived early, staunchly elbowing autumn out of the way to hang thick and dreary over a month it was supposed to have no claim over.

The Hogwarts stables, in which she found herself shivering one particularly dreary evening, were much like everything else in the castle: dim, dingy, and cold. The long stone structure, nestled against the backdrop of the forbidden forest, was set so far on the outskirts of the grounds that only the nearby Quidditch pitch overshadowed it.

Aurélie was no stranger to the inside of a stable, having spent most of her free time with the giant winged horses at Beauxbaton; the familiar smell of fresh straw, damp earth and something distinctly animal conjured memories of home that hurt as much as they soothed. Still, it was nice to know that horses smelled the same no matter which country she was in.

Unlike Beauxbatons, however, whose pristine stables were home to the school's herd of whisky-drinking Abraxans, Hogwarts dealt primarily with carnivorous Thestrals, who ate nothing but raw meat and did so with unsettling vigour. In the rapidly deepening twilight, their skeletal forms were almost indistinguishable from that of shadow and darkness; only the flash of white eyes or gnash of hungry teeth gave any indication they were there at all until her well-practised lumos threw their reptilian faces into sharp relief.

Spending her evenings with bat-winged creatures of pain and misfortune hadn't exactly been high on Aurélie's list of Things to Do At Hogwarts, but since she and Poppy were the only two students in their Beasts who could actually see them, their teacher, Professor Howin, had assigned Thestral care to their N.E.W.T studies.

'It's rare I ever have one student who can see them, let alone two!' Howin had said, delighted, as she'd ushered them toward the stables with a bucket of raw meat and a merry warning to 'watch your fingers!'

Aurélie shifted the weight of the meat bucket from hand to hand as the nearest Thestral - an imposing beast by the name of Sugar - stretched its long sinewy neck toward it with a hopeful snuff.

'And what was my second mistake?' she asked, worrying her lip between her teeth.

'The second,' replied Poppy with a sympathetic smile, 'was letting the Slytherin tell you one of his.'

If Aurélie had hoped that time would quell the novelty of being the new girl at Hogwarts, she was mistaken - and bitterly so. Thanks again to Sebastian bloody Sallow and their ill-fated trip to Hogsmeade together, her notoriety had only increased ten-fold in the weeks that had passed since she'd arrived. Only it wasn't her secret Ancient Magic or tragic backstory that had whipped the gossip mill into a frenzy (for Sebastian, it seemed, had kept true to his word to guard her secret), but the rumours that the tall, gorgeous, Quidditch captain had taken the strange, stuck-up Frenchie as his new girlfriend.

His girlfriend.

Aurélie clenched her fists.

The very notion that anyone could seriously believe -

The audacity to think she'd even consider -

And him, of all people!

The mere thought of it made her want to blast a hole through the nearest wall; only now, the familiar hot spike of magic in her hands was accompanied by an equally hot and spikey feeling in her chest that she could only attribute to an intense, eternally-burning irritation for the boy who would not let her be.

Though she'd barely spoken a word to Sebastian since the Undercroft, her determination to avoid him was rivalled only by his unyielding resolve to pursue her; for every step she retreated, he matched with two forward strides of his own. She caught sight of brown eyes and unruly curls in the corridors, freckles across the Great Hall and smug smirks in class so often that every flash of a green cloak in her periphery made her heart lurch. She did not want to hear about Ancient Magic or his ridiculous Obscuri, or, worse still, to find out that he'd been perpetuating the rumours of their not-relationship. Luckily, Aurélie was good at avoidance, and in the weeks that had passed since they'd sat elbow to elbow on the Undercroft's lumpy sofa, Sebastian had managed to track her down only once.

'You're welcome to nap in the Undercroft,' he'd said when he'd discovered her one evening tucked away in a dimly lit corner of the library.

Bleary-eyed and disoriented, Aurélie lifted her head from the pile of books she'd been using as a pillow, instinctively cast Lumos to dispel the creeping shadows and frowned at him, confused. She hadn't realised she'd fallen asleep until she was being prodded awake.

'The Undercroft,' Sebastian repeated, his voice hushed but his eyes full of a laugh he dared not let loose. 'You know, that secret room I've only ever shared with my twin and my closest friend. The one you refuse to set foot in.'

'Oh.' She scrunched up her nose. 'No, s'too cold.'

'Too cold?'

'And dark.'

Sebastian studied her closely, dark eyes roaming over her face. For a moment, caught in the illusory space between sleep and waking, where all the world felt like a dream and nothing was quite real nor unreal, Aurélie thought she saw herself reflected back in the dark circles beneath them. Exhaustion was a mask easily recognisable to one who wore it often; perhaps she wasn't the only one for whom sleep came only in nightmares.

'That's why you won't come?' he said eventually, and carefully. 'Because it's cold and dark?'

'I don't like the cold,' she muttered, pulling on the thick scarf that had become a permanent part of her attire. 'Or the dark.'

Unlike the rest of her cold-hardy classmates, who found amusement in the delicate Frenchie's intolerance for the cold, Sebastian didn't seem to find anything at all humorous in her discomfort. He simply nodded thoughtfully, frowning as he helped her gather up her book-pillows before Madame Scribner could scold them for loitering so close to curfew.

Sugar's surprisingly warm nose nudged Aurélie's clenched fist, prodding her back to reality with a start.

'But I didn't mean to tell him anything! It just sort of - happened!'

Poppy, with her hands full of raw meat, flashed her a knowing smile.

'Slytherins,' she said with a shrug. 'That's what they do. Secrets are like air to Slytherins - they survive on them.'

It was a testament to Poppy's Hufflepuff heart that she never once asked what the secret was, but simply offered a sympathetic ear to Hogwarts' most overwhelmed Ravenclaw.

Aurélie, overwhelmed, set down the bucket to an indignant snort from Sugar, whose allocated portion of meat was apparently not enough.

'But what am I supposed to do about it? I'm afraid he's not going to leave me alone now.'

'He probably won't. But at least we're graduating in nine months. You'll be free of him then.'

Sugar stamped her hoof as if she too were deeply troubled by the thought of Sebastian Sallow and not just hungry for a second dinner.

'As for what you can do it about in the meantime...' Poppy soothed the beast with an affectionate pet to its bony nose. 'Nothing, I'm afraid. Once you've won a Slytherin's loyalty, nothing short of betrayal will break it. Or death,' she added thoughtfully.

Aurélie snorted. Being the recipient of Sebastian's loyalty hardly felt like she'd won anything.

'And what happens if I betray a Slytherin?'

She immediately wished she hadn't asked, remembering the ease with which he'd threatened a man's life in Hogsmeade.

Touch her and I'll kill you.

Poppy shrugged. 'No idea. I've never betrayed one.'

The despair must have shown on Aurélie's face, for Poppy laughed and nudged her with her little elbow.

'Oh, don't worry so much, Sebastian's harmless. A little, erm... intense, I suppose, but there is a nice person underneath all' - she gestured vaguely with a chunk of meat - 'that. Trust me,' she continued, picking up the now-empty bucket. 'I was friends with Anne. Well, not quite friends, but friendly enough that I inevitability spent some time with Sebastian, too. And he's alright. No, really, he is!'

'Right, unless I betray him.'

Or I die, she thought grimly, trying not to picture Sebastian's ridiculous Obscuri, which had joined the cloaked figures and agonised screams of her nightmares.

Finally, with a stable full of happy, well-fed Death Omens, the two girls made their way toward the school for dinner, following the light of Aurélie's Lumos across the darkened lawns.

Poppy was an easy companion by her side, one who didn't feel compelled to fill every quiet void with mindless chatter, who smiled faintly whenever an owl hooted in the distance and who walked with her face cast ever skyward.

It was easy to like Poppy. Too easy.

'Have you seen the Quidditch pitch yet?' Poppy's steps slowed as they approached the looming stands. 'Hogwarts is a little, erm, enthusiastic about Quidditch, but the pitch is quite peaceful at night. It's a nice spot to watch the stars, too - not that we can see any now with all this cloud cover. Still... Fancy having a quick poke around before dinner?'

When Aurélie hesitated, Poppy laughed, as easy and infectious as ever.

'Oh, don't worry,' she said, bouncing on the balls of her feet, 'no one will be there at this time of night; it's too dark to play Quidditch now - even for the Slytherin's.'

But as she reluctantly followed Poppy into the stands, Aurelie couldn't help but think that deep, moonless darkness was exactly the kind of environment a Slytherin thrived in.

The Quidditch pitch was, to Aurélie's indifferent eye, rather unremarkable as far as Quidditch pitches went: big, oval-shaped and encircled by tall wooden towers, which, for the Quidditch enthusiast, were all the better for watching players do zoomies between the hoopy sticks on either end.

Aurélie was decidedly not a Quidditch enthusiast.

'Is Quidditch popular in France?' Poppy asked as they ambled toward the middle of the empty pitch.

'Oh, yes. You know, our national stadium was built to resemble the Château de Versailles. There's an elaborate hedge maze in the centre, with fountains and beautiful gardens all around.' The light from her wand illuminated the field before them, where not even an errant dandelion marred the perfectly smooth expanse. 'And the stands, they're made of carved stone, and bells toll after every goal is scored.'

'How opulent,' Poppy giggled.

'Oui, very French,' Aurélie agreed. 'Just imagine, this entire pitch filled with flowers with all the bees and butterflies and little birds flitting about. It was my father's favourite thing about Quidditch. We used to go to matches together just to see how the gardens below were faring. But, anyway,' she shook her head, dispelling the nostalgia before it got too painful, 'I suppose Quidditch fans over here don't care so much for what happens below them, so long as someone is scoring with the waffle balls above.'

'I wouldn't mind a garden pitch. But Quidditch is good fun to watch, gardens or no. Although admittedly, Hufflepuff hasn't won a single match since Sebastian rejoined the Slytherin team last year. He and Imelda are formidable together on the pitch. I daresay the snakes will win the Cup again this year thanks to them.'

Aurélie squinted up at the hoops, picturing, despite her best efforts not to, one brown-eyed, freckled Slytherin zooming between them, his exuberance vivid even in her imagination.

'He is very good, you know,' said Poppy knowingly. 'Sebastian, I mean. At Quidditch.'

'How nice for him,' Aurélie replied in French, feigning disinterest.

Poppy had been right; the Quidditch pitch was a surprisingly peaceful place, an unlikely refuge where the castle and the unfamiliar terrain beyond it were hidden behind the fortress-like stands. Settling together on the cool grass, Aurelie felt they could have been anywhere in the world as they chatted about France and flowers, nibbled on sweets Poppy procured from her pockets and bemoaned their staggering amount of homework until a flurry of movement across the pitch caught their attention.

Two figures had emerged from the changing rooms at the far end of the field. The one in the lead, clearly female, was marching staunchly across the pitch as if she owned it, her long, dark ponytail swinging aggressively from side to side, but the other, slightly out of step behind her, was unmistakable even in the near darkness: broad-shouldered and tall and tousle-haired and -

'No,' whispered Aurélie.

'Oh, it's Imelda,' said Poppy, squinting through the darkness. 'And - ah...' she trailed off awkwardly as the two shapes revealed themselves under the wand light.

'Let's go, quick.' Aurélie jumped to her feet, desperate to escape before her serpentine shadow could ruin what had been shaping up to be a pleasant evening.

But it was too late.

Imelda Reyes was shorter than Aurélie, but what she lacked in height she made up for with an expression of unapologetic contempt. Formidable, Poppy had called her, and Aurélie was inclined to agree. With her eyes narrowed and her lips pursed, Imelda didn't stop to chat as she approached them but slowed just enough to nod curtly at Poppy and scoff derisively at Aurélie; a reaction which, unfortunately, was not uncommon since she'd become Sebastian's so-called girlfriend.

Unlike Imelda, however, Sebastian did stop to chat, his brown eyes wide with surprise as they locked onto hers.

'Hello, Sebastian!' Poppy said in a falsely bright voice. 'I was just giving Aurélie a tour of the -'

'- we were discussing tactics,' Sebastian blurted, looking distinctly ruffled. 'For the upcoming season. For Quidditch.'

Aurélie eyed him critically. Judging by the dishevelled state of his uniform, it was obvious that whatever he'd been doing - alone, at night, with Imelda - likely had very little to do with Quidditch. Her gaze sharpened on him: his loosened tie, his upturned collar. Several buttons of his shirt were open, revealing a scattering of freckles from his throat to his chest. She tore her eyes away, incensed, offended; she'd seen enough secret canoodling back in France to know what the aftermath looked like.

Something hot bubbled its way up her throat. Not magic: words. She swallowed them back. Destructive magic was one thing to suppress, but near impossible were the destructive words she longed to berate him with. And what was magic compared to the wrath of her French temper.

He lied.

Aurélie had trusted him with her deepest secret, had shared with him the one thing she'd sworn to her now-dead parents never to tell another living soul. And in return, he'd lied right to her face.

I don't even have one girlfriend, let alone several.

And yet, for all the fuss he'd made in the Undercroft about it, he might as well have been standing before her now with lipstick stains on his collar - though Aurélie doubted that Imelda, with her down-turned sneer and thin lips, ever bothered herself about lipstick.

'She's my co-captain,' Sebastian explained, shrinking a little under the severity of her glare. 'Well, actually, if truth be told, she should be captain, not me. She's brilliant. At Quidditch, I mean. Far better than I am. I tried to turn down the position -' he swallowed audibly '- but she refused to be made captain out of pity.'

'Yes,' Poppy put in, looking desperately between them. 'Yes, Imelda is a, uh, wonderful player. The best, perhaps.'

'Yes.'

'Yes.'

Aurélie let the silence drag on.

Sebastian shifted his weight from foot to foot.

Poppy cleared her throat.

'How nice,' Aurélie said eventually, her accent thick with French indignation. 'I can see you're both very passionnés about Quidditch.'

Sebastian froze, sensing danger.

'Passionate?'

'I did not realise you had to undress yourself to discuss tactique.'

Sebastian's hand flew to his tie at the same time Aurélie whirled away from him, not waiting to hear more of his lies as she stalked across the pitch. Every muscle was tensed with the effort it took not to march right back to tell him what she thought of his loyalty. What good was trusting him with her secrets if he couldn't be honest with something as insignificant as his relationship status. How stupid and irresponsible and naïve she'd been to trust him - a snake. If betrayal was enough to destroy a Slytherin's loyalty, then lying destroyed a Ravenclaw's.

Gratefully, the footsteps that chased after her were not those of a big dumb idiot liar but a sweet-natured Hufflepuff.

'What happened?' Poppy gasped. 'What was that about?'

Aurélie picked up her pace.

'Do not mention his name to me ever again, Poppy. I mean it. Il n'est personne pour moi!' She swiped a hand across her forehead. 'He' - she said in English, empathetically jabbing a finger over her shoulder - 'is nothing to me.'

-x-

Authors note: eternally grateful to my favourite French friends Yoshi  @yoshi_tsuno  and Boni @mianeryh for their endless patience when I annoy them for French translations. Also for teaching me sassy French slang. ILY BISOU BISOU.

Chapter Text

Aurélie woke bright and early the following morning with a steely resolve to never utter the name Sebastian Sallow again unless it was to curse it to the wind. She also, quite alarmingly, woke to find silvery ribbons of magic twisting around her fingers.

She bolted upright, bumped her head on Samantha's bunk and cursed so emphatically in French that she half-expected to hear her mother scolding her from down the hall.

'Oh, stop that, would you?' she said to her hands, giving them a frantic but ultimately useless shake that did nothing to dispel the energy stuck to her fingers.

Talking to one's hands as if they were sentient was never a good sign, but even worse was when those same hands, pulsing with forbidden magic, only glowed brighter and more defiant when told to stop.

She groaned aloud, wearily rubbing the bump on her head with fingers that made her brain tingle, and considered her options.

From her limited experience with her sporadic gift, she knew that once the magic was out, it could not go back in; much like trying to force-feed water back into a pipe, once conjured, it had to flow on.

At home in France, she'd had quick access to a backyard garden, where, on very rare occasions, she'd been forced to covertly feed magic to a plant or a tree and hope that her father wouldn't notice its inexplicable growth spurt the following day (he always did, of course, but he never said a word about it). At Beauxbatons, where she had a private bedroom and an ocean at her doorstep, she'd been able to slip out, unseen, to hand it over to the waves to sort out. But there was no ocean at Hogwarts, no secret garden, nowhere to go where she wouldn't be caught in the act of siphoning off magic like a thief in the night.

Well, that wasn't entirely true, but she'd sooner blow the school to smithereens than ever step foot in Sebastian's stupid Undercroft.

Peeking through her velvet bed curtains and hoping fiercely that her roommates were still asleep, Aurélie scanned the room for an acceptable vessel that might benefit from a little magical encouragement.

The solution came to her in the form Samantha Dale's potted Dittany that she kept on the nightstand by their bunk bed: a sad, wilted plant that sorely needed more sunlight but on whose behalf Aurélie had been too shy to speak to save it. Reaching through the curtains, she tentatively lifted the pot from its stand and set it on her lap. It was only a wee little thing, half-dead and neglected, but perhaps if she just gently - very gently - gave it a magical boost, Samantha might attribute it's miraculous recovery to an improvement in her herbology skills.

Alright, then, she said silently, her fingers hovering over the dry soil, if you insist on doing something, please help this plant.

For a startling moment, the Dittany glowed bright, its wilted leaves bristling with sudden vitality. It pulsed once, twice and then -

Exploded.

She squeaked in surprise as plant, pot and soil vanished with a wet-sounding pop and a swirl of fading magic. For a long, long time, she stared down at her now-empty hands, quietly dismayed.

Help the plant, she lamented inwardly. I said help the plant, not blow it up.

She dressed quickly after that, braiding her hair with shaky fingers and trying not to think about her innate ability for destruction. Finally, exhausted and stressed, she traipsed down to the Great Hall for breakfast, making a mental note to seek out a new half-dead Dittany before days end.

Being rather early, the hall was mostly deserted. Above her, the enchanted ceiling reflected another dreary sky, and as she poked unenthusiastically at her eggs and toast, she marveled at how many different shades of grey the Scottish sky was capable of producing. So absorbing was this little exercise of hers that it left very little attention to spare for the figure sitting alone at the Slytherin table, whose wild brown curls were falling across his eyes as he poured over a book.

A covert peek through her lashes revealed that the book was a huge, old tome not unlike the one he'd shown her in the Undercroft. She narrowed her eyes. Surely Sebastian wasn't still reading up on Obscuri and other such spooky Slytherin nonsense? Surely he didn't really believe she was dangerous? Unstable? The idea was ludicrous.

Ridiculous.

Unbelievable.

Wasn't it?

Without warning, Sebastian looked up and caught her eye, and - oh, look, was that a hint of stormy purple amongst the palette of greys above? Yes, definitely purple. And some deep blue, too, if she squinted really hard. She kept her eyes fixed skyward, absolutely captivated, and did not so much as glance across the hall again.

For the rest of the day, Aurélie remained steadfast in her commitment to forgetting she'd ever heard the name Sebastian Sallow. In classes, she focused on her studies, clenched her fists and ignored him for whoever happened to be sitting next to her. At lunch, she ignored him. In the corridors, she ignored him. In fact, so thoroughly did she reject his entire existence that if ignoring Sebastian Sallow was a N.E.W.T subject, she'd pass with top marks, graduate with honours and go on to establish a Department of Ignoring Sebastian at the Ministry.

By the time she all but collapsed at the Ravenclaw table for dinner, with very sore fists and a pounding headache, she wondered if it wouldn't be easier to let her magic loose on the whole bloody school and be done with it.

She was just spearing a boiled potato onto her fork when a tiny presence made itself known behind her shoulder. Turning in her seat, she came face to face with - a mouse.

Well, no, not a mouse, exactly, but a boy. A very small boy with mousey hair, bucky teeth and wide, darting eyes. Aurélie had never seen a human being look more like an animal in her entire life.

'Um,' squeaked the mouse as he thrust a roll of parchment toward her, 'this is for you.'

'For me?' she asked, blinking in surprise. 'Who is it from?'

The boy - who was a first year, judging by the size of him - simply stared at her with his unblinking eyes, shifting restlessly from foot to foot.

Aurélie unfurled the parchment, glanced at the untidy message scrawled across it (will you just let me explain?), and immediately thought about setting it on fire.

'It's from Sebastian,' piped up her tiny companion, rather unhelpfully. 'Sebastian Sallow. From Slytherin. He told me to tell you that, um' - the boy screwed his little face up in concentration - 'that I'm not to return without your reply and that you must reply and that I'm to employ any means necessary in order to obtain your reply.'

Aurélie simply couldn't stifle her laughter at that.

'Goodness,' she said, not unkindly. 'Well, I'd rather not bear the brunt of your wrath. Consider me duly warned. But there's just one problem.'

She arched a brow at the boy, whose eyes, if possible, widened even further.

'You'll need to tell this Sebastian Sallow from Slytherin that if he expects a reply, he ought provide me a quill so I can write it.'

The boy looked quite alarmed at this unexpected turn of events, and for a moment seemed not to know what to do with himself. He took a small shuffle to the left, then to the right, and then, in a whirl of anxious energy, scurried away to where Sebastian Sallow from Slytherin was watching them with a shrewd expression.

After a short but animated conversation, in which Sebastian rolled his eyes and sent her the most exasperated look he could muster, Mouse came hurrying back, quill in hand.

'Thank you,' she said, fighting back giggles. 'But - oh, I have no ink.'

Off went the mouse again.

Sebastian, whose look of incredulity made her giggle even harder, dug through his satchel and procured a small ink pot, which was promptly deposited into Aurélie's waiting hand a moment later by the very out-of-breath first-year. She considered sending him back to ask for black ink, not green - just to see the look on Sebastian's face - but she took pity on the small flustered face of her little mousey friend and motioned instead for him to sit.

'Have you eaten yet, petite souris?' she asked, pushing her plate away to make a space for the parchment.

She was quite aware of the stares and whispers they were garnering as Mouse scrambled up onto the bench beside her. She supposed it wasn't common for seventh year Ravenclaw's to sit with first year Slytherin's - or indeed, for any Slytherin of any age to venture beyond the comfort of their own table - but she didn't care; she was quite enjoying this little distraction. It wasn't often she found reason to giggle any more.

As Mouse set to loading his plate with food, Aurélie set to penning a reply - though admittedly, Mouse ate far more enthusiastically than Aurélie wrote.

'Is he your boyfriend?' he piped up after a time, his mouth chock full of potatoes.

Aurélie's hand twitched. Ink blotted across the page.

'Who? Sebastian? No! Merlin, no, I -'

"It's just' - he swallowed his mouthful of food with difficulty - 'he said you were pretty and that's what mama says boys are supposed to tell their girlfriends to get kisses.'

Another twitch. Another ink blotch. Well, your mama is wrong, she wanted to say, grinding her teeth.

'Well, no,' she said instead, cleaning away the ink blotches with a wave of her wand. 'Besides, I'm not... And he's not... Anyway, that's not important. Just finish your dinner.'

Mouse eventually did finish his dinner, but not without a thorough rundown of his personal history, all of which he told her while fidgeting restlessly in his seat.

As it turned out, Mouse's name was not Mouse, but Michael. He was the eldest son of a wealthy pureblood family who was in the goblin metal business, the specifics of which he was most disinterested in despite being expected to inherit it when he was older. He also had a younger sister who was due to start Hogwarts the following year, a pet cat named Rabbit and an owl named Owl, and his favourite colour was orange - no, blue - no, green. Aurélie listened with delighted amusement as she penned her reply to Sebastian, which she composed entirely and unapologetically in French.

Finally, after he'd licked his plate clean and finished explaining, in great detail, the interior of the Slytherin common room, Mouse took her finished note and leapt to his feet to deliver it.

'Wait, Mouse!' she said, reaching out to catch his sleeve before he could scamper away. 'Tell Sebastian if he can translate it, I'll let him explain himself.'

Moments later across the hall, Sebastian unfurled the note, took one look at her reply, and burst into laughter.

-x-

The first choir practice took place on a Saturday so blustery and wet that every student, professor and ghost had taken refuge under the stormy ceiling of the Great Hall. Or at least, that's how it had felt to Aurélie, who was certain she'd never get used to dining as a Hogwarts student and wondered how much she'd have to bribe the house elves to fill her goblet with wine rather than pumpkin juice.

Among the hoard of restless students had been Mouse, who'd appeared at her shoulder, as tiny and breathless as he'd been the first time, to remind her that choir practice took place in the bell tower wing and that she'd be best to take the staircase via the Ravenclaw tower to get there and not the staircase from the third floor because that'll take her 'twice as long and you don't want to get lost and risk losing a spot in the choir because you couldn't find your way.'

Evidently, he'd been sent on behalf of a certain Slytherin boy, who was taking her challenge to translate her note so seriously that he hadn't spoken a word to her since she had written it. In fact, every morning for the last three days, Sebastian had sat alone at the Slytherin table, her note laid flat next to his plate and a French-to-English dictionary propped up against a milk jug, scribbling determinedly and snapping at anyone who dared break his concentration. And despite her staunch commitment to hating him with every fibre of her being, Aurélie had to fight very hard not to smile about it.

And when his proxy directions to the music chamber had proven both accurate and efficient, she had to remind herself, very firmly, that he was a no good rotten snakey liar who had at least one girlfriend if not several more.

Stupid, helpful Slytherin, she thought with a reluctant smile.

To Aurélie's delight, the music room was not the dank, draughty chamber she'd been envisioning, but a magnificent auditorium set high up in the castle's bell tower. Large and circular, with wood-panelled walls and deep-red carpet, it was the most beautiful room Aurélie had seen at Hogwarts thus far.

Tall leadlight windows stretched up to the ceiling, jewel-toned and brilliant even against the dull sky and howling rain beyond them. Each window told a story: a group of dancing children depicted in reds and golds, a choir of wood nymphs singing in greens and blues, and a multicoloured band of musicians playing instruments. And through each scene, represented as a gleaming golden thread, music was woven around human and creature alike, young and old, magical and Muggle.

It made Aurélie smile to see it.

Rows of cushioned seats descended to meet a magnificent grand piano at the bottom, around which the assemblage of choir hopefuls were waiting, anxious and silent. Though only small in number, the group was comprised of students from every house and every year level, each of them bound together by that same golden thread of music that transcended the systems that usually kept them apart.

Aurélie sat next to a fidgety Ravenclaw and thought of her mother.

If gardens and trees were where her father's spirit dwelt, then her mother's lived in music; in piano keys and falsetto, majors and minors, in beauty that was structured, refined, well-practiced. Where her father had found beauty in things gnarled and natural, her mother had created it: writing it into song, spinning it into silk, bottling it as French perfume.

Her mother's presence was harder to feel than her father's, but she was hopeful that maybe she'd find her here, alive again in music.

Unfortunately, her hopeful illusions were shattered when the stiff, haughty form of Ominis Gaunt swept into the room, following his blinking wand down the steeply descending stairs until finally, with a rather dramatic swish of his all-black robes, he whirled around to face them. Behind him, the windows rattled and the wind howled, and the entire group stiffened as one. The nervous Ravenclaw next to her made a small noise in the back of her throat. Aurélie sat up straighter.

'Small turnout,' sniffed Ominis, sweeping a sightless gaze over the nervous group. 'Only eight this year. Disappointing.'

With a frightened squeak, the girl beside her jumped up, muttered something about being in the wrong room, and fled. Aurélie thought about following her but remained seated.

'Seven,' Ominis corrected himself without inflection. 'Very well. I assume you can all sing, then.'

Exchanging nervous glances, and looking like they'd rather do anything but, the group muttered their assent that they could indeed sing.

Ominis took to the piano, laying his wand across its polished surface while his long pale fingers rested lightly on the keys.

'Very well, let's begin,' he said, striking a resonant G-major that echoed up to the ceiling and filled the chamber with life. 'We shall start with the youngest to the oldest. I only need to hear your vocal range and I will tell you immediately whether there is place for you here or not.'

It took some coaxing to convince the youngest member of the group, a second year Slytherin boy, to get up and sing, but eventually, with shaking voices and nervous glances, every hopeful singer was granted a place in Ominis' choir. Even Aurélie, whose voice was soft but clear, was given a curt nod of something close to approval and assigned as a soprano.

Having been the eldest, and thus the last to audition, Aurélie was not keen on being alone with a Gaunt at the top of a deserted tower. Mumbling her thanks, she hastily collected her things and turned to leave.

But Ominis stopped her.

'New girl, a word.'

Up close, Ominis Gaunt cut an imposing figure in all his all-black robes. Tall, lean and perpetually bothered, he was every bit as proud and disdainful as an Heir of Slytherin ought to be; Aurélie couldn't blame the nervous Ravenclaw girl for fleeing before him, for she had half a mind to flee herself.

'I don't know how to broach the subject delicately,' he said curtly, 'so I'm going to come right out and say it. Whatever is going on between you and Sebastian needs to stop. Immediately.'

Aurélie almost choked on air.

'Wh -'

'I know something happened at Hogsmeade,' he snapped, cutting her off mid-objection, 'I don't know what, for he refuses to divulge a single detail to me, but given his... behaviour since, I know that it was something significant. I also know he showed you the Undercroft.' Aurélie froze as Ominis' voice rose in pitch. 'That was not his decision to make. We all swore in our first year never to share its whereabouts with another living soul and him showing you is a betrayal of not only my trust but also that of -' He cut himself off with a sharp inhale through his nose.

'Regardless,' he began again, composed, 'that is beside the point. I don't know how much he's told you about his past, but let me be plain: Sebastian isn't good for you. He isn't good for anybody. I made a promise to his sister to keep him out of trouble, and for two long and arduous years I have been committed to keeping that promise.'

'You think I'm trouble?' Aurélie frowned, affronted; she hadn't spent her entire life trying to be the exact opposite of trouble only to be accosted by some contentious Slytherin.

'You don't know Sebastian the way I do. Our sixth year was a nightmare, and if it weren't for honouring Anne's wishes, I'm not sure I would have put myself through the trouble. Whoever you think he is, I assure you, you're only seeing what he wants you to see. He is loyal to be a fault. His sister was the same; I suppose it's a Sallow trait, only Sebastian takes it too far. When he wants something, he will go to great lengths to get it. He will take the kind of risks most others won't. He loses sight of himself, of everything, and I don't know what it is about you, but he hasn't been the same since you arrived.'

'But I -'

'He's secretive. Distracted. I've seen him this way before and it has never once ended well for anybody.'

When Ominis paused to take a long breath, Aurélie finally felt her mother's spirit in the surge of French indignation boiling inside her.

'I've tried to avoid him!' she argued. 'But he's... it's not that easy!'

'Well try harder!' he spat, his pale eyes snapping to hers. Aurélie faltered: there was something about his eyes that unsettled her - not because they couldn't see, but because she felt like they could.

'Trust me, you are better off not being a part of Sebastian's life. And if that is not enough to dissuade you...' his tone turned cold, venomous, 'Sebastian is better off without you.'

Chapter Text

Two French girls were sprawled barefoot and carefree over sun-warmed sand; one, whose vivid red hair was a flicker of flame against the landscape of yellows and blues, was idly tracing shapes in the fluffy clouds above, while the other, a vivacious blonde with sun-kissed skin, who possessed all the confidence of a girl who'd never waivered in the knowledge of her own beauty, was bemoaning her latest romantic drama with a boy who'd been kissing not one, but two other girls behind her back.

The two friends had been there for hours, lazing about with the ocean at their feet, an endless sky above and three months of summer holidays stretching glorious and warm before them. But the afternoon was wearing on, evidenced by the deepening strike of tangerine in the west, and Aurélie was expected back home before dark; even on summer holidays, the daughter of an eminent music professor was never allowed to stray far from the piano.

'But enough about my problems,' said the blonde with a deep, mournful sigh. 'When are you finally going to kiss someone?'

Aurélie grimaced.

'Celeste,' she said fondly, 'I'll kiss someone when I find someone worth kissing.' This was Aurélie's usual reply whenever her best friend began lamenting the deficient state of her love life, and today was no different.

Celeste heaved another theatrical sigh and rolled her eyes to the heavens. Aurélie laughed aloud: her golden-haired best friend had a flair for dramatics that she'd always found endlessly amusing.

'Why don't you just kiss that Muggle boy?'

'Eurgh, if you mean the one from the post office...'

'Of course the one from the post office! He can't take his eyes off you whenever we pass by!'

Tossing her long hair over her shoulder, Aurélie pursed her lips and let the sound of crashing waves serve as her reply.

Celeste tsk'd impatiently.

'You don't want to be the only seventh-year at Beauxbatons who hasn't been kissed, do you?' she persisted, knowing all too well how to coax a reaction from her reticent friend.

'We're not seventh years yet.'

'No, but we will be in three months, and you can't be the last girl to be kissed, Aurélie! You're too beautiful to deny yourself a chance at romance. I won't allow it.'

Aurélie wiggled her toes in the sand. 'I'm not denying myself, it's just that I'd hate to rob you of a potential beau, you know, so really I'm just thinking of you.' She grinned. Celeste scowled. 'Besides, you have your priorities all wrong; we'll be taking our N.E.W.Ts this year and all you care about is whether or not I get kissed?'

To her vibrant, spirited best friend, there was little more in life that held more importance than romance. But to Aurélie, the idea of kissing some paltry French boy just for the sake of doing so was rather unappealing. Besides, she didn't have nearly enough patience to navigate the world of dating, nor the required skills to do it with the grace that Celeste did.

'Oh, but don't you want to know what it's like?' Celeste's fair head came to rest on Aurélie's shoulder. 'To be in loooove?'

'My sweet darling precious friend who I love with all my heart, with the way you moan and complain about these boys, I think I'll wait until I find someone worthy of the agony of love. Anyway, your love life provides enough drama for both of us. Now, excuse me,' she leaned over to kiss her best friend's cheek before rising and brushing sand from her blue dress. 'I have to go. Mama will have my head if I'm home late again.'

Home.

Twelve hundred kilometers away, languishing in the sodden Scottish Highlands, Aurélie's heart ached for home; for seashells and sand dunes; for bare feet and shoulder freckles and salty skin; for her best friends' laugh, her mother humming Chopin in the kitchen, her father planting mallowsweet outside.

For warmth.

But that home was gone.

Now, home was imposing stone walls and grey skies and horizons drenched in rain; an indifferent aunt and uncle in London who hadn't once written to check in on her; a room she shared with three strangers, where she'd had to cast an Imperturbable Charm around her bed so none of them could hear her crying.

Home was cold.

Adrift through the bustling castle, her feet had swept her away from Ominis Gaunt, whose scathing voice rang as clear and resonant in her mind as had his piano in the music chamber; but his words were discordant notes, an echo of fumbling fingers over piano keys: Sebastian is better off without you.

But wasn't everybody? Weren't they all in danger simply for being in her presence? Samantha's Dittany had been the latest victim of her accursed magic - blasted into the ether never to return - but who would be next? Ominis had warned her away from Sebastian, but in the end, would it be Sebastian who'd come to regret ever knowing her?

Uneasy in spirit, Aurélie found herself back in the Great Hall before she was aware of the path her feet were travelling. She supposed it was the smell of lunch that had drawn her there. Though she had no appetite after her encounter with Ominis, she'd followed the familiar aroma of onions and garlic, butter and bread as if some lonely part of her hoped she might find home at the source of it. But it was a false trail; there was no comfort to be found within this cold castle.

It was late in the afternoon now, and only the last stragglers remained at the long House tables, their voices far away and their faces blurred by the force of her distraction. The enchanted ceiling hadn't changed since she'd last gazed upon it, but, of course, she'd been expecting that; the oppressive reflection of the storm outside had become synonymous with her sojourn at Hogwarts, but something about seeing it now made her want to cry.

She wanted to go home.

Heartsick, she cast a wide sweep across the near-empty hall, searching.

She wanted... She wanted...

'... to make amends,' said a voice beside her. 'I think we got off on the wrong foot.'

Dragging her tired eyes from the ceiling, Aurélie turned to find Garreth Weasley grinning at her, red-haired and bright-eyed and entirely unaware of her internal turmoil. She smiled back, though the action felt stiff and wooden on her face.

'This is for you,' he said, holding up a glass vial with a small incline of his head. 'A peace offering. I fear I might've left you with the wrong impression of me, given that our first and only conversation was about, well, you know...'

'Murderous Slytherins?' she offered wearily.

'Yes, that. Not that I didn't mean what I told you about Sallow,' he added hurriedly, scratching at the back of his neck, 'because I did, only I think I perhaps could have gone about saying it with a little more... tact. Anyway.' He chuckled sheepishly. 'I thought you might get some good use out of this.'

He gestured again with the small vial, but before either of them could blink, the innocuous-looking potion was snatched out of his grasp and Sebastian Sallow was insisting himself between them.

Again.

'What is this?' demanded Sebastian, brandishing the potion in Garreth's face. 'What are you giving her? What do you think you're playing at, experimenting on her?'

The sound of his voice shouldn't have had such a profound effect on her, but beneath the fear, the dizzying anxiety, the tension headache, and how angry she was supposed to be at him, was a profound and very worrying sense of relief.

Garreth did not share the same sentiment.

'I know it's physically impossible for you, Sallow,' sneered the Gryffindor, his green eyes narrowed to slits, 'but have you ever considered not being an overbearing twat for just once in your life?'

Sebastian turned his back on him.

'Do not accept anything this idiot gives you,' he told Aurélie, baring down on her with a very stern look. 'Ever. I told you, Garreth Weasley is notorious for his potion failures. Who knows what this will do to you!'

'Merlin's balls, Sallow, it's only a calming draught!' Garreth retorted. 'I thought she might need it after all the antagonism she cops from you!'

Sebastian held the vial up to the light, squinting sceptically.

'She doesn't need anything from you, Weasley, and I dare say poisoning her isn't going to do much for her stress levels.'

'Sebastian!' Aurélie made a grab for the potion, but the tall Slytherin and his long stupid Quidditch-captain arms only held it higher above her head. 'That's mine, give it back!'

'No,' he said tersely. 'Now come on, I need to speak with you. And, Weasley,' he added, throwing a contemptuous look over his shoulder, 'try this again and I will hex the red out of your entire genealogy.'

Aurélie only had time to mutter a hurried apology around Sebastian's elbow before she was unceremoniously ushered out of the Great Hall.

'Just remember what I told you, yeah?' came Garreth's reply from somewhere behind the broad-shouldered Slytherin.

Sebastian scoffed. 'Remember what he told you about what?' he demanded, scowling as he nudged her into Entrance Hall, where two Gryffindor's were arguing before the house point hourglasses about whose fault their recent fifty-point loss was.

'Don't tell me he's still banging on about me being a - what was it? A dark wizard?' he rolled his eyes. 'A big evil Slytherin? What a prat. Bit possessive, isn't he? What, is he your boyfriend or something?'

'You don't have much self-awareness, do you?' Aurélie snapped. 'Now stop shoving me and give me my potion!' She whirled around to face him, one hand held out expectantly while the other balled into a fist.

'No.'

'Sebastian!'

'I said no. You are not drinking one of Garreth Weasley's experiments, Aurélie!'

'Why not? Everyone else does!'

'Yeah, well, you are not everyone else. If you want it back so badly,' he slipped the vial into his pocket and turned to grin down at her, spreading his arms out wide, 'you'll just have to reach into my pocket and take it.'

'Ugh!'

Vexed, she pivoted on her heel and whirled away from him, her braid swinging to-and-fro as she stomped past the arguing Gryffindors, through the great double doors and down a flight of stairs. Laughing, Sebastian matched her angry strides with no more effort than he'd expend on a leisurely stroll.

Aurélie swept him a scornful look.

'You're annoying,' she sniffed.

'I've been called worse,' he chuckled, leaping down the last two steps to land lightly in front of her. 'Anyway, I've got something for you.'

She dodged past him. 'Is it my potion?'

'No!'

The sound of Sebastian's laugh, rich and warm, made something inside her purr.

'Well then I don't want it!' she said, thrusting her nose into the air.

'You don't even know what it is!'

'I don't care!'

Grinning, he stepped in front of her and waved a piece of crumpled parchment in her face.

'Look,' he said, beaming triumphantly. 'You said if I could translate it, you'd let me explain.'

The note was so worn and crumpled that she barely recognised it as the same one Mouse had delivered days earlier. She unfolded it with pursed lips and a quirked brow, but when she saw how every inch of space was filled with scribbled translations and corrections, she almost dissolved into giggles on the spot.

He was thorough, she had to give him that.

'Not bad,' she said loftily. 'But you've lost all the French humour in translation.'

'Humour?' Sebastian's eyebrows flew upward. 'You accused me of lying to you!'

'But you did lie to me!'

'If this is about Imel- what happened on the Quidditch pitch -'

Aurélie scoffed. 'I have no plural girlfriends, Aurélie, I swear,' she said, lowering her voice to a gruff mimicry of his. Then she turned on her heel and took off again, stomping blindly through the castle without purpose or direction.

'But I don't!' he exclaimed, bounding after her. 'Aura, I don't have plural girlfriends!'

'But you do have one, which means you lied about it.'

She took a sharp left into a narrow, windowless corridor, saw that it only lead to a dead end, then pivoted and marched right back the way they'd just come.

Sebastian's groan of frustration chased after her, his footsteps scuffing over the flagstones in his haste to keep up.

'Aurélie, I don't - I didn't - just stay still, would you?'

This time when he jumped around her, he launched himself forward so abruptly that she barreled right into him.

Suddenly, her hands were on his chest.

Suddenly, his hands were gripping her shoulders.

They froze.

'You said you'd let me explain,' he blurted, wide-eyed.

Panicking, Aurélie wasn't sure what else to do with her hands but to keep them where they were. Sebastian's heart was pounding; she could feel it beneath her palms.

'F-fine!' she yielded, looking anywhere but directly at his face. 'Explain!'

'Fine!' He kept his hands on her. 'Imelda and I had a - a thing,' he began, and then, upon seeing the way she scowled, he threw his hands in the air and said, 'What? What is that look?'

They broke apart.

'What look? I didn't give you a look!'

'Yes, you did! You gave me a look!'

'Ugh!' She swiped a shaky hand across her face and tried very hard not to slip into French. 'Okay, fine - so you don't have plural girlfriends, you have plural things? That's even worse!'

'What, no, I - I don't have any things! I had one thing but it's over now! In fact, you interrupted the ending of it on the Quidditch pitch!'

'Oh, I interrupted the ending of something, that's for sure!' she said hotly, which only earned her a sound halfway between a groan and a laugh as Sebastian fought to keep a straight face. She narrowed her eyes. He swallowed back a laugh.

'Look, it was purely physical, alright?' he went on hurriedly. 'We had an agreement to... to benefit each other... As friends...'

Aurélie gasped and clapped her hands over her ears, but thankfully Sebastian was too overcome by laughter for coherent speech.

'Eurgh, mon dieu, Sebastian!' she wailed, frantically shaking her head. 'I don't want to hear about that!'

'Why not?' he laughed, gently prying her hands away from her face. 'I thought you'd be used to that sort of thing, coming from France.'

When his large hands encircled her wrists, Aurélie hoped with every fibre of her soul that he'd attribute the heat in her cheeks to her righteous anger and not... Well, whatever the alternative was.

'N-no,' she stammered. 'When it comes to that, I am very... British.'

Sebastian laughed so hard at this that his whole body shook with it and his hands squeezed her wrists in a way that made her wish he'd pull her in a bit closer.

She yanked free of his grip, feigning outrage.

'Stop laughing at me!'

'What's that supposed to mean? British?' he chuckled, wiping tears of mirth from his eyes.

'What it means is that I really don't care about your love life, just don't lie to me about it!'

'I'm not lying to you.'

She pursed her lips, but when he dipped his head to meet her eyes, she let slip the tiniest hint of a smile.

And there his gaze lingered, soft.

He moved a little closer.

'Aura, I have never lied to you,' he said sincerely. 'And I never will.'

Something passed between them in the silence that followed that made every worry in her mind shrink down to one inescapable truth: there was no use trying to stay away from Sebastian Sallow.

'And I'm sorry,' he went on, his grin widening mischievously, 'but you specifically asked me if I had a girlfriend, not if I was shagging any-'

'Sebastian!' she squealed. 'What did I just say?'

But she was laughing along with him now, and, oh, how easy it was to smile when he smiled and to forget that anything else existed.

'Anyway, now that we're friends again,' he nudged her playfully with his elbow, 'you can finally visit the Undercroft.'

Aurélie shook her head. 'No, I told you -'

'Yeah, yeah, it's cold and dark.' He rolled his eyes. 'Which is why I made you this.'

Sebastian's pockets had been enchanted to hold more than they should, and she watched with amusement as he began extracting a variety of objects from their seemingly bottomless depths: a small black notebook, several quills of varying size and quality (most of them broken), a loose handful of Every Flavour Beans (all green-flavoured), scraps of parchment, three wiggenwald potions (half empty), a golden snitch, and a small white owl feather which he promptly snatched up and secured in his breast pocket.

Finally, with a triumphant aha!, he extracted a small jar full of dancing blue flames.

'You hate the cold,' he declared proudly, 'so I made you this.'

The jar was as warm as she'd expected, but it was the heat that bloomed through her chest and over her face and all the way down to her toes that surprised her most; warmth that stemmed not from enchanted blue flames, but from friendship, from being cared about, worried over. Like sinking into a warm bath, she felt it seep through her skin to settle into parts of her that hadn't felt warm in months.

Aurélie's throat tightened, and there was a pressure building behind her eyes, and she was very grateful that Sebastian was too busy reorganising his pockets to notice just how tightly she was clutching the jar.

When he finally looked up at her, his smile dissolved into a frown.

'Are you alright? What's wrong? Don't you like it? They're bluebell flames,' he explained in a rush. 'I've never conjured them before, they're probably not the best, and it took me ages to perfect the spell and I almost set my bed on fire about a dozen times, but -'

'No, it's - I just -' She swallowed down the hard lump in her throat. 'How do you do that?'

'Ah!' Sebastian's eyes lit up. 'Well, it's quite difficult, actually. See, the challenge lies in conjuring the blue flames instead of actual fire, which -'

'No, no, not the bluebells, I mean - how do you go from being completely unbearable one moment to... rather nice the next?'

'Oh, that,' he shrugged. 'It's a gift I've been honing my whole life. Anyway, now that you've got portable light and warmth,' he said, nodding at the jar clutched to her chest, 'you can come back to the Undercroft.'

A small warning bell sounded in her mind: Sebastian isn't good for you. Sebastian isn't good for anybody.

And yet, now that she was here with him, laughing and warm, she found that Ominis' threats were rather hard to believe.

In fact, it all seemed a bit silly, really.

This time, Aurélie didn't refuse Sebastian's invitation to the Undercroft, and when his answering smile broke across his face like the dawning sun, she couldn't help but return it in full.

She took the memory of it to bed with her that night, his jar of bluebells a small, warm spot against her heart.

Chapter Text

Aurélie's first month at Hogwarts washed away in sleety rain and blustery winds as grey September became auburn October, and though the jar of Sebastian's bluebell flames was a comfort in her pocket, keeping her fingers warm in the Thestral stables with Poppy, and brightening the dim corners of the library when she studied late, Aurélie had steadfastly avoided meeting him in the Undercroft, fearing that sharing the seclusion of his secret place together would only make things harder when she ultimately went back to France.

No more goodbyes, she had to remind herself time and time again. It'd been hard enough leaving her friends in France for only a year; saying goodbye to new ones forever was simply unbearable.

Still, when an owl arrived in her dorm one Saturday morning bearing a letter from the world's most persistent Slytherin, she couldn't suppress the warmth that bloomed like bluebells through her chest.

No more goodbyes, no more goodbyes.

Sebastian's handwriting was not the untidy scrawl she'd expected, but a surprisingly elegant script for somebody who embodied so much chaos. His owl, on the other hand — a rather handsome but aggressive tawny — refused her owl treat when she offered it, shrieked at her once and cuffed her across the head with its wing as it took off. So there was that.

'Frenchie,' began the letter, and Aurélie rolled her eyes.

'If you're still interested in joining the extracurricular study group I mentioned back on your first day' — Aurélie snorted at this, vividly remembering the day he'd invited her to join his unsanctioned duelling club, — 'meet me at the statue of the confused unicorn on the third floor in an hour. Tell nobody, and come alone!' — This he underlined several times. — 'If you happen to get stopped on your way there, just say you're lost. Ominis tells me he's already rescued you half a dozen times wandering about the far-reaching corners of the castle, so at least the excuse will be believable.

Destroy this letter.'

Aurélie groaned as she set the letter aflame with her wand; even in writing, she could hear the teasing lilt of his voice in every cursive loop, envision his roughish grin as he'd penned the letter, his freckled face full of wry amusement.

She leapt to her feet, grateful that the empty dorm granted her the freedom to grumble aloud without one of her roommates sticking their noses in for fresh gossip about her so-called boyfriend.

Who did he think he was to summon her on short notice? To assume she had nothing better to do than hunt down one specific statue in a castle full of statues simply because he owled her? The sheer audacity had her stewing as she snatched her hairbrush from the nightstand and dragged it roughly through her hair.

And yet, despite her frustration, she dressed in her favourite blouse, finished her braid with a blue silk ribbon, and secured his bluebells in her pocket as she set out to track down a statue of a confused unicorn, the existence of which she half expected to be some kind of prank.

Forty-five minutes later, out of breath and inwardly cursing every square inch of Hogwarts' nonsensical floor plan, she finally managed to find the stupid statue against which stupid Sebastian Sallow was waiting for her, his arms crossed and his expression one of utmost impatience.

'You're late,' he said curtly, not even bothering to uncross his arms as he pushed away from the wall. 'I told you not to get lost again.'

Aurélie shot him a severe look, her patience wearing dangerously thin after having traversed what felt like the entire castle to meet him.

'Oh, yes,' she snapped at once, 'because I went off and got myself lost simply to be contrary to you!'

'Wouldn't surprise me.'

'It's these portraits!' she exclaimed, throwing her hands out to her sides. 'They play tricks on me! I asked for directions to meet you here and they all pointed me to the dungeons!'

'The dungeons?' he said with a smirk. 'Again?'

'Yes, again!'

Sebastian pressed his lips together, evidently holding back a laugh. Donned in a cream knit jumper and brown trousers, the tall Slytherin looked simply so grown up that one might've easily mistaken him for an older brother come to visit a sibling, someone who ought to be done with silly trifling things like homework and exams and secret clubs. And with shoulders like that...

'Well, you must be asking the wrong portraits,' he said with a slow infuriating smile.

Aurélie tsk'd impatiently. 'You know, if a portrait at Beauxbatons gave such cheek, it'd be packed up and shipped out so fast its rude little head would spin! And we'd certainly never allow a poltergeist to take residence, and our staircases do not move!'

Sebastian's grin only grew as he listened to her furious diatribe. 'Beauxbatons doesn't sound like much fun,' he observed, his tone full of mirth.

'Beauxbatons is plenty fun!' she shot back, swiping her hair out of her eyes with an impatient huff. 'What's fun about getting lost every time you step outside your common room? Oh, stop laughing at me!'

'Sorry, sorry,' he said, raising his hands placatingly. 'You know, you sound much more French when you're angry.'

'Yes, I know! My French side is my angry side!'

She swiped her hand across her face and sighed.

'It's my mother's temper,' she explained. 'She only ever spoke to me in French, which meant I was always scolded in French too; I suppose it... had an impact on me somewhat.'

Had her mother been around to witness the illicit activities she was about to partake in, Aurélie knew the scolding would have been particularly French. Her father on the other hand, who'd embodied the more chaotic side of Hufflepuff, would've thought a duelling club run by a duo of rebellious Slytherins quite a thrilling adventure - though he'd have been loathe to ever mention it to his wife.

'My English side just wants a cup of tea and a nice place to sit,' she said wistfully, 'but apparently that's impossible at this school.'

'Well, you're not likely to find tea and comfort at a duelling club,' said Sebastian in a much softer voice, 'but I can help you with your awful sense of direction. Here, take out your wand.'

Ignoring her vehement protestations that her sense of direction was just fine, thank you, he taught her a simple spell that would point her wand true north.

'There. Once you know the layout of the school a bit better, you'll know which direction to head in,' he said patiently. 'Now, c'mon, I won't hear the end of it from Ominis if we're any later than we already are.'

Hurrying to keep up with his long strides, she followed him down a series of long corridors and winding staircases until they arrived in the very same dungeons she'd just come from.

'Yeah, yeah, knew you wouldn't be impressed,' he muttered, catching sight of her withering glare as he pushed open a nondescript door in the stone wall; but as he stood aside to let her pass, her jaw fell open, silencing whatever sarcastic quip she might've been about to give him. Whatever she'd been expecting from an illegal duelling club, it certainly wasn't something so, well - impressive.

'Welcome to Crossed Wands,' Sebastian grinned.

The room was as tall and spacious as any other she'd seen at Hogwarts, with rough stone walls and ancient candelabras hanging from vaulted ceilings, but there was an air about the place that felt as if no professor had ever stepped foot past the threshold.

Watery autumn sunlight filtered through tall narrow windows, glinting off a nearby glass cabinet full of oddities and casting prisms of light over several battered and charred training dummies along the far wall. Piles of large, squashy pillows were stacked haphazardly about, some grouped in front of towering wall-to-ceiling bookcases, while others were arranged in twos or threes by the sun-brightened windows.

Before them, a dozen or so students were assembled in a semi-circle, their wands drawn but held loosely at their sides. In its centre stood Ominis Gaunt, looking as stern and fed-up as he had in the music chamber, his shiny Head Boy badge pinned to his chest in an ironic display of responsibility that he clearly was not upholding. His gaze shifted ever so slightly to where she and Sebastian stood by the door as if he could sense their presence in the room, his gaze omnipotent and unsettling. Eager to avoid his wrath, Aurélie focused her attention instead on the well-stocked bookshelves and wondered how on earth a room like this went unnoticed by the faculty.

'The door we just came through is enchanted,' Sebastian told her in an undertone, answering her unasked question. 'Unless you've explicitly been told about the club by Ominis or myself, it looks like a blank stretch of wall. That's why nobody's ever discovered us here before.'

'Really?' She turned to him, impressed. 'Who came up with the enchantment?'

'Me,' he shrugged. 'It wasn't too difficult, but it took a few goes to get it right. The first time I cast it, I turned the entire length of the wall into doors. Took me ages to find the real door again.'

A few members of the group cast them cursory glances as she stifled a laugh behind her hand; most of them were Slytherins - unsurprising, given the secretive nature of the club - but there were several staunchly-built Gryffindor's, a solitary Ravenclaw boy whose panic-stricken expression suggested he'd stumbled in by accident and was trying to figure out how to leave, and, standing apart from them all, was little Poppy Sweeting.

'Poppy's here?'

'Never missed a session, the little maniac,' replied Sebastian, chuckling as the maniac in question grinned over at them, bouncing on the balls of her feet.

'Go on, I'll check in on you later,' he murmured. 'I do believe I promised to teach you some fun spells, did I not?'

Poppy beckoned her over with an excited wave, her face positively beaming with excitement.

'You're here!' she exclaimed the moment Aurélie was in earshot. 'Sebastian invited you, I suppose? Oh, I so wanted to ask you to join, but we're not supposed to talk about Crossed Wands to anyone who isn't already a member.' She lowered her voice as Ominis stepped forward, silencing the room with a rather severe look. 'Anyway,' she went on in a whisper, 'I didn't think you were speaking to Sebastian.'

'I wasn't,' Aurélie whispered back.

'But?'

'But now I am,' she shrugged.

Ominis, in his usual disdainful fashion, greeted the room at large with a haughty sneer, while behind him, Sebastian leaned against the wall with all the nonchalance of someone about to partake in a book club meeting, not oversee a duelling match. He caught her eye and wiggled his eyebrows. Her heart flipped as she grinned back.

'Welcome to another season of Crossed Wands,' said Ominis in a tone that suggested he'd wish they'd all go away. 'I trust you've all signed your names to the members list?'

At this, Aurélie cast a questioning glance over at Sebastian, who returned it with a small shake of his head. She frowned; she certainly hadn't signed her name to any list.

'Good,' Ominis nodded. 'For those who don't know, or those who might need a prudent reminder, the member's list has been jinxed. Speaking about Crossed Wands to anyone other than a fellow member will result in very obvious disfigurement of the face that I doubt even Nurse Blainey knows how to cure.'

Sebastian raised his brows at her as if to say that's why, and she inwardly endeavoured to sign her name to the stupid list if it was the last thing she ever did. Sebastian, as if he knew precisely what she was thinking, rolled his eyes.

'New members may only be invited by myself or Sebastian. If you wish to invite a new member, requests must be made in writing to either of us. If approved, we will personally extend an invitation to the potential new member ourselves.'

One of the Gryffindor's - a tall, broadly built boy with a rather disproportionate jawline - cast an unfavourable glance in Aurélie's direction.

'So who invited the Frenchie, then?' he sneered.

Sebastian straightened. 'I did,' he said without missing a beat. 'Why? Do you have a problem with that, Abbott?'

A cloud of palpable excitement arose from the watching crowd; hands twitched eagerly for wands, Poppy bounced on the balls of her feet, her little fingers digging into Aurélie's arm, and from somewhere at the back of the room, someone exclaimed, 'I'll bet two galleons on Sallow!'

Sebastian, however, who didn't so much as flinch when the Gryffindor raised his wand, was stoic in his displeasure, straight-backed and stiff, not a single twitch betraying his contempt but for the slightest tightening of his jaw.

Aurélie looked on helplessly, knowing all too well what brewed beneath that calm exterior.

'Gosh,' Poppy breathed, her wide eyes darting between the two, 'he's rather protective of you, isn't he?'

For a long tense moment, nobody made a move.

'Try it,' Sebastian urged, unblinking. 'Go on.'

Aurélie's arm was just starting to go numb under Poppy's grip when finally, to the very obvious disappointment of almost everybody in the room, the sneering Gryffindor conceded defeat under the unwavering glare of his opponent.

'No need to get your knickers in a twist,' he mumbled, with an unconvincing try at indifference. 'I was only having a laugh.'

But Sebastian did not take his eyes off him; not when Ominis called the group to order, nor when he had them split off into pairs to practise disarming, and it was only when Poppy tugged her over to a relatively quiet corner by the sunlit windows that Aurélie finally released the breath she'd been holding.

Rather protective was an understatement: Sebastian Sallow was going to be the death of her.

'Oh, I've been looking forward to this all term!' Poppy, undeterred by overzealous Slytherins, whipped her wand out with a flourish.

Aurélie couldn't help but laugh.

'I didn't take you as an avid dueller,' she commented. 'How did you even end up here? Did Sebastian invite you, too?'

'Ominis, actually, back in our fifth year. I think he was lonely.'

Over at the far end of the room, Ominis was glaring up at the ceiling, arms crossed firmly across his chest as Sebastian whispered urgently into his ear. If Ominis was lonely, she thought, it was likely a deliberate choice.

'He started coming down to the Kneazle enclosures, back in fifth year. Always alone, he was.' Poppy told her, her voice tinged with empathy. 'I think people underestimate him because he's blind, but he's got this sixth sense, you know? Nothing gets past Ominis.' She smiled then, a soft thing she usually reserved for her beloved Beasts. 'He even managed to win over Highwing's affections, even though he couldn't make the proper eye contact needed to initiate the first meeting. Highwing just trusted him immediately.' She trailed off, and then, as if suddenly remembering herself, raised her wand with renewed vigour. 'Disarming spell incoming!'

'Er, Highwing?' Aurélie deflected Poppy's cast easily enough, even without the warning.

'Oh, sorry, I keep forgetting you're new. Highwing is my pet Hippogriff. Alright, now you disarm me.'

'A Hiffogriff? What, like as a pet?' Aurélie kept her wand at her side.

'Oh, yes!' Poppy's eyes widened. 'I rescued her years ago from a group of poachers. She lives here at the school. Have you much experience with Hippogriffs?'

With all thoughts of duelling forgotten, Poppy told her about Highwing the Hippogriff; how she'd saved her from poachers in her fourth year and become fast friends. Aurélie, in turn, told her about Neige, the first friend she'd made after her parents had moved them to France when she was eight; the unicorn who'd gifted her the tail hair in her wand, who'd kept the loneliness at bay in a strange country she didn't know. But when she got to the part when her magic manifested and Neige had become fearful of her, her happy memories turned once more into regrets, and she became pensive, quiet.

'Bit hard to practice duelling when you've both put your wands away, don't you think?'

Sebastian had evidently been enjoying duelling club far more than the two animal lovers had; cheeks flushed and eyes bright, his knit jumper had long been discarded and his shirt sleeves were pushed up to his elbows, but there was something beyond his appearance that held her attention captive, a sense of exuberance she'd not seen on him before, a brightness in his eyes that shone right through her creeping sadness and made her feel light again.

'Oops,' she said with a sheepish grin.

'Oops,' he agreed, smiling as he folded his arms across his chest, his sparkling gaze lingering on hers.

Poppy, ever the observant Hufflepuff, cleared her throat. 'I'll, uh, just partner up with Andrew, then, shall I?'

'Go easy on him,' replied Sebastian without looking at her. 'Bit skittish, that one.'

'Having fun?' Aurélie asked him, once Poppy was out of earshot.

Sebastian arched a brow. 'I've been winning, so yes,' he said, fervently. 'Are you having fun?'

'We, er... We got distracted.'

'So I heard.' He sauntered closer, twirling his wand in his hand. 'Fond of unicorns, are you?'

'Fond of eavesdropping, are you?'

'Hard not to with all the twittering going on back here,' he chuckled. 'I don't think I've ever seen you so animated before.'

'Oh.' Her responding laugh was breathy and ridiculous. 'Yes, well, I... I tend to get carried away when I'm excited about something.'

Sebastian quirked a brow. 'Does that come from your French side or your English side?'

She hummed thoughtfully. 'My Aurélie side, I think.'

'Ah. That's the best side.'

'People revere them,' she blurted. 'Unicorns, I mean, for - for their beauty and their magical abilities, but actually, you'd be surprised how funny they are, and stubborn.' She twisted her fingers together. 'They've a wicked sense of humour; very mischievous, too, once they warm up to you.'

'Sounds like someone I know,' he said, giving her a pointed look.

She flushed again, bloody suffocating. 'I'm hardly a unicorn.'

'What are you, then?'

'A Thestral, I suppose.'

'A Thestral? Nah, you're far too pretty.'

Aurélie blinked.

Sebastian blinked back.

'I mean -' he fumbled with his wand, '- not that Thestrals aren't pretty, they're just not very pleasant to look at. Not that I think you're unpleasant to look at, because you're the opposite, actually -' his eyes widened, panic-stricken, '- not that I'm looking at you, I just meant that you - that you're -'

'Shall we duel?'

'Yes.'

With a short, slightly frantic nod, Sebastian wordlessly conjured a training dummy from across the room.

'Right, yeah. So, um, Confringo,' he said as the dummy came to a rough stop a few meters away. 'It's a long-range fire spell. Good for offensive work, which you are terrible at.'

With a determined set of his chin, Sebastian pushed his hair back from his eyes and launched into a detailed rundown of his favourite spell, lecturing her in much the same way Hecate did in their Defense classes: focused, thorough, and with a certain reverence for combat spells that bordered on being a bit obsessive. Only, Hecate's voice wasn't nearly as pleasant to listen to as Sebastian's, nor was she a tall, broad-shouldered Slytherin boy with lovely freckles and nice lips who'd just called her pretty...

Needless to say, Aurélie's first attempt at casting Confringo was a complete failure.

Sebastian was unimpressed.

'No,' he said sternly. 'Your movements are wrong; you're flailing all over the place.'

'I do not flail!'

'Here.' He slipped his wand into his robes with a sigh and gestured for her to come closer. 'May I?' he asked, reaching for her arm.

'May you what?'

He rolled his eyes. 'May I have your hand in marriage,' he said sarcastically. 'I want to show you how to cast properly.'

'Oh.'

He positioned himself beside her, his arm pressing along the length of hers as he gently took her elbow.

'First of all, relax,' he said, his voice low in her ear. 'You're too tense.'

Aurélie froze.

Sebastian sighed, exasperated. 'Do you enjoy doing the opposite of everything I say?'

'Yes, actually, it's my favourite thing in the world.'

His low chuckle danced across her cheek and tingled down to her toes. She swallowed audibly.

'Well, if you just relax,' he said, his voice lowering, 'this will be much more enjoyable for the both of us.'

Aurélie almost dropped her wand.

'As I said...' Sebastian's hand trailed down her arm, lifting her wrist, adjusting her grip with gentle fingers. 'You're flailing too much. You're trying to conjure fire, not prancing around a maypole. Your arm -' he gently squeezed her wrist, '- is coming out too wide. It's more of a flick at the end, not a wave. See? Like this.' He guided her arm through the movement, his free hand resting on her shoulder to keep her close. Across the room, Poppy had abandoned her duelling practice with Andrew and was grinning over at her so suggestively that for the first time since she'd arrived in Scotland, Aurélie felt hot.

'Keep your elbow close to your waist.' Sebastian readjusted her position. 'Like this.' His voice dropped an octave still, until, like the last key on a piano, it struck something deep and resonant inside her.

'Yes?' he whispered.

Aurélie nodded, breathless.

'Good.' He lingered a moment longer, his fingers just barely brushing along the curve of her waist before finally stepping away.

'It also helps if you channel some anger into it,' he suggested, his signature smirk returning in full. 'Makes the spell more potent. Imagine the combat dummy is a portrait who just gave you wrong directions.'

'Haa haa.' Trying to imagine anything but Sebastian's hands on her, she took aim at the dummy, raised her chin determinedly, and, with an embarrassingly shaky voice, said, 'C-confringo.'

When nothing happened, Sebastian's eyebrows crept slowly upwards.

'Your accent is making it weird,' he said finally.

'My accent is not weird!' She lowered her wand with a huff of frustration.

'I didn't say that, I said your accent is making it weird. You're putting too much emphasis on the end. It's Con-frin-go.'

'That's what I'm saying!'

'No, you're saying con-fring-go. Confring is not going anywhere.'

'But -'

He stepped closer. 'Your French side is showing again.'

Aurélie pursed her lips. 'Believe me, you haven't seen my French side yet,' she said under her breath.

Sebastian's grin almost split his face. 'Do you want to learn the spell? Or would you rather argue with me all afternoon? Because quite honestly, I'm happy to do either.'

Scowling, she crossed her arms and bit back the retort she longed to throw at him.

'Good,' he said, correctly interpreting her begrudging silence as consent to continue. 'Now, let's try it again. It's Confringo. Try to say it less like a Frenchie and more like a Brit.'

Grinning, he took a very deliberate step away from her, gestured at the dummy, then shielded his eyebrows with his hands.

'Safety precaution,' he said in response to her questioning look. 'My eyebrows have fallen victim to Confringo one too many times.'

'Wait, what? Sebastian, I don't want to lose my eyebrows!'

'You'll be fiiine, they'll grow back.'

She threw him a fleeting look of distress, covered her eyebrows with her free hand and, trying to sound as British as she could, conjured not the powerful jet of fire she was trying for, but the world's most pitiful poof of steam.

A moment of silence passed between them, and then Sebastian was laughing, his wand clattering to the ground as he bent over double.

'What was that?' he gasped, laughing so hard he could scarcely draw breath. 'That was like a baby dragon burp!'

At first, her laughter came out like drips from a leaky tap: slowly, and then all at once. Next moment, they had both lost all composure, laughing themselves silly amid the chaos of Crossed Wands.

How strange it felt to laugh again — but, oh, how nice.

'On the bright side,' Sebastian went on, wiping tears of mirth from his eyes, 'at least you've still got your eyebrows.'

Chapter Text

Sebastian had to admit to himself, as he sat on the sofa in the Undercroft, sweating, and in a mild state of undress, that perhaps he'd gone a little overboard in his pursuit to banish every chill draught from the underground chamber; the over-abundance of enchanted candles, torches and flaming braziers, which had all seemed a good idea at the time, now felt a bit excessive given his sweat-dampened shirt and sticky skin.

Still, despite his tendencies to overdo everything, there were two traits he possessed that he was quite proud of. The first was his determination to never back down from a challenge, no matter how difficult, puzzling or French it was, and the second was fire: Confringo, Bombarda, bluebells, and now, apparently, enchanted flames that were so magically potent he couldn't extinguish them no matter how hard he tried. Come summer, the Undercroft would be sweltering, but it'd be worth it if it meant finally having some company again in the lonely, underground room.

It'd be worth it for her.

He almost hadn't come to the Undercroft that evening; having stayed late volunteering in the hospital wing - as he did as often as his busy schedule allowed - it was so far past curfew by the time Nurse Blainey dismissed him that not even his special permission to be out late would've saved him from detention had he been caught.

Besides that, he was sure he'd only find the Undercroft empty again; as it had been since he'd gifted Aurélie the bluebells; as it had been since Anne had died and Ominis had distanced himself; devoid of life save for his collection of semi-sentient books that sometimes moaned and shrieked from their stack in the corner. Sebastian thought those books ought to be grateful that they were no longer locked away on some dusty shelf in the Restricted Section - but then, evil books probably weren't ever grateful about anything much at all.

Still, despite the late hour, the potential for another week of detention, and the fact he still had a veritable mountain of homework to complete, he'd found himself headed not to the Slytherin common room for sleep, but to the Undercroft's concealed entrance, hoping against hope that if the room below was empty, that at least he wouldn't find it on fire.

When nothing but disappointment and hot musty air greeted him, he settled himself on the lumpy sofa and sought distraction in his new favourite pastime: scouring his forbidden books for mentions of Ancient Magic.

So far, his search for literary evidence of Aurélie's gift had yielded little success, but there were hints here and there that stoked his obsessive need to know more: Hogwarts, a History gave a passing mention of the school being a "stronghold of Ancient Magic" (as if that in itself wasn't worthy of several chapters), while another briefly mentioned the process of imbuing "impervious dragon hides with ancient magic" but gave no further instruction as to how or why one might do such a thing. According to his academically-approved textbooks, the rare gift she possessed didn't exist at all, and so, as he had done years before, he'd turned his attention to the books he swore he'd never read again.

The books that got inside his head, whispering promises.

He was just skimming through a particularly grizzly paragraph about soul retrieval when the metallic clang of the lift broke his concentration. He leapt to his feet, heart pounding in his throat, but the name he so longed to speak aloud died on his lips when instead of the red hair and bright eyes he was hoping for, he was greeted by a blinking red light.

'Ominis!'

It had been so long since Ominis had been in the Undercroft that the sight of his sharp, pale features in the dank (though very, very warm) underground cavern was jarring. A stark contrast to Sebastian's crumpled shirt and loosened tie, Ominis was impeccable in both dress and disdain, not a hair out of place as he strode purposefully to where Sebastian stood dumbfounded by the sofa.

'Why is it so hot in here? Sebastian, what have you done?'

'Uh -' Sebastian hastily shoved the book behind the sofa cushions, lest Ominis even sense the malevolent energy radiating from its pages.

'Actually, don't answer that, I don't care. We need to talk,' he said, business-like.

Sebastian shifted uncomfortably. 'Okay.'

Ominis Gaunt had never been a picture of warmth or amiability, but he hadn't always been so cold, either - at least, not toward Sebastian. There'd been a time once when the two friends had spent every moment together, when Ominis had spoken to Sebastian like a friend, not a problem child, and Anne had been the buffer between their respective mood swings and impulsivity. Still, Sebastian supposed any interaction was better than being ignored, even if he was being yelled at.

'My brother sent this to me this evening via express owl,' Ominis said curtly, thrusting a neatly folded copy of the Daily Prophet into Sebastian's hands. 'I think it might interest you.'

Wondering what sort of news would prompt Ominis to appear unannounced in the Undercroft well after curfew, Sebastian unfolded the paper with a sense of growing unease. He frowned at the headline.

Calls to Ban Muggleborns from Hogwarts Shot Down by Minister for Education.

'Well, as he should,' Sebastian muttered, mildly bewildered.

Ominis sighed. 'Page four, Sebastian,' he said, pinching the bridge of his nose.

'Oh, right.'

At first glance, page four appeared as uninteresting as page one, but then a small article squeezed into the bottom corner caught his attention.

Key Witnesses in French Murder Case Attacked in Home.

'Aurélie.'

Sebastian's knees buckled. He sank onto the sofa as words and phrases jumped out at him at random: well-loved Collins' family... murdered in their home in Toulouse... seventeen-year-old daughter at Hogwarts... key witnesses set to give evidence...

Sebastian frowned.

'Hang on.' He flipped back to the front page. 'This is tomorrow's paper. Why did Marvolo send you tomorrow's paper?'

'Not Marvolo, Malific.'

'What's the bloody difference,' Sebastian ran his hand through his hair, scanning the article again. 'They're both as bad as-'

'You are well aware,' Ominis cut in, 'of my family's ties to the editor of the Daily Prophet. They are always forewarned of any news that concerns them, no matter how ambiguous that news may be.'

'News?' Sebastian stood up again, paper clutched tight in his clammy hands. Something niggled in the back of his mind, a nagging memory he couldn't quite recall, but between his heat-addled brain and the shock of seeing his best friend in the Undercroft again, his ability for coherent thought was severely diminished.

He swiped a bead of sweat off his forehead.

'What has Malific got to do with Aurélie?'

Ominis dabbed at his brow with an embroidered handkerchief. 'Honestly, is there a fire in here? I don't understand why it's so warm.'

'Ominis.' Sebastian crumpled the paper in his fist. 'What has Malific got to do with Aurélie?'

'I don't know, Sebastian, why don't you tell me?'

A heavy pause. Too hot. It was too hot.

'How should I know what your brother is up to?'

Ominis made a sound of derision. 'So we're back to this again, are we? Secrets and lies? Evasion? I dare you say you know a lot more about this situation than I do, given how much time you've been spending chasing after her.'

'I'm not chasing after her, I'm helping her!'

'Helping? Helping with what? What on earth could be so important that you spend all your time with a girl you only met last month?'

'I can't tell you,' Sebastian muttered, refocusing his attention back to the article.

The family of four, who were set to give evidence in the Collins' murder case, were attacked in the early hours of Wednesday morning...

'Besides, if we're accusing each other of secrets and lies -'

...escaped with minor injuries...

'- tell me why the fuck your brothers are sending you articles about my friend.'

Sebastian massaged his forehead with his knuckles.

'Friend?' Ominis scoffed. 'I've heard rumours she's your girlfriend -'

' - she's not -'

' - and that you've broken things off with Imelda -'

' - yes, but -'

' - and that she's quite pretty -'

'- for fuck sake, Ominis, I'm not in love with her if that's what you're getting at!' He loosened his tie, gulped for air.

'So you're sleeping with her, then.'

'Oi.' Sebastian took a step forward, tense. 'Ease up.'

Ominis held his ground, too used to Sebastian's outbursts by now to be phased by them. 'Then what? If it's not love or sex, then it must be power you want from her.'

'Fucking hell, is that how little you think of me? That I only want to fuck or fight?'

'You've not given me much else to hope for over the years.'

Sebastian let the insult slide. He paced away, then back, away, then back, his mind racing.

'Why did Malific send this to you?' he finally demanded, brandishing the paper between them. 'What exactly did he say to you?'

Ominis sighed.

'He merely suggested that as Head Boy, I ought to set a good example and extend condolences to her on behalf of the Gaunt's.'

'Condolences? From the Gaunt's?' Sebastian collapsed onto the sofa again, sinking deep into the dusty cushions. 'What, did your family know hers?'

'I never knew them, but considering my family's extensive connections to the purebloods in France, it's not a stretch that they'd be acquainted, even distantly so. But that's beside the point, Sebastian, because if -'

'Hang on, this is going out tomorrow morning?' He suppressed a fleeting urge to set the paper on fire - but only just.

'That is what I said.'

'Shit. Fuck.' Sebastian was on his feet again, pacing across the flagstones, sweat beading on his forehead as he tried to mentally calculate how many morning Prophets were delivered and the likelihood of collecting them all before anybody read them.

The blinking light from Ominis' wand followed him diligently back and forth; the omniscient red eye of a serpent tracking its prey. 'There's no way you'll manage to hide every copy of the Prophet.'

Sebastian scowled. 'Get out of my head.'

'I'm not in your head, you're just predictable.'

'She can't see this. Not like this, she -'

'Sebastian, are you hearing yourself?'

'Yes, I am!' His voice echoed through the room. All this time he'd spent longing to hear the sound of voices in the Undercroft again only for it to be his own fear bouncing back at him, magnified. 'She might not know yet. These people, the ones who were attacked, she probably knows them. She can't see this, can't - can't find out like this, it'll upset her...'

'Upset her? My brothers are sending me cryptic messages in the middle of the night and you're worried about her?'

'Who should I be worried about, then?'

'Yourself!' he shot back.

But Sebastian hardly heard him. 'What time does the paper delivery usually arrive? Wait, what time is it now, maybe I can -'

'Are you being purposely obtuse or did you catch another Bludger to the head?' Ominis stepped in front of him, cutting short Sebastian's anxious pacing with the precision of a striking snake. 'Listen to me.' He spoke slowly now, carefully annunciating each word. 'I do not know why my brothers are interested in her, but they very rarely, if ever, have good intentions for knowing anybody.'

Panic bubbled in Sebastian's chest. He longed to move, but Ominis' close presence kept him firmly in place.

'They want something from her. There's a reason her parents were killed. You know what it is, don't you?'

'I can't.' Sebastian swallowed and looked away. 'I can't tell you. I promised.'

'It doesn't matter what you've promised! If they realise you are a direct link to her, they will not hesitate to exploit that connection. Do you understand what I'm saying?'

Then it clicked: awful, horrible, dreadful realisation.

Two brothers.

Sebastian stumbled backwards.

The brothers won't stop until they have you.

The man in Hogsmeade.

Two brothers.

'Wait.'

The room was spinning. Sebastian fumbled in his pocket for his wand.

'It was them,' he said distractedly. 'Her parents, Hogsmeade, it... it's them...'

Fear launched him into action as one thought drowned out all others: protect her.

Ominis didn't flinch when Sebastian pressed the tip of his wand to his chest.

'Your brothers attacked these people?' he hissed, fear and fury blinding him to reason and logic.

'Put your wand away, Sebastian.' Ominis' calm tone carried an edge of a threat.

'Your brothers killed her parents?'

'I said put your wand away.'

Two boys, once friends, glared at each other; one sightless and cold, blind - or perhaps indifferent - to the fissures growing between their already strained relationship, while the other saw visions of everything good being stripped away from him again, and again, and again: his parents, unresponsive in the cellar; Anne, growing weaker by the day; Solomon, reaching for his wand in anger. Aurélie.

'No.' Sebastian's voice cracked. 'Like fucking hell your brothers are getting anywhere near her. You've got to keep them away from her.'

'No, you've got to keep away from her!'

'Ominis!'

'Sebastian! For once in your life, listen to me! They will destroy you to get to her!'

'So what, then?' shouted Sebastian. He lowered his wand, raked his hands through his hair. 'I'm supposed to just step aside and - and let her fend for herself? Against Malific? Against Marvolo?' He shuddered visibly.

'You're supposed to stay out of Azkaban!'

'And I'm doing that!' he snarled.

'Only because they allow it! What do you suppose they'll do when they find out they can get to her through you?'

'I don't give a fuck!'

Ominis laughed; cold, like a Gaunt. 'You think your refusal will be enough to stop them, do you? That if you ask nicely enough they'll give up their plans for power just to appease you? For crying out loud, they're Gaunt's, Sebastian: power-hungry, ruthless, cruel - and they're desperate. You know my family are in trouble. They're losing their grip on their fortune, their influence. Securing a wife for Malific is proving difficult, and as for me?' He barked a short, humourless laugh. 'Look... The last I heard they were trying to track some wand somewhere, but if my brothers are behind this -' he gestured vaguely at the paper, '- and Merlin knows I wouldn't be surprised if they are, it means it's too late now to stop whatever plans they've put into motion.'

'I'm not scared of them!'

'Perhaps not, but are you scared of Azkaban?'

Sebastian wanted to say no, to laugh bravely in the face of danger, to protect himself with the bravado and tenacity that had once been his armour.

But Azkaban was where he belonged.

Azkaban, a waiting death sentence with his name on it.

'They know your secret,' Ominis pressed on, ignoring his friend's spiralling desperation. 'They are the reason you're not behind bars for the rest of your life. You owe them a debt.'

Sebastian thought he might throw up. He gripped Ominis' arm, hard.

'You - you could talk to them -'

'Don't be so fucking dense.' Ominis wrenched his arm away. 'They'd sooner take advice from a House Elf than listen to me, the untrustworthy son; the runt,' he said bitterly. 'I did all I could to protect you from Azkaban, but I can't protect you from them. Either you sever all ties with her - and I mean immediately, Sebastian, and in a way that will ensure she never finds her way back into your life, or my brothers will force the choice on you later.'

Sebastian's thoughts were racing, possible solutions forking through his mind like erratic bolts of lightning. His freedom was a debt he owed to the cruelest family known to the wizarding world, whose corruption and callous acts of violence were common knowledge but whose influence and power kept them safe from the justice they deserved. They alone had covered up what Sebastian had done in his fifth year - no other family could have kept him from the Dementors clutches. He'd always known he'd have to repay them someday; he just hadn't anticipated that day to come so soon.

He paced again, thinking, thinking. And then a strike of clarity flared, a brilliant illumination through the haze of panic. He lunged for the book, retrieving it from where he'd stashed it behind the cushions.

The books. Knowledge. Answers. He only need find them, and then... And then...

'If you only knew what she can do!' He turned to Ominis, gripping the thick tome like it might keep him from drowning in his fear. 'You don't know the power she can wield... You don't understand...'

He trailed off, searching his friend's face for a trace of the comradery they used to share, for reassurance, support - for anything. But Ominis' expression remained cold, distant.

'She doesn't know about Solomon, does she?' Something close to pity flashed across Ominis' face. 'About Azkaban? About what you did?'

'Of course she doesn't know! How could I ever tell her I killed my own uncle?'

Remorse was not an expression Ominis wore often, but there it was, a rare moment  of pain on his usually inscrutable face. But whether that pain was reserved for Sebastian, or for all the people his friend had hurt, Sebastian didn't know.

'This isn't your problem to solve,' said Ominis, quietly. 'She isn't your responsibility. Just let it go.'

The finality in his tone made Sebastian want to scream, but the heat of his damnable enchanted fire had taken the air from his lungs. Sweat poured down the sides of his face.

'Why can't you just help me?' he pleaded, desperate. 'Just this once, Ominis, help me. Please.'

'I am trying to help you! But once they have their sights set on something, there's nothing I can do to stop them.' He sighed, mournful, then stepped away. 'For once in your life Sebastian, just let it go.'

The last flare of hope in Sebastian's heart flickered, then quietly went out.

Suddenly, there was a screech of metal on metal. The clattering of the lift announced the arrival of another as it rattled down to meet them. Sebastian moved toward it, knowing instinctively who it was even before the grilles slid open to reveal her brilliant red hair and vivid blue eyes.

Aurélie stumbled out of the lift. There was was a letter clutched in one hand, as crumpled as the copy of Sebastian's Prophet, but in the other, tendrils of glowing silver and smokey black magic twisted around her fingers, ensnaring her wrist, snaking up her arm. She was pale - awfully, frightfully pale. 

'S-Sebastian?'

She swayed once on the spot, and then she fell. 

Chapter Text

Misfortune, in Aurélie's experience, had a way of finding her on the tail-end of happiness.

At the age of seven, news of her family's imminent move to France had come on the same day the tooth fairy had left gold under her pillow; at fourteen, she'd been accepted into advanced classes at Beauxbatons only to lose her pet owl that same night; and on the day her magic had awoken, the long-awaited sunflowers in her father's garden had bloomed in time to witness strands of arcane energy bursting forth from her fingertips. Like a stain on her favourite dress, or a detention on her perfectly clean record, so her brightest memories were tainted with a dark spot she couldn't get out.

The latest bout of misery, however, had found her in a more appropriate setting: wrists deep in raw meat, surrounded by snorting, hungry death horses with a Hufflepuff companion whose sweet disposition belied her apparent penchant for chaos; after witnessing Sebastian's performance at Crossed Wands, Poppy fancied herself something of a match maker — much to Aurélie's mortification.

'But he fancies you! You can't honestly tell me you don't see it!' Unafraid of darkness, death omens, or belligerent Slytherin boys, Poppy Sweeting's voice trilled through the shadowy stables and brightened the dark corners like she were light incarnate.

Not for the first time that evening, Aurélie sighed, feigning a disinterest that was becoming increasingly difficult to uphold.

'Poppy,' she said evenly as Sugar the Thestral accepted her meat offering with a horsey snort of delight, 'I think Sebastian fancies all the girls.'

'Noo...' replied Poppy, dragging the word out in a sing-song voice, 'all the girls fancy Sebastian, but Sebastian fancies you.' When Aurélie gave no reaction to this bold declaration, Poppy threw her hands up in frustration. 'Oh, come on!' she implored, startling the nearest Thestral into a series of indignant snorts. 'The way he looks at you? And the way he got all close to you in Crossed Wands? He certainly didn't teach me Confringo that way!' she finished, fanning her cheeks with her hands.

Aurélie turned away, wrestling with the smile that fought to break free across her face. Try as she might to suppress it, the memory of Sebastian's touch glowed as warm as his bluebells in her pocket.

'Well, it doesn't matter even if he does like me,' she continued, picking through the meat bucket for an extra juicy morsel for Sugar, 'which he doesn't. You know I'm going back to France after graduation.'

'But does he know that?'

The question made her stomach twist into knots. 'Of course he does,' she mumbled, avoiding her friends' knowing eye. 'Everyone does.'

'But have you actually told him?'

Suddenly, there was a screech and a rustling of feathered wings as a post owl barrelled into the stable, startling the Thestrals into nervous jitters as it soared toward them. Thankful for the interruption, Aurélie smiled up at the feathered distraction only to yelp a moment later when it flung a letter squarely at her face.

Misfortune had found her again, but this time, as conveyed by her uncle in a concisely worded letter devoid of comfort or sympathy, it had chosen to befoul the lives of the Guillot family.

Long-time friends of her mothers and neighbours to the Collins' since Aurélie was eight, it was Antoine, the father, whose quick intervention had saved her the night of the attack. A retired Auror, as brave as anyone she'd ever known, he'd fought off her attackers and become a key witness to the cloaked figures who'd murdered his dear friends.

And now he was suffering for it.

His family were suffering for it.

If only he'd arrived minutes later.

If only he'd let them take her...

As it always did when danger lurked, tingly magic prickled at the periphery of her trembling form. But there was something else, too, lurking beneath the familiar buzz of her Ancient Magic.

Something darker.

Something wrong.

Beside her, Sugar pawed nervously at the ground, her scaly head thrashing from side to side. No longer interested in the bucket of feed, the contents of which were strewn across the hay where Aurélie had dropped it, the beast backed away from her, whinnying when her hind quarters bumped into the too-small confines of her stall, trapped.

A prickling of cold, scratchy darkness clawed under Aurélie's skin, rattled her rib cage, squeezed her heart.

Even death fears you.

She didn't hear Poppy's cry of alarm nor the frightened baying of the Thestrals as she fled the stables into the cool night beyond — only a voice that reverberated deep within her; like her blood had been given speech; like her bones were talking.

You did this, it said in a voice like black tar and sharp needles. This is your fault.

The world spun beneath her feet.

Stumbling over uneven ground, fighting to contain the tendrils of black and silver that were coiling around her fingers, she headed not for the beacon of light offered by the castle in the distance, but away from it; beckoned not by warmth or sanctuary, but by the darkness that lay beyond — and there she sat, wrapped in the cold embrace of oblivion until the only light that remained came from the blue flames in her pocket.

'Have you eaten?' Sebastian peered anxiously into Aurélie's face, checking her temperature with the back of his hand for the third time in a row.

The first thing she'd noticed upon waking in the hospital wing was the smell: the familiar scent of healing herbs — dittany, mandrake, and wormwood — mingled with the heady, slightly astringent smell of medicinal potions reminded her so strongly of her father's apothecary that for a moment she thought she was back home. The second, slightly more alarming thing to catch her attention had been Sebastian Sallow, whose gentle touch and look of tender concern felt like being home in an entirely different way.

But that had been three days ago, and Sebastian had scarcely left her side since.

'Yes, maman, I have eaten.'

Sebastian rolled his eyes. 'More than half a carrot?'

When she didn't answer, he tutted impatiently but continued his pointless examination unabated: temperature, heart rate, reflexes, blood pressure. Some of these he conducted with fancy little healing spells that shivered pleasantly through her body, while others he carried out with his hands. Those made her shiver, too, but in a wildly different way than his spells.

'Still dizzy?' he asked.

'Not really,' she lied.

'Tired?'

'N-no,' she replied with an eye-watering yawn.

Sebastian heaved an impatient sigh.

'You're as bad as Anne was,' he muttered, reaching for yet another vile-tasting potion she absolutely didn't need, to cure the illness she definitely didn't have, but which he vehemently insisted she drink anyway. At this rate, she was more likely to die of perpetual vexation than succumb to whatever had landed her here in the first place — which, according to Hogwarts finest trainee-Healer-who-thinks-he-knows-everything, had been a burst of destructive energy caused by the long suppression of her natural magic. In other words (and this Sebastian had told her with the smug expression of someone who dearly longed to say 'I told you so' but knew better than to say it to someone on their sickbed), she was showing signs of becoming the Obscurial he'd warned her about during her first visit to the Undercroft.

Aurélie had argued back that it was only stress, and that all his fussing over her was only making it worse, thank you very much, but Sebastian, as usual, was deaf to her remonstrances. Because no matter how she tried to spin it, stress didn't tend to manifest as swirling black tendrils of magic from the fingertips, nor did it usually leave one so depleted of energy that one couldn't stand without fear of keeling over.

Infuriatingly, Madame Blaine — who'd been debriefed on Aurélie's special condition long before the school year began — had wholly agreed with Sebastian's astute diagnosis, as if he were the bloody school matron, and had condemned her to a stint in the hospital wing on a lumpy mattress and a bed that creaked to the high heavens every time she so much as blinked. Now, her freedom lay entirely in the hands of one overzealous Slytherin who panicked at the slightest sign of discomfort.

Not that she was keen to rejoin the school after the terrible news had broken. Even cooped up as she was under the watchful eye of both Blainey and Sebastian, word of her being not only an orphan, but an orphan whose parents had been recently murdered, had spread so rapidly throughout the school that the most audacious among them had started sneaking into the infirmary to catch a glimpse of her, as if having no parents meant she'd suddenly sprouted horns. As a consequence, she'd been moved to a small, private room where she was deprived of both prying eyes and natural daylight and barred from any visitors who weren't first given a thorough debriefing by Sebastian. (Poppy was conditionally allowed in, provided she didn't stay too long or talk too much, but Garreth Weasley had been flatly refused.)

The only exception to Sebastian's scrutiny was Mouse, who, no matter how many times he'd been shooed away by the great overbearing snake that was her warden nurse, came and went from Aurélie's room as he pleased. Presently, the small squeak of a boy was sifting through the mountains of gifted sweets that sat untouched at the foot of her bed, humming to himself; Mouse didn't care who was orphaned or who had horns so long as that parentless-horned-being had sweets to give out.

Groaning as Sebastian pressed his fingers to her pulse point for the tenth time that day, Aurélie squirmed out of his reach and said, 'Sebastian, I'm fine!'

And for the tenth time, Sebastian snapped back, 'You are not fine, you are ill!' as if telling her enough times might make it so.

But she wasn't ill, she was overwhelmed. Three days of being poked at, fussed over and fed potions that tasted of bitter old socks had made her rather irritable, to say the least. When she swatted his hand away with an impatient tut, he only thrust another potion at her.

'Drink this,' he demanded.

She pushed it away. 'I don't want to drink it!' 

Sebastian's expression hardened, his usually complacent nature lost to the darkness of stress and sleeplessness; indeed, with his dark eyes and stubbled chin, he looked as tired as she felt, yet whenever she suggested he get some sleep, he only frowned and vigorously took her temperature again.

'When are you going to start taking this seriously?' he snapped, frustration boiling over as he forced the potion into her hands.

Aurélie bristled and sat up straighter. 'I am taking this seriously!'

'No, you are being petulant and ungrateful!'

'Well, you are being overbearing and rude!'

Sebastian barked a short laugh.

'Yeah, I am. I am overbearing, and I am rude, but even I would have the sense to let the Healer do his job if I were ill!'

'You're not a Healer! And I'm not ill!'

'Merlin, help me,' he groaned, pinching the bridge of his nose, 'you are really testing my — Mouse!'

At the foot of the bed, surrounded by an ever-growing mountain of sweet wrappers, Mouse jumped and dropped a small glass vial he'd extracted from an otherwise innocuous box of Chocolate Frogs. Sebastian snatched it up, glowered at it, then muttered something that sounded suspiciously like Garreth fucking Weasley under his breath before vanishing its contents with a wave of his wand.

Then he turned back to face her.

'You,' he spat, punctuating the word with a sharp jab of his finger in her direction, 'are a stubborn, silly, spoilt girl, Aurélie! You can't stand to be told you are wrong, even when you are — which is most of the time, by the way; very surprising for a Ravenclaw! — and seem to lack enough self-awareness to realise that maybe you're not as smart and all-knowing as you think you are!' — Aurélie's mouth fell open at this, but Sebastian went on undeterred — 'Maybe nobody in France ever had the guts to call you out on your nonsense, but I do! So stop with the attitude!'

Attitude? What attitude?

'Oh!' she spluttered. 'Oh! I see! Well, if I'm so awful, why do you keep coming back, then? Why have you been here every bloody day, suffocating me and bossing me around? Hm? Why don't you,' — she jabbed her finger back at him — 'just leave me alone?'

A small thrill of panic accompanied these words as they left her. Beneath all her frustration lived a small, seldom acknowledged hope that Sebastian would never leave her alone, that he'd never see her as the monster she was, and that he'd keep coming back with his warm eyes and gentle hands even if it were only to call her silly and spoilt.

Gratefully, Sebastian, in what she was beginning to recognise as true Sallow fashion, resigned himself to staying put despite her demands for him to leave, his temper fixed as firmly in place as were his feet on the floor, and not for the first time, Aurélie was grateful for it. If nothing else, his tenacity was dependable.

'You listen to me,' he said, his voice strained. 'Your neighbours were attacked.'

'I know, Sebastian.'

'Their children were attacked!'

'I know, Sebastian!' — louder now.

As if she needed reminding! As if the new addition to her nightmares wasn't already a source of shame and guilt without his bringing it up at every opportunity!

By now, everybody knew it: the Hogwarts professors — Weasley, Hecate, and Sharp — who'd taken grave meetings around her bedside, discussing new safety measures, implementing stricter rules and harsher curfews to confine her to the school grounds; the Aurors and Ministry officials who'd joined them, both French and English, to ask her the same tired questions she'd answered time and time before, to ensure her of the heightened security around those closest to her — all had unanimously agreed that the attack on the Guillot family was dire indeed: after all, Antoine Guillot was an ex-Auror, his wife Marie-Louise a retired Cursebreaker, both talented, formidable opponents in a duel — and yet even they had been set upon, attacked in a vicious attempt to keep them quiet.

'Whoever these people are,' Professor Weasley had told her gently, 'they are ruthless.'

'Powerful, too,' Sharp had agreed, less gently. 'And seemingly unafraid of who they must eliminate to avoid detection. Antoine Guillot was an exceptional Auror in his day, and certainly no less dangerous in retirement.' The professors exchanged dark looks. 'The situation is more dire now than it has ever been before, Miss Collins. You must remain vigilant.'

But Aurélie simply could not face the reality that all the pain and suffering was because of her; she, who'd tried all her life to be so good only to turn out so rotten.

She squeezed her eyes closed, but Sebastian's tirade was relentless.

'There are people out there who want to hurt you — who will hurt you!' he went on fiercely. 'And not just you, but the people close to you; the people you love! And yet, you — the most powerful witch to exist in hundreds of years — do nothing but suppress your magic until it makes you ill!'

Aurélie eyes snapped open, vitriol sharp on her tongue as she said, 'You don't know when to stop, do you?'

Sebastian's eyes flashed, then dulled, the spark of anger flickering and dying between them. She immediately wished she hadn't spoken, for the wounded look on his face was one she hadn't seen before and didn't wish to see again.

'Oh, believe me,' he snapped back, snatching the potion from her hand, 'I know exactly when to stop!'

Had she energy enough to spare, she might've leapt out of bed and explained, pleaded, that she was only scared, not angry — Merlin, she'd even let him take her temperature nine times in a row if it helped! — but all she could manage was a small, plaintive groan as he turned his back to her, his shoulders stiff with tension.

'Sebastian...' she said to his back.

'I have Quidditch practice,' he said in blunt return, and somehow the finality in his voice felt far worse than being shouted at. 'Take your potions and do as Blainey tells you. I'll be back as soon as I can. Mouse,' - he plucked a half-finished chocolate frog from the boys' hands and shooed him off the bed. - 'Visiting hours are over. Out.'

'Don't bother coming back,' she called after him, 'I can look after myself!' But her voice lacked all conviction, and her only reply was a sorry sort of wave from Mouse before the door shut behind them, leaving her with a sinking feeling that no matter how hard she tried to ignore it, misfortune was only going to find her again, and again.

'It's the ghosts you have to watch out for,' Sebastian whispered, his voice reflecting the impish expression she couldn't see, given that he was invisible. 'They tend to glide through the walls just when you think the coast is clear.'

It'd been nightfall by the time Sebastian had returned to the hospital wing, and, judging by how he'd arrived — that is to say, invisible, and with an expression of unadulterated exhilaration not unlike the one he'd worn in Crossed Wands — well after curfew.

Aurélie, of course, had been wide awake and anxious when he'd slipped quietly into her room, and though she'd chastised him about sneaking into a girl's bed chamber in the dead of night, a silly grin had burst across her face at the sight of him. At the same time, Poppy's voice in her memory had asked whether she'd told him about France yet, but she'd shoved that troubling thought away for another time.

'How am I supposed to watch out for the ghosts if I can't see them?' she hissed back, thankful that it was late enough that even the ghosts were absent from the halls. 'Wait - can the ghosts still see us if we're invisible?'

Somewhere to her left, Sebastian laughed.

'We're not invisible, we're under disillusionment. I told you, they're completely different things.'

'Details, details,' she replied, waving a hand she couldn't see through the air. 'If can't see my feet, I'm as good invisible, as far as I'm concerned.'

If she hadn't been virtually imprisoned for almost four days, Aurélie might've had more conviction to stay cross with him. But when Sebastian had returned to the infirmary, bright-eyed and brimming with contagious excitement to claim he had 'something amazing' to show her, she'd only put up a half-hearted argument before giving in.

'What, no endless medical examinations tonight?' she'd teased as he pulled her out of bed.

Sebastian cracked a smile as he steadied her on her feet. 'Why?' he smirked. 'Been enjoying them, have you?'

She smacked his arm.

'Nah,' he went on with a low chuckle, 'those examinations are all useless anyway.'

'Seb-astian!'

After he was certain she wasn't about to swoon into his arms again, he scooped up her robe from the small bedside table and tossed it at her head. 'If there's one thing I learned from looking after Anne,' he grinned, 'it's that a spot of adventure can be equally, if not even more restorative than bedrest and potions.'

But as to what his so-called restorative adventure entailed, he had remained tight-lipped.

'But I'm not supposed to leave the castle grounds!' she'd argued, disentangling the robe from over her face.

'We're not leaving the school grounds.'

'Well, where are we going, then?'

'For a walk,' was his final reply before placing his whole hand over her mouth to silence her. 'Now get dressed.'

Minutes later, they were creeping through the dark halls, cloaked beneath a neat little disillusionment charm of Sebastian's that'd made her squeal with surprise as it trickled down her neck like a raw egg.

Aurélie had never seen the castle after curfew before, but judging by the way Sebastian strode confidently through the darkened corridors, this was not his first foray into delinquency. If she squinted hard enough, she could just make out his grinning countenance beneath the facade of the cloaking charm. They were friends again, it seemed, and for that she was grateful.

'I can't believe you convinced me to do this,' she muttered.

'I hardly had to convince you,' he whispered back, the ghost of his grin gleaming under the still-lit braziers above them. 'Personally, I think you're not as goodie-goodie as you pretend to be.'

As they crept further into the depths of the sleeping castle, she wondered if his abrupt shift in mood from snarky Slytherin to charming Sallow was a result of smashing Quidditch balls around the pitch for half the evening, or whether it was Imelda's special company who'd raised his spirits.

Because regardless of his assurances that their situation was over, Aurélie couldn't help compare the very stark contrast between her small, soft, and, frankly, downright ridiculous personage to that of the lean, muscular, formidable Quidditch chaser who'd previously held Sebastian's attention captive. Clearly, there was something about Imelda that Sebastian valued — none of which Aurélie saw in herself.

Perhaps it was only pity, then, that kept him by her side? Some sense of moral obligation to help her since he'd been inadvertently made privy to her secret? Why else would he bother unless labouring under some illusion of personal responsibility? She'd never asked for his help, yet he insisted upon it in the way one might assist a small, helpless child. Surely, Imelda didn't need babying after a Quidditch injury, nor did she seem the sort who'd shy away from power, if she were capable of wielding it the way Aurélie could.

So why then, if he clearly preferred the company of someone stronger and more capable, did he care what happened to her?

'I thought you were cross at me,' she ventured after a time, having not the nerve to approach the subject directly but not, it seemed, the sense to leave it alone.

Sebastian's invisible hand caught her by the elbow as he checked an intersecting corridor for late night prowlers. Fleetingly, she wondered whether those hands, so warm, so large, had been touching another that night. Aurélie shook herself free of the thought; skulking about after curfew through a school full of ghosts and unsympathetic professors was neither the time nor the place to be picturing that.

'Nah, I was cross at myself,' he murmured in reply, his hand lingering on her arm. 'You were right, though. I don't really know when to stop. When I care about something, I have trouble letting it go.'

'Oh.' 

Like letting go of a so-called mutually beneficial friendship with a teammate?

She worried her lip between her teeth, grateful he couldn't see her face as they crept down a long, doorless corridor.

'I'm am sorry, you know,' he said after a minute, 'about shouting at you earlier.'

'I know. I'm sorry, too, I just -'

A distant echoing bang brought them to an abrupt halt. Sebastian's hand found her elbow again, his grip much firmer now as he held her in place. And still, even as her breath caught and her ears strained for signs of impending detention, Aurélie, like an idiot, thought only of Imelda, and of his hands on her body, caught up together in the thrill of Quidditch practise, sweaty and dishevelled and —

'I think we're alright,' whispered Sebastian, misreading the sudden tension in her body as nerves.

When silence settled around them once more, they breathed a shared sigh of relief — until the sound of hurried footsteps, startlingly close, spurred them into a fresh panic.

'Shit.'

In the face of imminent discovery, Sebastian's disillusionment flickered and gave out. They stared at each other with mirrored expressions of horror as the footsteps drew nearer.

'Here, quick!' he hissed, and before she could protest, he shoved her unceremoniously into a narrow but deep alcove in the wall that housed a statue of four House Elves disguised under a long trenchcoat. Then, with all the grace of a Graphorn trying to squeeze into a broom closet, he wriggled in after her, stepping on her toes, elbowing her ribs and squashing her flat against the wall, all the while grunting a way that made her wonder whether being caught wouldn't be less mortifying than being trapped flat against him. The gap between the wall and statue was narrow, and Sebastian was — well, Sebastian was big.

'Well, this is cozy,' he whispered after a moment, looking flustered but rather pleased with himself. 'Good thing you're so small.'

'Terrible thing you're so — ugh — bloody huge!' she retorted, wedged so firmly between the wall and his body she could scarcely breathe.

'Most girls don't complain about that.'

If she had room to kick him, she would have aimed it squarely at his —

'Shh!'

They listened with frozen breath as  somebody — decidedly not a ghost — made their hasty advance in their direction, until Sebastian, simply unable to stop talking for longer than five merciful seconds, lowered his head to her ear and whispered, 'Bloody hell, Aura, I can actually hear your heart racing.'

Tingles erupted down the back of her arms, her neck, her spine. She held back a whimper, mortified, praying he wouldn't notice the goosebumps over her skin or the sudden heat blazing across her cheeks.

'C-can you blame me?' she managed.

She felt him smile against her temple — more shivers, another embarrassing moan suppressed. 'Don't worry,' he murmured, his voice like warm honey, 'we won't get caught.'

Aurélie hadn't the nerve to point out that her reaction had little to do with being caught and everything to do being so close they were practically sharing breath. She could feel lips near her ear and warm breath on her cheek — if she turned her face up to his, she'd likely kiss him just by sheer proximity alone — and Merlin, he was so tall, and so warm, and — and would it really be so awful if she just — if just once —

As the footsteps drew level with their hiding space, Sebastian breathed a sound of caution, soft lips grazing her forehead. His hands tightened around her waist, drawing her, if possible, closer, closer, until not even a sliver of space remained in which to breathe or think or move — and yet still she leaned into him, hands braced on his chest, fingers curling into his jumper — and his resulting moan was so low in his throat that maybe she only imagined it — and she lifted her face, just a touch, a tiny inclination, until the tip of her nose touched his lips — so warm — and he swallowed, hard, his Adam's apple bobbing in his throat, and then his nose grazed hers —

Sebastian Sallow smelled like pine and ink and parchment; like warmth and woollen blankets and fresh bread. It evoked feelings of being holed up in some secret cozy place together, somewhere with a crackling fire and knitted blankets and walls lined with books; somewhere the cold couldn't penetrate and no one could find them if they didn't want to be found.

Would it really be so awful just to —

Just to —

Someone just beyond the statue coughed. 

Aurélie held her breath, nothing but trembling hands and a racing pulse betraying her concealment behind her statue. Sebastian held her tighter, his own heart thumping against hers.

There was a sniffle. The sound of someone blowing their nose. And then, miraculously, the footsteps were passing. 

In the resulting silence that followed, Aurélie was struck again by the warmth of Sebastian's body, the broad lines of his shoulders, his comforting presence in the face of danger — and found that she suddenly didn't have any desire to move at all, ever again, thank you very much. 

'Alright there?' Sebastian's voice was hoarse even as a whisper, but the amusement in his tone was so clear she couldn't help a breathless laugh in return.

'I hate you,' she mumbled into his chest. 

'Yeah, yeah.' She could feel him smiling into her hair. 'If you hate me so much, why haven't you moved yet?' 

It was with much graceless shuffling and awkward apologies that they finally extracted themselves from the alcove.

Aurélie peered down the now-empty corridor, holding herself round the middle to steady her shaky hands. 'Is it safe, do you think?' she whispered.

'Safe?' Sebastian smiled as he cast another disillusionment over her. 'It's always safe when you're with me.'

Chapter Text

Darkness, in both the literal and figurative sense, was handy for hiding many things one might want to keep shrouded in mystery: secrets, as Sebastian knew from experience, did very well veiled in the darkness of ignorance, while physical objects, like stolen books and mysterious relics, fared much better hidden in dusty corners, stashed under dormitory beds, or even — if desperation called for it — buried in underground caverns where the likelihood of their discovery was slim to none.

Sebastian had always been grateful for the reprieve of darkness, but never more so than after he'd climbed out of that narrow alcove, overwhelmed by the scent of jasmine and fucking roses and the lingering warmth of a small, soft body pressed firmly against his. — Of all the bloody secrets he was trying to keep from coming to light, the physical evidence of desire was not one he'd anticipated.

Thankfully, the source of that desire — who was presently still hidden under his disillusionment as they ventured across the moonlit lawns, still smelling like a fucking flower garden, and still, he imagined, warm and soft and supple — hadn't appeared to have noticed his... predicament. But then again, maybe she had. Maybe the wide berth she was giving him was because he'd practically moaned into her mouth.

Sebastian clenched his jaw, thankful that he'd had the foresight to don his long robe lest his disillusionment charm fail at another inopportune moment.

He was no stranger to girls, of course, nor oblivious to the effects he had on them; there were perks to being taller and older than the other boys in his year, and despite the rumours that abounded about his murky past, he'd never suffered a lack of romantic attention. In fact, if the groups of giggling girls that followed him around were anything to go by, the rumours seemed only to increase his popularity, not diminish it. As such, he'd touched and been touched enough times that if the opportunity with a willing partner presented itself, it wasn't something he generally shied away from.

But by Merlin's nine-inch goatee, this was different. She was different. Girls, generally speaking, were one thing, but Aurélie was... Well, she was —

'She's not Anne, Sebastian!'

'What the fuck is that supposed to mean?'

Hours after he'd rushed a certain Ancient-Magic-wielding-redhead to the infirmary, Sebastian had stumbled back to the Slytherin common room, bleary-eyed with exhaustion and tense with stress, to find Ominis pacing before the fireplace, still dressed in the immaculate black outfit he'd been wearing in the Undercroft and evidently keen to pick up their argument where it had left off. Neither time nor sympathy had tempered Ominis' anger; if anything, the intervening hours seemed only to have sharpened it.

'It means you have a saviour complex!'

Ominis didn't tend to shout, but when he did, his usually composed voice held all the contempt, the fury, and the power of the Gaunt's behind it; a stark reminder of the enemy that Sebastian was facing. Now that Ominis had seen — or rather, sensed — the truth about Aurélie's gift, there was no doubt of his brothers' involvement in the plot against her — for no other family was depraved enough to commit cold-blooded murder in the pursuit of power.

'Why?' said Sebastian wearily, dragging a hand across his stubbled cheek. 'Because I want to help the people I care about?'

'Is that what you call murder and betrayal, is it? Help?'

Too exhausted to deal with another of Ominis' long-winded lectures, Sebastian made to shoulder past him — but Ominis stood firm; somewhere between their fifth and seventh years, the youngest Gaunt had grown taller, stronger. Unmovable.

'Piss off, Gaunt,' snarled Sebastian. 'I wouldn't expect you to understand the concept of sacrifice.'

'Sacrifice?' Ominis' voice cracked with indignation. 'I sacrificed my freedom, my autonomy to call in favours for you!'

'You didn't do it for me, you did it for Anne!'

'Yes! And now she's dead because of you!'

The words hit Sebastian with a force that almost bent him over double. Crack. The fractures in his self control fissured, grew wider — but it was anger, not sadness, that filled the empty spaces his sisters absence had left behind, flooding every crevice, filling every gaping hole, fixing his broken pieces together like glue. Sebastian was always astounded at how deep his stores of anger ran: not even exhaustion of the most acute kind could temper it.

Ominis seized the moment to strike again, as if there hadn't been enough venom in his words the first time around.

'I am in as much my family's debt as you are,' his voice was snake-like again, his pale eyes glowing orange in the firelight, 'and now you're going to ruin it all — the freedom that I bought you, that I paid for with my own — for what? For some girl you don't even know?'

'I know her!' Sebastian's words were rough with the effort it took not to shout them. 'And not just what she can do, I know her! She loves the colour blue, she can't sleep without a light on, she has an affinity with unicorns —'

'Oh, spare me.'

'She doesn't like sweets, she speaks French when she's angry. — And I know that she blames herself for her parents murders! And that she's scared, and alone, and that she trusts me to —'

'Trusts you?' Ominis' nostrils flared. 'The boy who gave his soul to the Dark Arts? The boy who used the torture curse on his best friend for a spell book?'

Sebastian drew himself up; Ominis was taller, but Sebastian was broader — stronger; the only one who'd ever been brave enough to face down a Gaunt.

'I had to use that curse, and you know it,' he said lowly, his eyes locked on the boy whose blindness extended well beyond the realm of vision. 'I did what had to be done to save us.'

'Right, just like killing Solomon in those catacombs had to be done to save Anne!'

'At least I had the guts!' Sebastian grabbed the blind boys' collar. Ominis shoved him back. 'You would have been happy to let us to die down there, just like you were happy to let Anne d—'

'Depulso —'

' — Protego!'

Stumbling back, Sebastian was thrown off-kilter by the unexpected assault. Among the many gifts the House of Gaunt boasted, wandless magic was one of the lesser known of the lot.

'Shut up, Sebastian! — Depulso!'

' — Protego! Fuck, Ominis! Stop!'

'Shut the fuck up, Sebastian! Shut up! Shut —'

'Sebastian?'

He smelled her before he heard her: roses and jasmine blooming in the dark, sweetness jolting him back to the present — and then he felt her, a small hand reaching blindly through the darkness, first grazing his hip, and then his—

Sweet merciful Merlin.

Sebastian practically fell over.

'Fuck.'

'Sorry, sorry, sorry!' The sound of scuffling told him his invisible companion was hastily retreating.

'Was that your — oh mon dieu — I am so sorry, I was trying to find your arm, I didn't mean to —'

But the rest of her mortified outburst was lost to him as she switched abruptly to French; the only thing he understood with certainty — besides her little groans of abject misery — was the emphatic use of the word baguette, which only made Sebastian giggle like he was back in first year making fart jokes with his sister.

'Are you laughing at me?' came her distraught voice from somewhere to his right.

'Yes.' He reached out to stop her before she went running off in the dark, but his fumbling fingers met only cool night air.

'I didn't mean to!' she cried.

'It's fin- '

'I can't see you!'

'Don't wor-'

'I can't even see me!'

'Aura - '

'And it's so disorienting in the dark, I -'

'Aurélie! Shut up!' He cut her off, groping blindly through the darkness. 'Where are you?'

'I'm over here!'

Sebastian rolled his eyes. 'Very helpful,' he muttered.

Squinting, he could just make out where the moonlight caught the faintest edge of her outline; disillusionment wasn't foolproof by any measure, but in the darkness it was almost absolute.

'Stand still,' he warned, tentatively threading the darkness toward her voice. 'Please don't start flailing again.'

He heard her grumble in indignation, but when his fingers found her shoulders, she stiffened and fell silent.

'You alright?' he asked.

'No!'

'It was only my hip,' he lied, never more grateful for darkness and disillusionment than he was now — not only to conceal what his body was doing, but to hide the inarguably more embarrassing matter of his flushed cheeks.

Slytherins didn't blush.

Sebastian Sallow didn't blush.

'I was trying to find your elbow,' she lamented, and the despair in her voice was so endearing that he wanted to pinch her cheeks.

Instead, he tightened his grip on her shoulders — not hard enough to hurt, but just enough that the soft yielding of her flesh beneath his fingers stoked the warmth in his cheeks from simmering heat to burning inferno. He could almost feel the vibration of her heart pounding beneath his palms, even through her thick winter cloak. Merlin, if he wasn't so certain she'd write him the angriest, most impossible-to-translate letter in French and never speak to him again, he'd probably be kissing her right now.

Trying (and failing) not to think about how soft and lovely she'd felt pressed against him, Sebastian traced the outline of her shoulders, following the soft lines of her slight frame down to her elbows; slowly, so as not scare her off, until his fingers grazed over her wrists, her palms, and finally her fingers.

He held his breath, fingertips tingling as they traced lightly over her knuckles, and though he couldn't see her, he could hear the tremble in her breath, feel the tension in her body as his hands sought permission to touch, to hold.

He swallowed — hard. If this was Quidditch training...

But no, this was nothing like his frenzied post-Quidditch escapades, where the goal was only to find relief — and fast; where touching was a means to an end, and the result was not the comfort he so desperately sought but a hollow sort of feeling in his gut. Touching her wasn't frenzied or rushed, but it wasn't hollow, either. It was... slow, measured — like his hands were dipped in honey; a slow-moving molasses that pooled in his chest and spread outwards, languid and thick, from his hands to his feet.

Breathing out a long sigh, he waited for her to snatch her hands away — but the moment never came.

'Yeah, well,' he said, inwardly rejoicing when she turned her palms over to let him thread his fingers through hers. 'You missed your mark by a long shot.'

Aurélie groaned, but there was a smile buried beneath it; he knew it by sound alone.

'Come on.' He gave her hand a gentle tug. 'When we get around the far side of the castle, I'll lift the disillusionment. Just hold onto me — above the waist, if you don't mind,' he added with a grin, wondering where he found the fortitude to speak so calmly when every nerve in his body was on fucking fire with the urge to pull her closer. — But then, he'd always been that way: able to adopt a calm demeanour in the face of someone else's panic, stoic when he ought to be screaming, still when everyone else ran. It was his gift, the ability to look the unknown in the face and stand firm; the ability to face her and take her hands when he was so afraid she'd pull away.

A waxing moon, not quite full, served as their guiding light across the grounds, making the trek easy to navigate as they skirted around the Quidditch pitch, down past the Thestral stables and toward the far-reaching fringe of the Forbidden Forest.

'Sebastian, where are we going?'

'You'll see.'

Over the years, Sebastian had snuck out of the castle for all sorts of thrilling and adventurous reasons. Granted, by the time Anne had been cursed and Solomon had banned him from seeing her, most of those reasons had become the nefarious endeavors of a Dark Wizard in the making — or so Ominis had put it. And indeed, never had the Restricted Section of the library been frequented as often as when Sebastian Sallow had prowled its dusty aisles night after night, nor had the secrets beheld in the catacombs beneath Feldcroft been as thoroughly explored until he'd arrived in desperate search of answers and mysterious relics.

But in the early days, after he and Anne mastered the disillusionment charm in their first year, sneaking about had been nothing but a thrilling adventure, a test of daring nerve and magical prowess — in other words: plain and simple fun.

Together, the twins of chaos and their reluctant blind friend had galivanted off to the Forbidden Forest to search for shrivelfigs in the moonlight, or trekked to the top of the astronomy tower, where Ominis had grumbled about the cold and the twins had tried their best to describe the constellations. One time, well past midnight in the dead of winter, Anne had jumped in the Black Lake simply because Sebastian had teased her about being afraid of the Giant Squid. (Sebastian, being secretly afraid of the lake since he'd fallen in during the inaugural boat ride across it in his first year, had stayed firmly on land.)

But he didn't sneak out much any more; without Anne, he hadn't a reason.

Until now.

The sense of freedom was dizzying. If ever there was a time that Anne's presence might be with him, she was surely here now, alive again with the spirit of mischief.

Aurélie's hand was still in his when he lifted the disillusionment charm a short time later, and it remained so until they reached the edge of the forest, where, upon approaching the crooked treeline, she stopped dead in her tracks and pulled it out of his grasp.

'Sebastian, no.' Her wide eyes darted between him and the forest, where the shadows of ancient trees stretched long and jagged across the moon-soaked landscape. 'We're not going in there, are we? Professor Howin says the Acromantula problem is getting worse.'

Sebastian snorted. 'So?'

'Giant spiders, Sebastian,' she said in a tone that suggested he was a bit daft. 'They're giant.'

'And you're the most powerful witch in existence,' he replied, striding on without a backwards glance. 'Not even the biggest, dirtiest spider would stand a chance against you.'

With every step closer to his destination, Sebastian's nerves jangled with anticipation; but he was just now realising, with a creeping sort of dread, that dragging her out of her sickbed in the middle of the night to look at something shiny may have been a wee bit impulsive. Would she appreciate the surprise he had in mind? Or was there another very French cold-shoulder coming his way?

Aurélie shuddered as she caught up to him.

'But that's not the point!' she moaned, clutching his arm as they skirted around the base of an enormous oak.

'That's exactly the point,' he replied, flexing his bicep a bit. 'You, of all people, shouldn't be afraid of anything.'

'Well, jokes on you, because I'm afraid of everything!'

Sebastian waved a dismissive hand through the dark. 'You and I are going to change that.'

'Sebastian!' She stopped again, exasperated. 'If you've dragged me all the way out here to make me fight giant spiders!'

'Sshh! You'll scare them!'

'Scare what?' Her voice jumped several octaves. 'The spiders?'

'Not spiders, you moon mind.' He took her by the shoulders again, but instead of fulfilling his fantasies by drawing her closer, he whirled her around to face the opposite direction. There, by the edge of the forest, was a makeshift pen. And in it, huddled by the fenceline with their heads bent together, were the Unicorns he'd seen Howin and co bringing in after Quidditch training — two bright spots against a dark landscape.

'Unicorns?' Aurélie spun around to face him, eyes bright. 'You bought me unicorns?'

Sebastian had hardly slept a wink in the days that followed Aurélie's admittance to the infirmary; her alarming appearance in the Undercroft had sent him spiraling into an endless loop of study, worry, study, worry. The blissful reprieve of sleep, already so elusive to him, had been kept at bay by the light of his wand as he tore through book after book, his neck stiff from hunching over ancient texts all night, his eyes strained and bloodshot.

But in this moment, as she beamed up at him — actually beamed for once! — he felt absolutely certain the memory of it would keep him energised for the rest of his life.

For once, he'd actually done something right.

'Well, not me personally,' he clarified, rubbing the back of his neck. 'Howin and some of the other professors brought them in earlier... I spotted them after Quidditch practise... Heard you telling Poppy about how much you love them, and...' He cleared his throat. 'I just thought you'd like to see them, after...'

Aurélie whirled back around, her eyes ablaze with a brightness he'd never seen in them before. Free from the shadows that usually darkened her brow, her radiance fixed him in place, striking him dumb. Was this was a glimpse of the girl she'd been before she came to Hogwarts?

'There are two of them,' she observed.

'Yes.'

'Perhaps Howin wants to breed them?'

'I don't know.'

'Unicorns bond for life, you know. They only ever have one mate...' She trailed off into reverent silence, her hands clasped to her chest, and Sebastian was struck with the realisation that she was not unlike the unicorns; gentle, pure, and good — but immensely powerful, every part of her radiating with a magical potency that surpassed even that of the brilliant creatures before them.

His fingers itched to touch again.

'Do they?' he replied, but he wasn't looking at the unicorns.

'If one of them dies, the other won't survive long afterwards,' she sighed. 'Isn't that so... so...'

'Tragic,' he muttered.

'Beautiful,' she laughed, flashing him a sheepish grin that make his heart wiggle. 'I always thought it was sort of sweet.'

'Do you want to go a bit closer?'

But to Sebastian's surprise, a shadow of doubt flickered across her face. She frowned, shook her head, folded into herself — eight seemingly innocuous words was all it took to kill the light in her eyes.

'I - I can't.' She took a step back, her expression pained. 'I can't do this.'

'Can't do what?'

'We should go back.'

Dumbfounded, Sebastian caught her by the elbow.

'Can't do what?' he said again, more forcefully. 'No, don't pull away from me again. Tell me.'

'The unicorns!' she cried, throwing her hands up. 'The magic! — You!'

'Me?' he echoed, taken aback. 'But I'm trying to help you!'

'Help me with what?' Her voice, suddenly shrill, broke the spell that had previously rendered him speechless.

'Help you control your magic!'

'Why? So I can learn how to k-kill people?'

'What?' Sebastian gaped at her. 'No! So you can learn to defend yourself! So you can be safe!'

'You and I both know the only way I'll ever be safe is if I become as bad as they are!'

They. The Gaunt's. Was this his punishment finally catching up to him? Forced to choose between his freedom or hers? He couldn't  allow it — wouldn't allow it. Without him, she'd never stand a chance against them. And without her...

Without her...

In a frantic bid to salvage the moment, to hold onto the warmth he'd just been basking in, Sebastian took her hands, drew her closer, but she pulled away.

'They'd deserve it!' he said, struggling to control the anger blazing through his veins.

She shook her head. 'Stop it.'

'They would!' he insisted, standing taller. 'For what they did to your parents — to you! They'd deserve it!'

'So that's how you justify it?'

'It's not justification, it's just fucking common sense!' He jabbed a finger at her. 'You're telling me you wouldn't defend yourself if they came back for you? For your friends?'

'Of course I'd defend myself, but killing is —'

'— Sometimes the only option!' he shouted.

Something beyond the tree line took off in fright — a screech and a rustle of wings the only reprieve from the tension that charged the air between them.

With a strangled moan, Aurélie cast her gaze to the sky, hugging herself around the middle. Usually so composed, her hair was unravelling from her braids, robe hanging askew from one shoulder, and under the silvery moonlight, her skin was so pale it was almost translucent — the ghost of a girl. How easy it would be for her to fade away into the night, to slip through his grasp and disappear forever. The thought made something in Sebastian's chest ache and burn and swell all at the same time.

How could he ever leave her to fend for herself? Ominis didn't understand — Ominis, who claimed he loved Anne but had given up on her when things got too hard; Ominis, who didn't know love or family or friendship — not like Sebastian did. For love, Sebastian had gone further than anyone, delved deeper, sacrificed more. Nobody loved like Sebastian loved. Ominis simply couldn't comprehend it.

There was no leaving Aurélie to face this by herself.

There was no leaving her.

Sebastian reached for her. It was instinctive; a reaction borne from a lifetime of reaching for people who were no longer there; a physical need to anchor to another, to reassure himself that he wasn't completely alone in the world. But he stopped himself. Just shy of taking her hand, his fingers hovered in the small space between them, longing to touch, aching to feel.

'There's a difference,' he said carefully, 'between killing in cold blood, and protecting yourself.'

She smiled: a sad, small, lamentable thing.

'But would my soul know the difference?'

Sebastian opened his mouth, but no words came out. He let his hand drop.

No, he wanted to say. Mine doesn't.

But what good would it do to tell her what he'd done when he was trying so hard to make up for it? His past was over, his mistakes already made — but now he had a second chance to make things right.

She wasn't Anne. This wasn't like last time.

'Then let me help you,' he urged, trying to keep his voice steady, his twitching fingers to himself. 'You don't have to do this all by yourself. We'll figure it out together.'

Aurélie made a little sound in the back of her throat, swiped her hand across her forehead.

'What are you going to do?' she said with a watery laugh. 'Follow me around for the rest of my life?'

Sebastian clenched his fists, tightened his jaw, choked back the resounding Yes! that fought to tear from his throat.

For you, I would.

For you.

They were quiet for a long time before she spoke again.

'I don't want you to be involved,' she whispered. 'I can't... If you...' Her voice stuttered and gave out under the weight of her pain. Sebastian, softly, picked up where she had dropped off, one finger reaching out to tentatively to touch the back of her hand.

'I'm already involved.'

Sebastian Sallow had never been one to shy away from pain; it was his job heal it, to fix it, to shoulder its burden for the people he loved. He moved towards hers now, spurred into action by the wobble in her voice — but she got there first, suddenly flinging her arms around his middle with enough force to send him stumbling backwards.

Shocked into a moment of inaction, his hands hovering absurdly in mid-air, Sebastian forgot how to breathe, to think. He couldn't remember the last time he'd been hugged. Surely Anne hadn't been the last? Surely it hadn't been two years since he'd been embraced with any measure of true affection?

Anne, if you're here now, please don't watch this.

And then he held her; squeezed her — jasmine and roses, warm honey.

'What if I'm bad?' she whispered, her voice muffled against his chest.

Sebastian's arms tightened around her.

'You're not,' he said firmly.

'But what if I am?'

On those long, dark nights in his dormitory, after Nurse Blainey had kicked him out of the infirmary, and with nothing but the sound of his roommates' snores to keep him company, Sebastian had laid awake in his bed and thought longingly of the spell book he'd retrieved from the depths of Salazar Slytherin's scriptorium; the one he'd cast crucio on his best friend to get his hands on; the only helpful resource he'd ever found in his pursuit to cure his sister.

It was laughable, really, how quickly he resorted back to the Dark Arts after he'd sworn off them for good. But what other choice did he have when everything else failed him? If Anne hadn't destroyed that book that night in the catacombs, he had no doubt he'd be using it now to arm himself against the dangers he faced. If Anne hadn't destroyed that book, she'd still be alive.

Sebastian was, by definition, bad. But the Gaunt's were worse, and what good was fighting dark forces with the likes of accio and expelliarmus if his enemies knew how to kill, maim, and torture?

Hoping his racing heart wouldn't betray his inner turmoil, Sebastian gently laid his cheek atop Aurélie's head, hugged her tighter.

'I know bad,' he said against her floral hair. 'And you're not it.'

Another beautiful sketch by my talented friend yoshitsuno.

Chapter Text

It may have been the October chill that finally drew her into the underground cavern, but it was the company that'd kept her coming back every day for a week.

Sebastian, who'd been pacing in front of a blackboard for the better part of an hour, was so excited by the obscure reference to Ancient Magic he'd found in an equally obscure old book that he seemed not to notice the heat — or at least, he'd gotten so used to it that his damp shirt and flushed skin no longer bothered him. His sleeves were pushed up to his elbows, tie long-discarded and top buttons askew, and wisps of damp hair were curled around his face in a way that endeared the still-youthful flush of his cheeks despite the dark circles under his eyes.

In spite of the mounting pressures of their seventh-year commitments, Sebastian hadn't wavered in his promise to help her. For a week straight, whether still in his Quidditch uniform, tracking muddy feet across the flagstones, or fresh from the infirmary, his eyes brightened by the thrill of having cured a head cold or mended a broken bone, he came armed with books and parchments and theories that might help them understand the nature of her gift.

Today they'd met earlier than usual, taking advantage of a double free period to squeeze in an impromptu study session before their extracurriculars separated them again.

Aurélie had to admit, watching Sebastian when he was caught up in his studies was quite a sight to behold. Curled up on the lumpy old sofa under the pretence of taking notes, she was free to observe his little unconscious mannerisms: the crease between his brows, the way he bit his bottom lip when he was concentrating —single-minded in the same way she imagined his Ravenclaw mother might've been.

She wondered about his family as she doodled idly on a scrap of parchment. Which of his parents did he take after most? Were his freckles his mothers' or his fathers'? Had Anne possessed the same unruly hair, the same honey-sweetened eyes? And what of his loyalty? His unwavering commitment to help someone in need? Ominis had told her that loyalty was a Sallow trait, but that Sebastian's tenacity took it too far:

When he wants something, he will go to great lengths to get it.

But was that really such a bad thing?

'Aurélie!'

With a little gasp, Aurélie jolted out of her reverie to find a pair of very annoyed brown eyes fixed upon her, their usual warmth made molten by the flickering of ten thousand or more magically potent flames above them; Sebastian had abandoned his frenetic lecture on the theories of Ancient Magic to glare down his nose at her, his arms folded across his chest.

'Are you even listening to me?'

She flashed him a sheepish grin. 'Yes,' she said, gesturing vaguely at her parchment. 'I'm taking notes. See?'

Sebastian took one look at the scruffy-haired stick figure she'd been doodling, made a sound that was both amused and incredulous at the same time, then threw himself on the sofa with a long, exasperated sigh. The deep-set cushions sagged under his weight, tilting him sideways until his arm was firmly pressed against hers, as warm and strong as it had been the night he'd held her.

He made no move to right himself.

'If you're trying to drive me absolutely bonkers,' he groaned, pressing his hands over his face, 'you're doing a very good job of it. Did you listen to a single word I just said?'

Something of Aurélie's resistance had crumbled the night the unicorns bore witness to their moonlit embrace; if not a wall, then certainly a few bricks had fallen away, leaving a hole in her defences through which Sebastian could stick his hand and give her reassuring little pats on the head.

Like a newly adopted cat, Aurélie was wary of this newfound affection - but not entirely adverse to it.

'Are you regretting your offer to help me?' she asked.

His firm and immediate, 'No,' had her barely suppressing a grin.

Perhaps it had been an error in judgement to let herself be drawn to him — if she'd known how pervasive her thoughts about his arms were going to be, she would've thought twice before throwing her own around him that night. Or perhaps she was simply starved of affection, desperate for the comfort of another body to curl into. Whatever it was, Aurélie was tired, and Sebastian was warm, and so — just for a little while — she allowed herself to lean into him.

'Well, you're awfully grumpy,' she commented, drawing two angry little eyebrows on her stick figure's face.

'I'm not grumpy, I just want you to pay attention.' He rubbed his eyes wearily and looked at her. 'This is important, Aura.'

'But what's the point?' She dragged a hand across her flushed forehead. 'We've been at it all week, but all this research has yielded nothing we don't already know about my magic. Not that I don't appreciate it!' she added hastily, cutting him off mid-scowl. 'But we're making no progress! And we still don't know who's after me!'

Sebastian massaged his forehead with his knuckles but said nothing.

'The Auror's have no leads,' she went on, wringing her hands together. 'Neither the French nor the British Ministry know what to do with me except to put me in lockdown and hope for the best. It could be anyone.'

'It doesn't matter who it is,' Sebastian said tightly. 'French or British, the Ministry is useless. You wouldn't believe the kinds of things wizards get away with thanks to the gross incompetence of our legal system. Besides...' He stretched out his long legs with a groan. 'They're all corrupt to the core, brought and sold. You can't rely on anyone but yourself. And me,' he added, nudging her lightly with his shoulder.

'And you,' she echoed, nudging him back. 'Expert on everything.'

''Bout time you recognised my brilliance.'  Sebastian's smile eased some of the worry from his features, and, by effect, most of hers.

She averted her lingering gaze. 'I don't know... It just feels like we're just groping around blindly in the dark.'

To her surprise, Sebastian let out a mighty snort of mirth.

'You'd know all about groping in the dark, wouldn't you?' he said with a wicked grin.

Aurélie's mouth fell open, scandalised.

'Sebastian!'

'Oi!' He swatted her hand away as she aimed to smack his shoulder. 'All I'm saying is that next time, you only need to ask and I'd be happy to —'

Blushing furiously, she leapt to her feet and fixed him with a look that would've made even her formidable French mother quiver in fear. Sebastian, of course, being the most infuriating boy to ever walk the face of the earth, only laughed harder.

'Sebastian Sallow! Tais toi!'

Sweating under the blazing heat of his enchanted flames, she hastily snatched up her belongings while the scruffy-haired lunatic laughed himself stupid on the sofa.

'I didn't mean to —' she spluttered. 'It was dark and — I told you it was an accident — and anyway, you're the one who — never mind, I have to go, I have choir practice!'

But as she made to stalk past him, he caught her by the sleeve.

'I'm the one who what?' he asked, struggling to keep a straight face as she spun back to face him.

Almost kissed me.

Held me like nobody ever has before.

'Nothing.' She shook her head. 'And stop grabbing me all the time! Just because you're so big —'

She clamped her mouth shut, realising her blunder at the same time Sebastian's eyebrows shot upwards.

'Big?' he said gleefully. 'You think I'm big?'

'Sebastian, please.'

Swallowing the knot in her throat, Aurélie silently, and perhaps for the first time in her life, lamented her embarrassing lack of experience with boys. She should have kissed more of them in France. Merlin, she should have kissed at least one of them in France! Then maybe she'd know how to handle molten eyes and hushed words and — and Quidditch captain bodies —

'I'm only teasing you.' Rising from the sofa, he released her sleeve but not her attention as he sauntered closer. 'Skip,' he smirked, his voice low.

'S-sorry?'

He came closer, standing all tall and broad before her, his smattering of freckles on clear display beneath his open collar. She wondered how far down they went. Was every part of him freckled?

'Skive off. Don't go to choir practice.'

Stay.

Her eyes snapped up to find that look on his face again: soft brown eyes beneath dark lashes, lips slightly parted and wet — a look he only wore in the Undercroft.

A look he only wore for her.

She shook her head. 'Can't.'

'Why not?' His eyes flicked down to her lips, then to her neck, her collarbone. She had no freckles there to trace, but his gaze traced her all the same.

She shivered, for once not from the cold.

'Because... Halloween —' She cleared her throat. 'Halloween feast next week. We're singing. I've got... got the solo... Ominis —'

Unable to look him in the eyes a moment longer, she sought distraction from his unwavering attention by rummaging blindly in her satchel.

Was this how his Quidditch thing with Imelda started? With teasing remarks and lingering gazes? Had he asked her to stay with his silken voice? Made her shiver when his gaze lingered on her skin?

Sebastian, too busy scowling at the mention of his friend's name, seemed not to notice the way her hands shook when she extracted her chunky woollen jumper.

'Ominis,' he sneered, 'can shove his stupid choir up his—'

'Just because the two of you are quarrelling, doesn't mean I—'

'Oh, so you take his side?'

'What side?' Her voice was muffled as she struggled to slip her jumper over her head. 'You still haven't told me what you're arguing about.'

'He knows about you, he was there when you fainted!'

'I didn't faint,' she grumbled, wrestling with the neck hole — it took a moment to realise she was trying to put her head through the sleeve. 'And so what if he knows? He hasn't... mentioned it... Ugh, I'm stuck...'

Sebastian, rolling his eyes impatiently, pulled the jumper over her head in one swift movement and glowered down at her.

'So what if he knows?' he repeated, picking a piece of fluff out of her hair. 'He's a prat, that's what!'

Aurélie sighed and slipped into the waiting lift.

'Well,' she said distractedly, checking her pockets for her sheet music, 'he'll be even more of a prat if I'm late to rehearsals, but I'll be sure to let you know if he tries to kill me for my magic between songs.'

Sebastian's expression pinched as he squeezed in beside her, and when the lift clattered upwards, she thought she heard him mutter, 'not fucking funny,' under his breath.

Judging by the typical pandemonium that met them in the Defence tower, classes had just let out for the day. Halloween was fast approaching, but the horrors that followed Aurélie through the halls weren't the leering pumpkin carvings or the clouds of live bats fluttering around the high ceilings, but the whispers, the sideways glances, and the nasty sniggers that'd haunted her since she'd debuted as Hogwarts newest orphan.

The word was like a curse on the lips of all who spoke it — whether whispered in sympathy or meant as an insult, Aurélie felt every syllable in her heart as sharp as shattered glass.

Because that's what she was.

Orphan.

Sebastian, far more comfortable with the title than she, and seemingly immune to nasty jabs about his past, tried his best to act as a buffer, but not even his truculent presence was enough to spare her; even as they ascended a marble staircase headed for the music room, somebody nearby hissed, 'No wonder he likes her, they're both orphans.'

'Don't,' Aurélie muttered, yanking him by the sleeve before he could start flinging insults or hexes — or both. 'There's no point growling at them — they're right.'

'That's not why I like you!'

'I meant about being an orphan.'

'I know what you meant.'

On the morning Aurélie was due to rejoin her classes after her dramatic stint in the hospital wing, she'd spent so long in her dorm braiding and re-braiding her hair that the common room was empty by the time she made her way out.

Dreading the long day that lay ahead, she lingered uneasily at the tower's threshold, stomach churning at the thought of facing whatever lay beyond it. She could handle being the French girl — Merlin, she could even handle being Sebastian's (ugh) girlfriend, but being infamous for having no parents was simply unendurable.

The few Ravenclaw's she'd already faced had treated her kindly enough; her roommates had offered sympathetic smiles and condolences, but between Samantha Dale looking at her like she was a kicked puppy and Constance Dagworth bursting into tears at the thought of losing her own parents, Aurélie wasn't sure how much more pity she could take.

Thankfully, it wasn't sympathy waiting for her outside the common room. Before the enchanted door knocker could scold her for dawdling behind so late, Aurélie was taken by surprise when Poppy came bounding over, grinning from ear to ear, while behind her, tall and scowling, Sebastian threw his hands in the air with an impatient huff.

'Finally!' he groaned, rubbing his stomach and looking very put out. 'I'm about to drop dead!'

Aurélie shot him an alarmed look, but Poppy only rolled her eyes. 'He's hungry,' she explained, linking their arms together. 'He tried coming in to get you, but he couldn't solve any of the Eagle's riddles.'

'Oi, Hufflepuff, neither could you.'

'Well, I wasn't the one bragging about almost being a Ravenclaw, was I? Anyway, have you heard? Howin's just brought in two unicorns!' 

It was Poppy's idea to sit with the Hufflepuff's for breakfast that morning. Sensing Aurélie's hesitation to enter the Great Hall, she gave her elbow a reassuring squeeze while Sebastian swept a menacing scowl across the room.

'I'll hex anyone who says anything,' he muttered darkly. 'Especially Weasley.'

'No hexes,' the girls said in unison.

'Come on.' Poppy tugged her arm. 'The Hufflepuff's won't bother you, promise.'

Whether the invitation explicitly extended to Sebastian or not seemed irrelevant to the tenacious Slytherin, who plonked himself squarely at the Hufflepuff table amid a sea of very bewildered badgers, looking as out of place as a troll at a ballet recital.

Aurélie tried to stifle a laugh: Hufflepuff's, she observed, were rather a small people, and Sebastian — well... When the girl next to him — a dark-haired seventh-year with a very kind face — had to crane her neck all the way up to gawk at his face, her suppressed giggles came out unbidden.

'Uh, hello...' he said to her. 'Leah, isn't it?'

'You know my name?'

The Hufflepuff table was a surprisingly homey contrast to the erudite Ravenclaw aesthetic she was used to; rather than scattered books and scraps of parchments crammed on every available surface, the badgers took their meals amongst an abundance of flowers and bits of greenery; a tiny potted Mandrake stood guard over a jug of pumpkin juice, while a collection of dancing cacti made the act of serving porridge fraught with spikey peril.

But perhaps the most surprising of all, if Sebastian's reaction was anything to go by, was the vast array of sweets and pastries on offer, piled high on golden platters, sugar-glazed and chocolate-drizzled.

Sebastian gazed upon the spread with incredulity. 'Why do you lot get chocolate eclairs for breakfast?' he complained, loading three of them onto his plate.

Before long, after the flowers were hastily rearranged to accommodate two extra guests, and the tea was poured and shortbreads distributed, and she'd politely refused the indulgent baked goods for a bowl of porridge (without injury), Aurélie was just beginning to feel at ease when—

'Oh. Oh!!'

A shrill voice made her jump so violently that if it weren't for Sebastian catching her at the last second, she would've toppled backwards off the bench. A few spots down the table, a girl with blonde pigtails and glasses brandished a brightly coloured cake tin in her direction.

'It's you!' cried she, pushing her glasses up the bridge of her nose. 'You're the French girl!'

Before Aurélie could utter a startled 'oui?' in reply, another girl, this one with pink and yellow flowers woven through her ash-blonde hair, leaned across the table. 

'Gibby...' she whispered, shooting a kind but shy glance at Aurélie, 'maybe you should give her some space.'

'But Siobhan, she's French!'

'Half-French,' Sebastian said around a mouthful of beans on toast.

'Half-French!' Gibby leapt up from the bench, rattling her cake tin with increasing urgency. 'Which means she'll be able to tell me whether my truffles are half-good or not!'

'T-truffles?'

'Gibby's parents are confectioners,' Poppy explained in an undertone. 'She's very, er... passionate about baking.'

'She force-feeds us,' Siobhan added, eyeing the tin with some apprehension. 'It's easier just to accept them than it is to argue with her, trust me.'

Gibby blew her a raspberry and upturned the contents of her tin onto an empty platter.

And so the morning was spent in surprising companionship, where, rather than navigating unwanted sympathy like she'd been dreading, she found comfort as an honorary Hufflepuff, discussing France and unicorns and trees while offloading a steady supply of truffles and sweets into Sebastian's enchanted pockets.

A week later, he was still snacking on truffles as they wound their way up the bell tower wing toward the music room.

There was far less grandeur to be found this high up in the castle; polished marble staircases were left behind for rickety old floorboards, and the smell of stale air and musty carpets replaced the malodorous scent of potions mishaps and British food that was distinctly Hogwarts.

Usually, her only companion on her lone trek to choir practice was the resonant echo of Ominis rehearsing his scales at the piano. Now though, having set off rather earlier than she'd planned, the only sound that kept her company was the creak of floorboards underfoot and the slow, measured breath of the boy beside her.

'So why then?'

Aurélie's question was so abrupt that it surprised even her when it came tumbling out. Sebastian blinked, seeming to rouse from some deep, truffle-induced abstraction to look at her curiously.

'Why what then?'

She opened her mouth, thought about clamping it shut for the rest of her life, then said, 'You don't like me just because we're both... You know...' she trailed off, unwilling to speak the word aloud.

But it came so easily to him, like everything did. 'Orphaned?' He raised his eyebrows. ''Course not, that's ridiculous. I didn't even know you were an orphan when we first met.'

'So...'

'So what?'

She rolled her eyes. 'Never mind.'

At the end of the hall, the door to the music chamber stood ajar, but the room beyond lay silent and still. In a castle full of nosy peers and ever-watchful professors, she wondered how Sebastian always managed to get her alone.

Or, perhaps more accurately, why she always let him.

'Wait, hang on.' He touched her elbow, and she turned to face him almost too willingly. 'Are you asking me why I like you?'

'N-no, not like that, I just —'

She caught the sweetness of chocolate truffles on his breath and wondered, fleetingly, if she'd taste it on his lips if she pressed up and kissed him.

'It's just... I just want to know if you — why you care.'

'Care?' Sebastian looked at her with a mixture of exasperation and tenderness.  'I thought you —'

But the rest of his answer died on his lips as a very out-of-place sound diverted their attention.

They turned toward the music chamber, listening hard.

'Is that' — Aurélie frowned, confused, — 'a snake?'

Several things happened in quick succession.

Two figures appeared at the doorway, both clad in black and almost identical in weight and stature, deep in what might have well-been conversation if it weren't for all the hissing they were doing. She recognised Ominis, but the other —

Sebastian swore under his breath. In the space of a heartbeat, he pulled her against his chest — and for one wild, unfathomable, completely insane moment, she thought he meant to kiss her. She gasped, lifted her face — but then a jolt and a trickle of magic rendered her suddenly stiff and invisible: Disillusionment was a familiar sensation by now, but Petrificus Totalus was new - and awful.

Whispering an inaudible apology against her temple, Sebastian had time only to prop her against the wall before an unnervingly soft voice had him straightening up.

'Ah, Sebastian...'

A Gaunt, undoubtedly, in both name and appearance. One of Ominis' brothers she'd heard so much about.

At first glance, he was virtually indistinguishable from his brother: elegantly dressed, fair-skinned and with that aristocratic curl to his lip that was doubtless a family trait, but the longer she observed him, the more pronounced their differences became. He was taller, a little older, his blonde hair a shade or two darker — and though he spoke politely and smiled easily, there was a lingering coldness beneath his facade as if his smile was pulled into place by invisible strings rather than genuine affection.

But worst of all were his eyes, so shocking a contrast to his brothers' that they might as well have been two black holes in a cadaverous face.

'How good to see you again,' he said, extending a gracious hand.

'And you, Malific.'

Aurélie wished she hadn't seen the shudder that rolled through Sebastian's shoulders as the pair shook hands. If only she could close her eyes, turn away.

If only she could run.

Because worse than being trapped in her own body was the dreadful realisation that Sebastian — fearless, dependable, unshakable Sebastian — was afraid.

'Not here for choir practice, surely?' Malific Gaunt's laugh was as cold as his smile, a sudden draught in a warm room.

'Me?' Sebastian choked, his voice constricted. 'Salazar, no, I sing like Mandrake. I only wanted a quick word with Ominis, but I can come back if —'

'Nonsense! I was just on my way out. Here on official business, actually.' He swelled with self-importance. 'I've just been to see Phineas.'

'The Headmaster?'

'Malific has been promoted,' Ominis explained, sounding bored. 'Undersecretary to the Minister for Education.'

'Youngest in history.' Malific's modesty was as false as his smile. 'Goes to show what hard work and commitment to one's future success can do. Something I trust you're focused on now, entering your final year.' His cold black eyes sharpened on Sebastian's brown ones. 'Staying out of trouble, I hope?'

Though the question seemed innocent enough, it froze every muscle in Sebastian's body, as if he'd hit himself with a full body bind. He unclenched his jaw to speak, but it was Ominis who answered for him.

'I can attest,' he began, stiffly, and without a hint of warmth, 'that Sebastian is so focused on his Healer training that it's a rare sight to see him anywhere but the infirmary these days. My promise remains as true as ever, brother.'

'A Healer?' Malific looked almost disappointed. 'An admirable vocation, I'm sure, but I confess... Given your experience, I had you pinned as a Curse Breaker.'

'No.' The resolution in Sebastian's voice was firm. 'I want to help people.'

'Yes, yes...' Malific sighed. 'I suppose that's for the best. After your last little mishap—'

'—That will never happen again.'

Mishap? 

Malific dismissed this avowal with a sniff. 'Well, I ought to be going,' he said, suddenly disinterested. 'Business to attend to, you know how it is. Good to see you again, Sebastian.' Foregoing a second handshake, he turned to address his brother instead. 'As I was saying earlier, father will expect an answer before the year is out. You can't ignore him forever, you know how he gets. And Marvolo...'

As the brothers brushed past her, conversing once more in spits and hisses, Sebastian caught her eye. Even invisible, he was attuned to her, able to pick out her camouflaged form against the wall. He shook his head almost imperceptibly. Could he hear her heart smashing against her chest? Sense the fear clawing its way up her spine with cold, scratchy fingers?

Could he feel the prickling of magic beneath her skin, itching for release?

'Oh, and Sebastian?' At the end of the hall, an afterthought turned Malific on his heel. Sebastian spun around. 'Do keep me informed of your training, won't you? Should your N.E.W.T.s stand up to it, I'd be happy to put you in touch with some of my connections at St Mungos.'

Sebastian nodded stiffly, sweat beading at his temples. 'Thank you, but that won't —'

'Or perhaps a stint in France might be more... appealing to you?'

'F-France?'

Aurélie could only watch the colour drain from Sebastian's face. Panic rose inside her like a wave, but without an outlet, without movement to diffuse the energy, it could only swell and crash, over and over, drowning her in her own immobile body. And beneath it all, prickly and hot and painful, the thrumming of magic fought to free itself from constriction.

'Certainly!' Malific's smile grew wider, twisting into something sinister, a predator baring its teeth. 'The Gaunt's are well connected in France, as you know. I'd be happy to put you in touch with some of my associates there, should you wish to, uh — cross the channel after graduation.'

In just a few short weeks, Aurélie had witnessed Sebastian threaten a man's life in Hogsmeade like it was a daily occurrence, accept responsibility for her dangerous and unstable gift without any consideration for his own safety, and vow to defend her against the dark forces that were murdering and attacking without prejudice. He was a boy as defined by his impulsivity as his fearlessness. But now, as Malific bid his farewells and disappeared down the hall, she could see the cracks in Sebastian's facade: the sweat on his forehead, the simmering panic in his wide eyes.

For the first time since she'd met him, Aurélie was truly afraid.

A long silence met Malific's absence. It was Ominis who finally broke it.

'Sebastian, you idiot!' he hissed. 'What were you thinking!'

But it wasn't Sebastian he turned to. With an almost careless wave of his wand, he freed Aurélie from the constrictive binds of Sebastian's spells.

Visible now, she stumbled, the grateful expansion of her lungs sending a dizzying rush of magic through her body — but it was too late. Displeased at being trapped for so long, turbulent and roiling, it crashed over the walls of her self-control and took control of her body.

She straightened up, raised her arms.

'Aura, no —!' Sebastian launched forward, hands outstretched, but she couldn't stop it, couldn't hold it back...

The floodgates broke.

A shockwave of magic hit them full-on, blasting the two Slytherin's off their feet.

Chapter Text

This is the right thing to do.

Aurélie paused outside the office door to let out a long, slow breath, willing herself to believe the words she'd been inwardly repeating all night and day.

This is the right thing to do. There is no other option.

Knuckles braced against the polished wooden door, she cast a furtive glance over her shoulder; after everything that'd happened last afternoon by the music room, Sebastian was so far honouring her request for space to process it all, but it had been with great and very obvious difficulty that he'd not approached her during classes with his pleading eyes and endless apologies on his lips. She'd skipped dinner so as not to endure his visible regret longer than she had to. She'd skipped lunch, too — and breakfast for that matter, but she was too sad to feel hungry any more...

After everything Sebastian had confessed to...

After what she'd done to him...

When she finally found the courage to knock, the voice on the other side answered immediately, inviting her in.

Professor Weasley's office was a small room with a large, welcoming fireplace. Under different circumstances, Aurélie would've appreciated the sudden warmth that enveloped her, but the flicker of shock that passed over Weasley's face seemed to leech all the heat from the flames; Aurélie knew she looked a frightful mess, but there was little to be done for her appearance when she was too stressed to think straight.

'Miss Collins, please, come in...' Leaping to her feet, the Deputy Headmistress beckoned Aurélie to a chair by the fire and hovered uncertainly by her side. For a moment, she seemed to be on the verge of hugging her, teetering between professionalism and some apparent maternal instinct to comfort a troubled child. In the end, she resumed the role of concerned professor as she sat behind her desk, but Aurélie was glad for it; she wasn't sure she could hold herself together if someone were to hug her, and crying over the teacher's desk wasn't high on her list of priorities.

No, she needed her strength to repeat the words she'd been practising over and over in her head: Sorry to bother you, Professor, however, I wonder if we might discuss the possibility of my returning home earlier than planned?

But when she opened her mouth to speak, she promptly burst into tears.

'Aura, I'm sorry, I'm sorry!'

There were few things more embarrassing to Aurélie than crying in front of other people, but along with the explosive release of her magic came the inevitable outpouring of long pent-up tears. More mortifying still, every time Sebastian thumbed them frantically off her cheeks, they were immediately replaced with more until his fingers were wet with them.

'Shh, it's alright, everything's okay... I'm sorry...' Sebastian's hands were trembling as he cupped her face, but it was a testament to his loyalty (or perhaps a reflection of his obstinacy) that he didn't shy away from her unstable magic or her hysterical tears; in fact, after she'd blasted him off his feet like a ragdoll, he'd only picked himself up, brushed himself off and immediately hurried back to comfort her.

That's when she'd started crying: it was bad enough that she'd almost killed him, but when he came running back to her like she wasn't an imminent danger to his life, every tender-hearted feeling she'd ever suppressed for him came exploding to the surface with ten-times the force her magic had.

What a stupid time to realise she loved him.

'Choir's about to start. Why don't you take her up to the bells to calm down?' Ominis' voice was surprisingly gentle for someone who'd just been assaulted by Ancient Magic, but Aurélie couldn't bring herself to face him, too ashamed by her loss of control to utter the apologies he so deserved. Instead, she clung blindly to Sebastian's arm and let him lead her upwards until, panting slightly from the effort of climbing so many stairs, they found solace beneath the school bells.

They must have been in the highest point in the entire castle; the rough wooden walls creaked with every gust of wind, and the tall arched windows were paned with thin slats, designed to allow the tolling of the bells to be heard across the Highlands. Far below them, the faint swell of music signalled the beginning of choir practice.

Sebastian gave her some space to compose herself but hovered within arms reach. It made her nervous to have him so close after what she'd just done to him, especially being so high, perched together on a narrow wooden platform that ran parallel with the bells above, but the needy pulse of her magic had dissipated since she'd let it loose, leaving her feeling strangely drained and empty.

'Did I hurt you?' she sniffled, casting a sideways glance over the solid planes of his shoulders.

'Aura,' he said wryly. 'You don't become the schools best duellist without learning how to cast a bloody good cushioning charm.'

A half-laugh broke through her watery misery.

'And Ominis?'

'Please.' He rolled his eyes. 'Are you forgetting who founded Crossed Wands?'

It took a long time for the last of her tears to subside, but when they finally did, Aurélie wiped her eyes and looked at Sebastian with a newfound vision, gazing up at him like she was only just recognising who he really was, and Sebastian, with bated breath and an equally tender expression, gazed back at her like he knew it.

She moved then as if in a daze, closing the small space them, her brand-new eyes locked with his until they were close enough to touch. But when Sebastian spread his arms wide, a slow smile creeping across his face, she leaned in and startled him with a sharp finger jab to his chest.

'Ow!'

'How dare you.'

Sebastian's smile faltered. 'Wha—'

'How dare you!' Aurélie's lip wobbled dangerously, but she steeled herself, cloaking her anguish with righteous anger instead. 'Don't you — ever — do that to me again!' she bristled, sounding increasingly French with every word.

Sebastian raised his hands, palms open.

'I — I won't —'

'Why?' Another jab. 'Why did you do it?'

'I —'

'You couldn't have warned me first?'

'N-no, there was no ti—'

'You told me you wouldn't lie to me!'

Sebastian opened and closed his mouth, clearly bewildered by her erratic mood swing.

'I'm not lying to you! I just — I don't like Malific!'

'You don't like Malific?' she echoed, her voice shrill. 'You hit me with a curse,' — another poke to the chest, — 'that rendered me completely defenceless without any warning because — you — don't — like — him?'

'Ow! Stop poking me!'

She glared up at him, but when he made no further reply, she set her jaw and poked him again.

'You tell me the truth right now, Sebastian Sallow, or I swear to Merlin —'

Considering she'd just hurled him twelve feet down a hallway by accident, Sebastian seemed to take her empty threat more seriously than he usually did, eyeing her pointy finger with apprehension.

'Okay — ouch! I said okay, Aura! Bloody hell!'

Aurélie watched him through shrewd eyes as he set about pacing the platform, his hands running distractedly through his hair while he muttered incoherently under his breath; the creaky floorboards underfoot drowned out most of his monologue, but she caught a few choice words such as 'fuck', 'shit', and 'fucking shit'.

'You need to understand,' he said finally, coming to an abrupt halt before her, 'that I only did what I did to save my sister.'

Well, that didn't sound good. Aurélie instinctively wrapped her arms around her middle, wondering if perhaps she'd been a bit hasty about demanding the truth. But Sebastian only took a deep, determined breath, and she knew there was no stopping him now.

'You remember that day under the oak tree, the first weekend you arrived?' His voice was low but urgent, his eyes locked onto hers. 'When we spoke about forbidden magic?'

Aurélie nodded. There were many things she remembered about that day: the way he'd flopped down on the grass beside her like he was already comfortable by her side, teasing her like they'd known each other years, not mere days; the hint of auburn in his sun-dappled hair, the colour of his eyes. But it was the look on his face that struck her memory like a bell, the fervent gleam in his eyes when he'd philosophied the morality of using the Unforgivables, his desperation to make her understand him:

And what about the killing curse? Would you be wrong in using it to defend yourself?

He wore that same look now, only this time he wasn't just some strange boy, some antagonistic Slytherin — he was Sebastian.

Maybe even her Sebastian.

She pushed the thought away, wondering how she could think of that at a time like this.

'That's when I knew you were like me,' he confessed. 'An orphan, I mean. Only those who've suffered the way we've suffered could ever comprehend how it feels... Only those who understand loss...' His eyes searched hers, wide and earnest. 'You understand, I know you do...'

'Sebastian, what are you —'

'Do you remember what you told me that day?' He shuffled closer. '"People who are vehemently against the idea of using Unforgivables have never been faced with such an awful decision before"?'

'I remember,' she whispered, and the hint of relief that softened Sebastian's expression made her arms ache to reach for him. I remember. I understand. She tightened her grip around herself; it would do them no good to go about cuddling each other when there were truths to unearth.

Would it?

'Aura, I was faced with awful decisions.'

It was a confession she'd always known was coming, but how his voice didn't crack under the weight of it, how he could meet her eye and hold it steady... And yet, even as she braced herself for the fear to strike her heart, she instinctively knew it would never come. Because despite all the rumours she'd heard about him, the troubling hints about his past and the flat-out warnings she'd been given from the first day she'd arrived, wasn't she still standing as resolutely before him as he stood before her? Weren't her feet firmly planted, unwilling — or unable — to walk away from him? Even now, when the truth danced between them, cold and awful and stained with darkness, didn't she still feel warm in his presence?

Why?

If she loved him now, had she loved him then, too?

'You did it for Anne?' she finally asked.

Relief flooded his voice when he answered, 'Yes. She was cursed with dark magic. It only made sense that dark magic would reverse it.'

Aurélie nodded, chewing her lip as she considered the implications of his confession.

'What... what sort of dark magic?'

Something like shame flashed across Sebastian's expression. He looked away, his arms hanging at his sides and his shoulders slumped, and when it became clear he couldn't answer her, Aurélie offered him the answer she already knew to be true:

'The Unforgivables?'

Sebastian nodded at the floor. 'In my pursuit to find a cure, I discovered the existence of a secret room within the castle: Salazar Slytherin's scriptorium. It was said to be a myth, but I found it.' He paused for a beat, his brow heavy, and in that moment, he looked so young and lost that Aurélie wanted to hug him. 'I made Ominis come with me. He didn't want to, of course, but I figured we'd probably need Parseltongue to gain access, so I...convinced him.'

She could picture it so well: a dank underground cavern, not unlike the Undercroft but worse, all green and foreboding, probably full of snake decor; Sebastian charging fearlessly into the unknown, not a doubt in his mind that he was doing the right thing; and Ominis, trailing behind, sceptical of his friends' reckless plans but powerless to stop him. But that's where her imagination failed; she simply couldn't picture the intractable Ominis Gaunt being forced into anything he didn't want to do.

'He did it for Anne,' Sebastian explained, seeming to read the thought right off her face. 'He loved her, too.'

So it was love, then, that had sent them venturing into darkness.

'Anyway, I was right about the Parseltongue.' A small, proud smile brightened the melancholy in his voice. 'We got in. I found what I needed. But exiting was... not as easy.' His smile faded. 'I wasn't surprised that Slytherin had installed traps to deter — well, people like me nicking his things, but a torture door went beyond my worst expectations.'

She didn't need an explanation to know what he was implying, but he offered it anyway.

'To pass through, one of us had to cast the Cruciatus on the other. Ominis agreed to let me —'

Aurélie paled, shocked for the first time. 'You knew how to cast it?'

'Yes.' His reply was quiet, but it came with no hesitation. 'I'd read the theory, knew the incantation... Casting it wasn't as difficult as I'd expected.'

'In your fifth year?'

'What was I supposed to do? We'd have died down there otherwise, and I couldn't leave Anne to fend for herself. I couldn't!'

'Oh, Sebastian...' Aurélie moaned, cradling her head in her hands. To think that at the same time she'd been trying to suppress dangerous magic, Sebastian had been across the channel teaching himself to harness it, learning the very same curse she'd had used on her the night her parents had died. Her mind reeled away from the pain of it, leaving behind only a vague imprint of red light and her own agonised screams until a vicious shiver brought her awareness back to the bell tower.

She couldn't find the strength to lift her face, but she could tell that Sebastian had moved closer, could feel the tension radiating from his body, the heat of his breath over her skin. She knew him even with her eyes closed; the shape of him, the scent, the weight of his expectant gaze on her face, her senses soaking up every part of him as if his body was an extension of her own.

'Aurélie, please,' he whispered, agony in his voice. 'She was my twin. The dark magic, I thought — the only way... I tried everything else first. Everything. Healing Arts, St Mungos. If I could have taken the curse and borne her pain myself, I would have, but nothing worked!' He came closer, desperate, until his warmth seeped into her cold bones. 'Please... After my parents, she was the only one... I couldn't lose her, too...'

Aurélie kept her face hidden. 'But it wasn't enough?' she said into her hands. 'The dark magic... It wasn't enough to save her?'

'No.' His voice was rough, broken. 'Sh-she refused to let me help, said she didn't want to be cured by evil. But by then it was... I was in too deep. That kind of magic, it takes hold and doesn't let go. I - I needed help. The Gaunt's —'

She looked up at him then. 'They helped you?'

'Yes.'

'And now you owe them a debt?'

'Yes.'

The long pause that followed offered little relief from the dawning realisation that everything was about to change.

That everything already had changed.

'Am I the debt?'

'I'm afraid you could be,' he breathed out. 'If they find out that I... That you're important to me...'

The entire world seemed to tip on its axis.

'Can't we do something?' Aurélie pressed the heels of her palms to her temples, her vision spinning. 'T-tell someone? The Auror's...'

Sebastian slowly shook his head. 'If we tell someone, the Gaunt's will turn me over to Azkaban.'

'But you said Ominis agreed to it! You did it to save your lives! S-surely if it was consensual...'

'Aura, I used the torture curse on an Heir of Slytherin.'

Aurélie made a little sound of distress. 'And if they tell you to hand me over?'

'Then I guess I'll have to torture the rest of them.'

'Sebastian, that's not funny!'

'Who says I'm joking?'

She wanted to scream. 'You can't! The punishment for using an Unforgivable is — '

'— life in Azkaban, I know!'

Sebastian kept his distance, but his whole body was taut with the effort of holding himself back from touching her.

'Then what are you doing?' she wailed, raking her hands through her hair. 'Are you mad? You — you need to —'

'I'm not leaving you.'

'But you can't! Sebastian —'

'No.' He finally touched her then, moving so quickly she had no time to react before he took her face between his hands and tugged her closer. She didn't even try to move away, but simply turned her face and let out a dry sob against his palm.

'Sebastian, I won't let you —'

'No,' he said again, his eyes fierce, his breath on her face. 'You think I'd let that happen? Let you belong to them? To a Gaunt?' He spat the name like a curse, like a bad taste on his tongue.

'Everyone would be better off if I —'

'Better off? Better off?' His hands slid down to her shoulders and squeezed. 'What do you think they plan to do with power like yours? That they'll use it to make the world a better place? The only reason Malific Gaunt is in the Ministry is to ban Muggleborns from Hogwarts — and that's only to start. If he achieves that, he'll move on to punishing them for stealing magical knowledge. And Marvolo,' — he broke off with a shudder, and when he spoke again his voice was low, urgent, his eyes boring into hers. 'The Gaunt's teach their children how to use the Cruciatus Curse. They practise on Muggles, Aurélie. Ominis was forced to torture innocent people from the moment he was allowed a wand. That's why he loathes them. That's why he wanted nothing to do with the scriptorium or...'

He sucked in a shuddering breath, clearly trying to maintain his composure, but his fingers dug into her shoulders like he was trying not to shake her.

'Don't you understand? They're already powerful, but with magic like yours, they'd be unstoppable. With magic like yours, everybody would suffer.'

'But you —'

'I can look after myself.' His hands were back on her face, his thumbs on her cheeks a gentle contrast to the urgency in his voice. 'All I care about is keeping you safe.'

Aurélie swallowed the hard lump in her throat as two battles raged inside her. The first was to lean into him, to fold into his body and lay her cheek against his chest and let the sound of his heartbeat lull her to safety.

The second was to run and never come back.

Because to stay meant risking his freedom, his life — but to leave meant losing the only person who could still coax a laugh from her when every part of her was broken.

How could she be so selfish to even consider it?

Two battles, two hearts, both tangled in threads of black and silver fate that had ensnared them long before they'd met; before blue eyes and had met brown and recognised each other; before dormant magic had awoken; before death and dark magic and destruction had irrevocably angled their paths towards each other.

When Sebastian's trembling thumb brushed the corner of her mouth, Aurélie's gaze dropped automatically to linger on his lips, her breath coming in shallow little gasps and her hands tugging at his shirt.

Sebastian opened his mouth but no sound came out, and it was only when he leaned down close, so close and so slow, did Aurélie find strength enough to whisper, 'You'd risk Azkaban for me?'

His barely audible yes brushed right across her lips.

'But — why?'

A long, long silence — and then, 'I think you know why.'

She closed her eyes. 'Sebastian...'

'I know you don't want me to say it —'

'— then don't.'

'— but I can't help it.'

She put up no resistance when he pulled her against his chest, but rather than soothing away her bubbling panic, the sound of his heartbeat only made her eyes well up again.

'I'm not ready,' she moaned into his shirt.

'I know,' he said, cradling her head, stroking her hair, 'but I can wait. As long as you need, I'll wait.'

It'd taken Aurélie a full night of crying into her pillow that night to decide that the latter was the better option; if the threads couldn't be untangled, she would have to cut them herself. It was the right thing to do, the only option she had — no matter the pain it caused her to do it. If she didn't, Sebastian would only become another victim of her cruel, inescapable destiny, another regret she'd carry for the rest of her life.

She was surprised she still had tears left to shed as she sat sobbing over Professor Weasley's desk with a handkerchief pressed to her face. Weasley was kind enough not to ask why Aurélie suddenly wanted to flee back to France, but maybe it wasn't such a stretch to understand that the overwhelmed orphan girl desperately needed a hug from her mama, even if that hug was impossible now.

'I'm sorry,' Weasley said, leaning across the desk to give Aurélie's hand a reassuring squeeze. 'I know things are difficult right now, but Hogwarts is the safest place for you to be. We're doing everything we can to keep you safe.'

But it wasn't she who needed safeguarding. When she slipped out of Weasley's office some time later, puffy-eyed but bolstered by an inexplicable steely resolve, Aurélie vowed to never let a single person suffer in her place ever again.

Chapter Text

Once the preferred location for serving out detentions, the chamber was now mostly used as a convenient place to stick naughty students when the Professor's couldn't be bothered thinking up a better punishment. Or in Sebastian's case, when the head of Slytherin house didn't want to go too hard on his team's Quidditch captain a fortnight out from their first match but had to make an example of his misbehaviour.

Idiot, idiot, idiot.

The brilliant illumination of hope guided Sebastian back to his common room shortly after. Though curfew wasn't quite upon them yet, the hour was late enough that most students had returned to their common rooms to settle in for the night. He'd hoped Aurélie wasn't among them, wanting so desperately to tell her the great news, but a cursory check of the Great Hall, the library and the Undercroft told him she was likely shut up in the Ravenclaw tower where he couldn't reach her no matter how hard he argued with the eagle knocker.

Then he wrenched himself away, picking through the wreckage of ruined hopes as he went.

Chapter Text

Chapter Text

Chapter Text

In a small garden in Feldcroft under a late afternoon sky, Aurélie turned to find Sebastian in a duelling stance, brandishing his wand at a patch of clover.

'Seb-astian!' Laughing, she dodged around a stack of terracotta pots and a pile of freshly pulled weeds to catch him by the wrist before he could set the whole lot on fire.

'We don't kill, we weed, remember?' she giggled, gently tugging his wand from his hand; it was so easy to disarm him now that she'd discovered his greatest weakness was...well, her. 'No wonder Anne didn't like having you in her garden.'

Anne's "summer" garden, with its explosion of blooming sunflowers and climbing honeysuckle, technically shouldn't have existed in mid-March, but the moment the snow had cleared and Spring had stretched out its frost-bitten fingers, Sebastian had devised a "brilliant plan" to help her practise wielding her Ancient Magic in a way that didn't involve accidentally blasting him across the room.

'It's a perfect way for you to siphon off some of that magic before you explode again,' he'd told her as they'd trekked through his secret tunnel to Hogsmeade. 'Besides, you said you'd help me, remember? You told me once that you can make plants grow, and I reckon Anne will be happy seeing her garden flourish again.'

'Do you remember everything I say?' she'd laughed, swinging their hands between them.

'Pretty much everything, yeah.'

And so Aurélie found herself newly in charge of Anne's garden, using her magic to grow plants and bloom flowers several months ahead of their time until, so like her papa's gardens had been, the empty beds burst with life, and the air smelled of pollen and sea breeze, and she felt, for the first time since her parents had died, that maybe home wasn't as unobtainable as she'd once believed.

'Besides, nothing in nature is ever killed,' she reminded him, returning his wand. 'There's no such thing as death in a garden.'

'Tell that to all the weeds I just destroyed,' he muttered, lowering his head until his forehead rested against hers and their noses touched. 'You're good at this.'

'At what? Reining in your chaos?'

'Growing things,' he snorted. 'Nurturing.'

'Oh. Well, Papa taught me a lot,' she shrugged. 'Plus the magic helps.'

'Please. If I had Ancient Magic, I'd probably kill everything within sight. But you,' — he kissed her nose, — 'you give things life.'

Through the long, frigid winter, Sebastian had dutifully kept her so warm and content that she'd found herself wishing that time would stop; that winter would freeze time itself, and graduation would never come, and they'd never have to face the great unknown that lay ahead of them. But inevitably, the snow thawed, and the ground warmed — though infinitesimally, by her standards — and they emerged on the other side of winter together, two sprouts surprised to find themselves in an unfamiliar garden.

Surprised to find themselves sprouted at all.

'Do you think the kitty is okay?' she asked him for about the hundredth time.

There'd been no sign of the little brown cat when they'd arrived at the cottage. Aurélie worried that the weeks of heavy snowfall had been her demise.

'Aura,' Sebastian groaned, half exasperated, half endeared. 'I'm sure cat is fine. You know they've got nine lives, don't you?'

An hour later, after Sebastian was sufficiently satisfied that he'd protected the garden against the dangers of encroaching weeds, and Aurélie had left a bowl of food out for the cat ('Just in case'), they were sprawled out under a small copse of pines that bordered the far side of Feldcroft. Between them, strewn across a mossy patch of earth, was a pile of food Sebastian had stashed away in his pockets — mostly sweets, which Aurélie did not touch — and an even larger pile of homework they'd been dutifully neglecting in favour of gardening and... well, kissing.

Three months of kissing Sebastian Sallow certainly hadn't lost its appeal; if anything, the more she kissed him, the more she wanted to kiss him until, to her absolute mortification, her neediness for physical affection almost rivalled his. More times than one, he'd had to pry her arms from around his neck, or her legs from his waist with a gentle reminder for patience.

'Not like this,' he'd say while they were sneaking kisses in some alcove somewhere, or tangled around each other in the Undercroft, lost in a mess of lips and hands with half an ear out should Ominis choose to visit. Kissing him was like eating a feast but never feeling satiated; like strolling a pleasant distance but never reaching a destination — never had she felt so full yet so achingly empty.

In the quiet moments, whenever Sebastian was lost in a book, or laying on the grass under their oak tree, Aurélie would watch him from the corner of her eye and marvel at the sheer magnitude of events that had shifted to bring them together.

She couldn't quite believe he was real, and that they'd found each other.

'Sebastian?'

'Mm?'

'Do you think Anne would've liked me?'

Sebastian didn't even glance up from the book he was reading. 'Nope.'

'What?' Utterly flabbergasted, she scooted across on her knees until she was looming over him, her hands on her hips. 'Sebastian Sallow! Don't tease me!'

'I'm not!' he laughed, falling onto his back as she pounced on him. 'It's sibling code, you wouldn't understand — ow! Oi, don't pinch!'

'Sibling code?' She sat squarely on his stomach and pinched him again. 'Sibling code dictates that your sister would've hated me?'

'She wouldn't have hated you, she just —'

'Just what?' She pinned his arms above his head, grinning impishly. 'Think very carefully about your next words.'

'Well...it's just that you're very French, and — ah, stop! —'

Giggling madly, she pinched his arms and chest and shoulders until he flipped her onto her back and squashed her with his entire body weight.

'No more pinching,' he warned when he finally pushed himself up on his elbows.

She reached up and pressed his nose flat with her finger.

'Sebastian?'

'Yes, Or-el-ee?'

'Do you really want to come with me to France?'

'Yes.'

'But that means living with me.'

'Mhm.'

'But what if I annoy you?'

'You always annoy me.'

'Shut up!'

'Make me shut up.'

Later, with the sun freshly set and the landscape painted in deep, navy blues, they headed back to the cottage, where, only a short walk from the treeline, Aurélie could see the edge of Anne's garden peeking from around the side, the sunflowers stretching for a sun that was far too mild to sustain them, the scent of honeysuckle, borne on air too cold to carry it, almost too faint to register. Yet it existed still, an anomaly — a miracle — because Sebastian looked at all the parts of her she believed were dangerous, or scary, or unnatural and saw only good.

All that life because he refused to believe she was bad.

You're good at this.

'She would have loved you eventually.' He paused at the doorstep to tuck her hair behind her ears. 'Once she saw how happy you make me.'

'I'm sorry I never got to meet her.'

'Me too,' he replied, and they smiled at each other even though they were sad.

When he opened the door a moment later, his smile died on his lips —

At the table sat a figure, a lone dark shape whose pale skin and black eyes made no sense in the pokey, ramshackle cottage, a deliberately wrong note in a familiar song.

Sebastian sensed the danger before she did. Like a bowstring snapping, a snake striking, he had her shielded behind him and halfway out the door before Aurélie fully registered what the presence of those black eyes meant —

Who they belonged to —

Sebastian raised his wand, a growl rumbling deep in his chest, but the figure rose from the table; too quickly, his wand pointed in an elegant hand, Malific Gaunt smiled a dead smile and uttered, 'Imperio.'

Sebastian's arms fell limp, and he stepped away from her.

'Ah ah.' Malific tutted, wagging a finger in warning. 'There's no need for violence, Sebastian. Be a good boy and take a seat at the table, won't you?'

With a frightened whimper, Aurélie clawed at Sebastian's elbow, her fingers digging in hard enough that he should have reacted, should have taken her hand and kissed her palm, should have soothed her, looked at her — anything. But he only stepped away and sat obediently at the table, leaving her to face the nightmare on her own.

'Dear Aurélie,' said Malific, pronouncing her name the French way. 'Please do forgive us the intrusion, my brother and I only wish to speak to you.'

It was then she noticed Ominis. Standing by the fireplace, his wand held low but his back stiff, he offered no reaction to the scene unfolding before him, as if he, too, had been robbed of his free will. But unlike Sebastian, who sat mildly at the table with his hands folded, there was a warning in Ominis' stillness:

Be careful. Be still.

And her magic agreed; a low hum simmering just beneath the skin as Malific bared down on her: a fox in a warren with sharp claws and bloodied teeth.

'We've met,' she told him, her voice trembling. Because she knew, then, by the swish of his robe and the silken threat in his voice, that it had been him that night in France in her living room, standing over the bodies of her parents.

In her veins, the magic seared, recognising the threat at the same moment she did, surging forward like a boiling ocean, but she pushed it down.

Be careful. Be still.

'We have,' he replied with a small incline of his head. 'Although our first acquaintance was made under rather regretful circumstances, I confess. And our second, well — I hardly thought it appropriate to introduce myself when you were propped up against a wall like an old broomstick. But now,' — he swept his arms wide, — 'we can finally meet properly. Please, sit.'

With perfect politeness, he gestured to the table that didn't belong to him, laid out with tea and biscuits that he'd taken without permission.

When she hesitated, his smile slid off his face like mud.

'Sit!' he hissed, his teeth bared. 'Or I will make him slit his own throat at your feet.'

Aurélie collapsed into a chair, china and silver wear rattling as her knees gave out and she gripped the table for support. Beside her, Sebastian stared straight ahead, indifferent to the threat on his life.

'Good,' nodded Malific, satisfied. 'Now —' He sat opposite them and poured himself a cup of tea, his tone jarringly conversational. 'You'll have to forgive my precautionary use of the Imperious Curse. I have no particular desire to harm Sebastian, but after all that mess with the relic and his uncle, not to mention his nasty habit of firing off Unforgivables when he's panicking... Well, he's just easier to manage this way. Drink up, Sebastian,' he added, flicking a careless gaze across the table as he stirred two sugars into his tea. 'Don't be rude.'

Without hesitation, Sebastian poured himself a cup, his hands steady, his expression terrifyingly blank. Aurélie clenched her hands in her lap, not trusting herself enough to handle china and hot water without her magic blowing it up in her face — or accidentally levelling the cottage, killing them all.

'The — relic?' she stammered. 'His uncle? I don't understand.'

'Yes, yes.' Malific raised his teacup to his lips. 'I certainly don't begrudge his use of Dark magic,' he said lightly, 'but I'd rather not cover up any more of Sallow's crimes if I can help it. It's rather tedious business, you know, sweeping murder under the rug.'

Her magic hummed an octave higher, and she suddenly felt very dizzy.

'Malific...' Ominis warned, speaking for the first time in a low voice. 'She doesn't know about Solomon.'

'Oh?' Malific's brows rose above dark eyes. 'He hasn't told you what he did? Tsk tsk. And here I was thinking you were special to him.'

'Solomon? But — but he died in his sleep,' she implored, throwing a desperate glance at Ominis. 'He told me. Ominis —?'

'He was too afraid to tell you the truth,' came his quiet confirmation, and Aurélie felt a tendril of black coil around her throat.

'He lied?'

'I don't see what the fuss is about,' Malific went on, sipping his tea. 'Personally, I applaud him for taking care of the problem. The only good Auror is a dead Auror — or a corrupt one, and Solomon Sallow was neither. He was a liability that I, for one, am glad to be rid of.' He set down his cup and fixed her with a thoughtful stare. 'Now, if it were up to me, I'd congratulate Sebastian for having the nerve to do what needed to be done — and with an Unforgivable, no less! How old was he, Ominis? Sixteen? Seventeen? Not even Marvolo was capable of the Killing Curse in his teens. But unfortunately,' he sighed, 'the Ministry, should they ever find out about Sebastian's transgressions, will be less inclined to see it my way. The Dementors even less so, given that he's been evading their justice for two years. Anyway, all this to say that dear Ominis had to call in a favour to help cover it all up, and now we're calling in what he owes us in return. Which brings us to you.'

'You want my magic,' she uttered — and the magic thrashed, writhed, raged against the idea of being taken.

'Well — yes and no,' Malific said thoughtfully, fingering the edge of the cup. 'You see, we Gaunts have always been rather protective of our assets; being direct descendants of Slytherin means we've accumulated quite an impressive collection of powerful artefacts. Relics and spellbooks, as your Sebastian discovered — but there are others we've been searching for, magic that Salazar studied extensively after he was banished from Hogwarts; magic that rightfully belongs to us. Ancient magic. And now more than ever, father believes in consolidating the family's power. You see, the more we own, the stronger we are against those who seek to topple us.'

'Imagine it, dear Aurélie.' His entire visage lit up, an animated corpse. 'The future Heirs of Slytherin, the powerful House of Gaunt, descendants of Salazar himself bolstered with your magic. Once we're back on top where we belong, our rightful place, we'll be the most powerful wizarding family in history. We'll be royalty. — It's perfect, really.' He leaned back in his chair, completely at ease. 'Ominis owes us his compliance, and nobody else is willing to take him.'

Behind him, Ominis remained still, staring into the middle distance.

'T-take Ominis?'

'Well, yes,' Malific smirked. 'I'm too busy at the Ministry to be producing heirs at present, and Marvolo is... well, at least Ominis will be nice to you.'

A future flashed before Aurélie's eyes, vivid and warm: a summer garden somewhere off the southern coast of France, where the sun rose early and set late, and the air smelled of salt and flowers; a cat, small and brown like the one she'd been leaving food out for, curled up in a patch of sun... And him, his freckles darkened by the sunshine, his hair burnished bronze by salt water and ocean breeze — a husband, maybe, someday...

Like creeping clover, these tentative dreams had first taken root in the shadows of her awareness, seedlings at first, fresh and tender little things she'd hardly noticed; but quickly they'd spread, grown into her psyche and spread into her heart — only to be ripped out by the roots, useless weeds, unwanted in any garden.

Keep or kill?

Malific clapped his hands together, jolting her back to a reality where a bleak future stared at her with evil eyes, and the boy she loved was a murderer.

'My offer to you is simple,' he said, rising fluidly from his chair. 'Marry Ominis and nobody else will die for you. Marry Ominis and Sebastian will stay a free man. You may keep him around, I suppose, if you're so fond of him —' he waved dismissively at Sebastian, '— so long as you're discreet about it. Consider it a sweetening of our arrangement. I'll give you some time to discuss the finer details amongst yourselves, but father is impatient to get the process started and he so hates to be kept waiting. I'll await your owl, Ominis.'

Swigging the last of his tea, he set the cup down and swept across the small room with quick, long strides. But at the door, he paused to cast her a final glance over his shoulder.

'Your parents weren't supposed to die,' he said without inflection or remorse, 'but they fought us. Don't make the same mistake.'

Then he was gone, and time stretched out interminably until the crack of his disapparation set it all in motion again.

Freed from the Imperious curse, Sebastian shot out of his chair. With no wand drawn, he launched himself across the room with anger as his only weapon.

'I'll kill you.'

He slammed Ominis against the wall, seething with a rage so intense that every muscle in his body rippled with it, every vein stood out in sharp protrusion.

Ominis pushed him back, forcing a space between them.

'You asked for my help—!' he panted, his voice low but urgent.

Sebastian's rage went off like a blast between them. 'I didn't ask for this!' he shouted. 'Marriage? Are you fucking sick in the head?'

Aurélie watched them mildly; she knew she ought to be upset — frightened, even, but she only felt...funny... Detached...like she was observing two strangers from a very long distance...

'This is the only way to keep you out of Azkaban!'

'Azkaban?' Sebastian grasped at his hair like he might tear it out. 'You think I give a fuck about Azkaban? I'd rather rot in prison for the rest of my life than see her married off to a Gaunt!'

'I can not let you go to Azkaban, I —'

'If you mention my sister one more fucking time —'

'I made her a promise!'

'THEN BREAK IT!' Sebastian roared.

'It can't be broken!' Ominis screamed back.

Aurélie winced away from the sounds, pressing the heels of her palms over her eyes as black and silver threads of magic squeezed her, choking her from the inside out.

'In case you've forgotten, Anne is dead!' Sebastian's voice was like nails scratching inside her skull. 'Whether you keep or break a promise to her is irrelevant now, isn't it? Because she'll never fucking know about it, will she?'

'You don't understand —! You never understand a fucking thing even when it's right under your nose!'

She squeezed her eyes shut as the argument raged on, like howling wind, like pounding blood — and she couldn't be sure, but was the cottage tilting?

Please, she whispered to no one.

A little nudge against her leg answered her. Looking down, she spotted two wide, bright eyes staring up at her from under the table.

'Kitty's back,' she mumbled, but nobody heard her. 'Hello, kitty. Minou, minou...'

Swatting away her reaching hand, the cat bolted to the door, and Aurélie, moving in a daze, followed her.

It was dark outside, and very, very peaceful: crickets and distant waves, noctilucent clouds along the horizon outlined in silver moonlight; beyond them, the ancient craggy mountains watched on, indifferent to her journey through the darkness, stumbling over rabbit holes and uneven ground.

After a short time, she heard someone shouting in the distance. She quickened her pace, following the cat's sleek tail into the pines, then beyond the pines, then deep into a forest she'd never seen before. If only she could find a nice, quiet place to lie down in... She could rest... And never get up again...

She was hardly surprised when Sebastian caught up to her. Panting hard, he whirled her around to face him — then almost immediately let her go.

Almost.

She didn't know what he saw in her expression — madness, maybe – but even bleached colourless as he was in the darkness, she saw his eye widen, watched the blood drain from his face.

'Aura —'

'You killed him,' she said dimly.

'Aurélie, your eyes —'

'You lied to me.'

Frantic, Sebastian grasped her face between his hands, forcing her her look at him. 'You need to let your magic out,' he commanded, holding her too tightly. 'Now.'

'Can't.' She tried to shake her head. 'They died... They'll all die... Where's the cat?'

Sebastian blinked. 'Cat? I —'

Suddenly, something came crashing through the underbrush behind them. Something huge.

Sebastian swore, yanked her back by the arm, but the shadow took form, looming out from the tree line before they could retreat.

Aurélie frowned at it. The shape made no sense —

Too many legs.

The creature reared up before she could fully comprehend the sheer size of it. Too fast — how could something so big move so fast? — and then it was upon her, enormous legs pinning her down, fangs wet and clicking, dripping venom like fat drops of rain onto her face. Her head hit the ground with a sickening crunch and her vision blinked: black, at first, and then blurry shapes —movement, muffled sounds, and a strange feeling at her shoulder: a pressure, then a pop, and something wet —

There was a scream, then a burst of hot, orange light above her illuminated the many-eyed stare of death that bared down on her, the thick, twitchy legs that held her down. Acromanula. Strangely calm, she thought of her Papa, and of her Maman, saw their faces, heard them calling out — then the creature rolled away, a tangle of too-many limbs, a screech like she'd never heard, and she pushed herself up, woozy, and slow...

Sebastian was on his feet, his face lit up by the barrage of fire spells he was casting at the creature — Bombarda! Confingro! Incendio! — but each flamed assault only served to anger it. The creature reared up; Sebastian knocked it back. It came at him again; he dodged just in time.

Aurélie raised herself on shaky legs, watching him through a long, black tunnel. He was shouting something at her, but she couldn't make out the words —

A nudge, so like the cat under the table, only this time in her palms. She raised her hand to her face. There, undulating in her palm, was a ball of magic as pure and unrefined as lightning, twisting and furling around itself. A second orb flared to life in her other palm; strands of liquid metal looping around her fingers, ropes of silvery water twisting, pulsing...

Her vision blurred again. She fought to stay conscious.

'Aurélie!'

Sebastian was on his back, wandless, kicking frantically at the underside of the spider, thrashing wildly against the many legs that were trying to pin him down.

'Aura!' — He caught her eye; time sped up, and magic set her veins on fire. — 'Run!' he screamed. 'Go! Run —!'

But only one thought registered, ringing clear through the terror like a bell:

Not him.

This time, her magic didn't ask permission: it was rage made tangible, fear made deadly — uncontrollable. It ripped itself from the air around her with a sizzling crack, drawing up from the earth, from the ether, from beneath her feet and above her head and from everywhere all at once. Her palms burned, searing and white-hot, surely burning the flesh from her bones with the force of it —

And then she giggled.

Some dim part of her terror-addled brain knew it was entirely the wrong reaction, but the magic seemed not to mind; on the contrary, it purred, grew bigger, like a touch-starved cat being scratched behind the ears, happy to finally have her attention.

Kill, it said, and she raised her hands, nothing more than a conduit now, a channel for power, charged with fear and rage and — death.

With a sound like rushing wings and raging flames, the magic left the prison of her body, ecstatic at finally being set free. It hit the monstrous beast from behind, lit it up like a terrible beacon — beneath it, Sebastian cried out: a sound she'd remember for the rest of her life — and then, in a single staggering flash, it was gone.

It was only then, in the complete and terrible silence that followed, did she notice the fang stuck through her shoulder.

Chapter Text

Sebastian was on his feet before Aurélie's knees hit the ground. Moving faster than he'd ever imagined possible, he caught her around the waist and laid her gently across the forest floor, careful not to jostle the pincer embedded in her shoulder.

Where fear might have made a weaker man its slave, it only made Sebastian sharper, more precise: a complicated twirl of his wand told him her injuries were limited to the puncture wound. Thankfully, the pincer had missed her heart, but the venom would work itself there regardless if he didn't stop it —

Stop it. Stop it. — 'Solomon, stop!'

Light spots danced in his vision and his ears were ringing, remnants of the magic that had just saved his life, but he forced his focus into sharpness, stamping down the bubbling panic by reeling off Healing spells in his head:

Vulnera Sanentur, repeated thrice, would close the wound once the pincer was removed — he could do nothing for the venom without the right potions on hand but a few wiggenwalds and a good Stamina charm might stave off the worst of it until he got her to the infirmary and then —

Sebastian tasted blood; Solomon's Depulso had blasted him into the cavern wall.

He gritted his teeth. Remove the pincer, staunch the wound.

'Aurélie.' He searched her face for signs of awareness; her eyes were pure white, a telltale sign that something far deadlier than venom was coursing through her veins.

Sebastian pushed the thought away.

Remove the pincer, staunch the wound.

'I'm going to take the pincer out, okay?' he told her firmly, though he wasn't sure she could hear him. 'It might hurt a bit, but I'm going to fix it, alright? I'm going to fix everything, don't worry.'

Bracing one hand on her shoulder, he gave the pincer a good, firm tug. It came out easily, but the blood —

The blood —

Spurting out like a macabre fountain, it soaked through her clothes, staining his hands dark and wet. She made a small, feeble sound, a terrible little whine of fear and pain, and he thought of Anne in the catacombs, caught between him and his uncle. 'Solomon, listen to me! This will work! This will save her!'

'Aura, I'm sorry, I'm sorry —' His fingers smeared bloody streaks across her face, painting her with violence. Why did everything he love end up bloodied and broken? 'Fuck — it's – it's alright, I'm going to fix this, I'm —'

His trembling fingers fumbled with his wand, slipping over the polished handle as he held it over the wound and uttered the incantation.

Close the wound, wiggenweld, stamina charm, infirmary —

Close the wound —

Close the wound —!

But the wound would not close, and the blood would not stop coming.

'You're rotten, boy, just like your father was!'

Diffindo made quick work of her sleeve, but when he peeled it away from her skin, horror froze the breath in his lungs.

'No,' he cried out, gripping her shoulders. 'No no no.'

Worse than blood, worse than a wound full of venom, tendrils of black spread along her skin like rotten veins, creeping across her shoulder, probing up her neck, disappearing under her ruined blouse.

Sebastian knew healing spells: he could mend wounds and set bones in a blink, could numb pain and diagnose most ailments, but nothing in his Healer training had ever prepared him for this:

Obscurial.

Solomon raised his wand to the relic; Sebastian screamed, but it was too late — the relic was destroyed, and with it, his hope. And with it, Anne's life.

'Aura —' Abandoning his wand entirely, Sebastian hoisted her head into his lap and cradled it. 'Aura, you have to get it out. Use your magic, p-pull the pain out.'

She shook her head. 'Can't...any more...' she groaned, and desperation clawed from Sebastian's throat like a feral animal, sank its claws into his flesh, ripped chunks out of his self-control.

'Please!' it howled. 'Aura, it's killing you!'

'I won't let her suffer!'

He grabbed her hand and shook it, desperate to awaken the magic that had just saved his life, the magic that could grow plants as easily as it could annihilate enemies, magic that needed no wand nor incantation to direct it, only the force of her will if only she'd let it.

'It hurts...' she mumbled feebly. 'So much pain.'

Sebastian's throat constricted around the sheer size of his panic. He leaned lower, cupping her face between his hands, desperate to find her in the bottomless depths of her white eyes.

'Aura, love, look at me,' he commanded. 'I know pain, I know it hurts, but you — you're so strong.'

'Not...strong...' she breathed out, and a bubble of exasperation burst through his fear: even on the brink of death, she was infuriatingly stubborn, unable to see herself as she truly was. How could she not realise her own strength? Sebastian had never seen anything like her, both equal parts fury and beauty, terrifying and enchanting — like a goddess, like Aphrodite scorned, so staggeringly powerful that even the fucking spider had turned to admire her as she'd reigned its demise upon it.

Not a girl, but a creature of flame.

He'd never loved anything more.

He held her hand over the wound, squeezed her fingers.

'Please,' he begged, his voice cracking. 'The Obscurus is poisoning you, I can't heal it. — Use your magic. Please, Aurélie, please.' He pressed his forehead to hers, breathed in salt and panic. 'Remember the butterflies you conjured? And all the flowers you bloomed? You did that. Your magic did that. You're good.'

'Good?'

Her voice was so soft he could hardly hear it over the pounding blood in his ears, but he fought to keep his hands steady, his words sure. 'Very, very good.' He kissed her forehead, tasted blood, then kissed it again. 'And if you can just use your magic one more time, I'll take the pain away, okay?'

An eternal moment passed in which everything — past, present, future — hung suspended between them. He recalled her in the Great Hall that first night, a brilliant beacon that had drawn him in beneath the enchanted ceiling and never let him go. He held the vision in his mind as she looked back at him, her white eyes locked onto his, and her expression softened, just a little, as if she could see it, too: them, together.

Them, forever.

Something flitted across her face — a smile, almost. Weakly, with every breath rattling in her lungs, she reached up and pressed her wet, crimson fingers to his chin.

'I don't...want...to marry Ominis,' she whispered, and somehow, though grievously injured and bleeding all over the forest floor, she managed to look deeply offended at the prospect of becoming a Gaunt.

Sebastian's heart clenched like a fist, and he almost laughed.

'Ominis wouldn't know what to do with you,' he growled, pressing her fingers to his lips. 'You're mine.'

She sighed, a pretty sound like music in the middle of a battlefield, and then tiny wisps of silver magic seeped out from her fingertips, as insubstantial as mist over a lake but enough to illuminate her face in the darkness.

Sebastian almost fainted from the staggering force of his relief.

'That's it,' he whispered, holding her hand steady as the silver cords stretched and grew. 'Find where it hurts and — and give it to me. I'll take your pain. I won't let you suffer.'

The black tendrils came out fighting, drawn out slowly by the silver threads of her magic. Twisting and tangling like some bizarre sea creature with its tentacles caught in fishing wire, the cords cast shadows and light through the forest around them. Sebastian thought he saw movement in the corner of his eye, something flitting between the trees. He scooped up his wand and held it tight, but nothing but magic moved around them, a slow-moving cloud that grew with each insidious black ribbon she pulled from her body.

Morbid curiosity compelled his hand toward the black mass. At first, it pulled away from him, skittish and unsure, but then a tentative strand coiled around his index finger. He held it up to his face: an Obscurus without a body, pain without a place to live — so like Ancient Magic, but...wrong. Distorted.

'You've made your choice.' The betrayal on Anne's face hurt more than the burns across his face, more than Solomon's taunts ringing in his ears. Sebastian reached for her, but she turned away.

A voice, as familiar as it was frightening, called out from the place inside him where the darkness lived, and the tendrils, drifting around him like smoke, suddenly changed course. Before he could pull away, they unfurled into every empty space inside him, curling and filling all the voids and cracks, stealing the breath from his lungs, the vision from his eyes... The world narrowed to a tiny point, and darkness enveloped him like a cloak, silent and soft, and another voice spoke to him, like Anne's —

And maybe he'd see her again, his sister —

And maybe his parents —

And if Aurélie was with them, at least they'd always be together, and she'd be safe —

Aurélie.

Too weak to hold himself up, Sebastian slumped forward, covering her small, blood-soaked body with his own. If this was dying, then at least his last act would be protecting the one he loved...

The only one he had left.

'Aura, I love you,' he heard himself saying. 'I love you, and I'm sorry...'

Love.

Deep in the catacombs beneath Feldcroft, blazing in the heat of battle, fighting off Inferi and fire, grappling with life and death, Sebastian thought about love as he forced his uncle back with a well-aimed blasting spell.

In that singular moment, Sebastian's choice was simple: Anne or Solomon, love or hatred.

Sebastian chose love — he always did.

'I won't let her suffer!'

Love bolstered his hot fury as the Inferi stumbled and Solomon's counter-spell missed its mark; love warmed his cold fear as his wand — aspen wood and dragon heartstring — seared hot in his palm, as eager to attack as the lethal creature its core had been taken from; love was the driving force as the relic whispered in his ear: Do it. You know the spell. He deserves it.

Nobody loved like Sebastian loved.

Across the room, Solomon seemed to realise his fate at the same moment Sebastian decided it, and when the rushing green light hit him squarely in the chest, and the life fizzled from his eyes, and his face went wonderfully slack, Sebastian smiled.

Nobody loved like Sebastian loved.

Nobody.

Moments later, or perhaps hours, or years, or in another life completely, he found himself upright again.

He was seven, healing the scrapes on his sister's knees with Dittany after she'd taken a tumble in the yard; he'd had no magic back then, and only knew how to treat wounds with whatever magical herbs his parents had lying about the house. — He was nine, learning how to make broth after Anne had come down with a nasty case of the mumblemumps; they'd both been ill that winter, but Sebastian had dragged himself out of bed every day, aching and shivering, to make sure his sister ate. — Eleven, just a month shy of being orphaned, stitching together a nasty gash on his lip after he'd borrowed and consequently crashed his father's broomstick.

He was nineteen, standing at the end of a hospital bed, his hands stained with blood.

Awareness trickled back to him in drips and drabs:

He was both hot and cold.

It was dark.

Aurélie was asleep in the bed before him, cleaned of blood and breathing steadily. He wanted to move closer, to touch her, hold her, but something kept him rooted to the spot.

How long had he been standing here? He could remember nothing but blood and blackness.

'Sebastian?'

Ominis' voice came from somewhere behind him, quiet and tentative through the silent room. Sebastian didn't turn, but the Dark thing inside him shifted its awareness from the girl whose blood caked his clothes to the person whose family had caused it.

Ominis' wand was tucked away; a deliberate effort, Sebastian supposed, to appear as non-threatening as possible.

'We got her here before the venom spread too far,' Ominis said, breaking the silence with his indifferent voice. 'Luckily, Sharp's been brewing antidotes all year, given the Acromantula problem is so out of control. Nurse Blainey says she'll be well enough to be discharged in a day or two.'

Sebastian nodded stiffly. 'I don't remember how I got here,' he admitted, his voice raspy.

'I found you both unconscious in the forest. I apparated her back first, but when I came back for you —'

The forest. The cottage. Malific.

'You can't have her,' he said evenly, looking at his oldest friend — his newest enemy? — for the first time. 'I'm not afraid of your brothers. You can't have her.'

Ominis' face was drawn and tight as if he'd aged several years in a single night. 'I know it seems inconceivable to you, but my name truly is the best protection she could —'

'No.' There was no threat in Sebastian's voice this time, no malice, no anger — just a statement of fact: 'I don't care what I must do, or how much pain I must endure. She will never marry you.'

The Dark thing hummed in agreement. He would protect her — no matter the cost.

'Sebastian, I...' Ominis shifted to face him more fully. 'There's something you need to see. Something you need to understand.'

Sebastian's fists clenched. 'I understand enough,' he hissed, 'to know that I can't trust you any more.'

'Please, if you insist on refusing my brothers, you need to know the full story.'

After flatly refusing to leave Aurélie's side for anything less than vengeance, the sound of Nurse Blainey doing her nightly rounds compelled Sebastian to acquiesce to Ominis' request. He was, after all, still covered in blood, and though Blainey usually went easy on him for hanging around the infirmary after curfew, the sight of him in such a state would surely cause unwanted alarm. The last thing Sebastian needed was to deal with Headmaster Black while a foreign darkness settled itself in his bone marrow.

Ordinarily, Ominis' Head Boy privileges would've ensured them a quick and uneventful journey through the castle after curfew, but given the circumstances, they kept to their secret passageways and concealed doors until they reached a long, windowless corridor.

Sebastian didn't know what floor they were on, nor did he realise anything magical was happening until a set of heavy doors materialised before his eyes and Ominis was ushering him into an endless room full of junk.

'What is this place?' he mumbled, registering only a vague sense of surprise.

'I may have kept a few secret rooms to myself over the years,' Ominis admitted, following his blinking wand down aisles of broken furniture, past stacks of books, and old bathtubs, and cages full of strange-looking bones. 'This is the come and go room. I discovered it when I needed a — well, you'll see.'

Sebastian's intrigue should've been piqued beyond the point of self-control, but he only felt strangely dull and unfocused.

At an intersection of towering junk, a self-playing piano was stuck repeating the first few bars of Fur Elise out of tune, its keys stained with something rusty and wet. They turned left and carried on, and when the tune died away in the distance, Sebastian picked it up, humming it under his breath until Ominis finally spoke again.

'It's here,' he said, and with a flick of his wand, he uncovered a small stone basin from beneath an old sheet.

Sebastian stared at it blankly; he recognised a pensive when he saw one, but Ominis offered no explanation. Instead, he procured a glass vial from his breast pocket, uncorked it and tipped its contents into the basin.

'Please forgive me,' he said quietly, staring into the pool of undulating silver memories as if he could see them. 'Everything I did, I did for her.'

Without thinking, Sebastian stepped forward and plunged himself into oblivion.

Sitting at a small round table in a tiny room, Anne Sallow's face was shrouded in darkness. Across the table, a hooded figure sat contemplating her, their identity hidden by a haze of incense smoke and shadows, their bejewelled fingers steepled beneath an obscured chin.

Anne leaned forward in her chair; even in the dim light, the shadows under her eyes bloomed across her pale skin like bruises: she'd travelled a long way and the curse was hurting her, but this meeting was too important to put off for something as trifling as pain.

She had to know. She needed answers.

'I need to know about my brother's future,' she implored the faceless figure. 'He's done something unforgivable and I don't know what to do next.' On the tabletop between them, she carefully placed a small wooden item: a family crest she'd once given to her brother as a token of protection.

The figure picked it up and held it for a long moment, then a voice spoke from beneath the hood, neither female nor male, but both, and all:

'I see a dark place. — Anguish... fear... monsters.'

A shiver ran down Anne's spine, obvious even in the dark. 'Azkaban,' she uttered, the realisation shocking her like ice-cold water.

The figure neither confirmed nor denied, but continued on, 'It is cold in this place. I see him pleading, begging for life. There is pain. So much pain, and yet—' long fingers curled suddenly around the crest, and the voice deepened, '— he emerges.'

'He gets out?' Anna sat forward in her chair, her tiny frame swimming in her worn-out travelling cloak. 'Do they release him, or does he escape?'

'He emerges,' repeated the voice. 'But...different. Powerful.'

'What does that mean?' Anne hardly heard herself over the dread screaming in her ears; the same dread she'd been keeping at bay ever since she'd watched her twin brother murder their uncle. 'Powerful how?'

The voice turned raspy, full of smoke.

'Terrible power — unlike anything in existence — a distortion —' It puffed and choked, and then, as clear as wind, it howled, 'POWER LIKE POISON... WHEN THE DARK ONE CONSUMES, THE SACRIFICE OF ONE WILL MAKE MANY...'

The crest clattered to the table, and then the scene dissolved, and a new one replaced it:

Two hands clasped tight, bound together by a vivid rope of magic.

Anne was thinner now, paler, barely able to draw a full breath, yet her eyes were locked onto the face before her with fierce determination.

'Ominis Gaunt,' she began, her voice full of all the conviction her body lacked, 'will you do everything in your power to keep Sebastian out of Azkaban? To prevent the prophecy from coming true?'

'I will,' answered Ominis, and the light around their hands burned brighter, brighter until Anne had to turn her face away.

And then as quickly as it had flared up, the light faded, and the two stood facing each other through semi-darkness again, breathless.

'Ominis —' Anne's knees gave way, but Ominis' arms were ready to catch her, as they always were.

'I know,' he murmured, holding her to his chest. 'I know.'

A whirl of colour and sound brought the next scene into sharp focus:

Anne's garden was blanketed under piles of snow, drenched pale blue under the light of a half moon. Beyond it, the cottage stood shadowed in darkness, its windows blank and its chimney cold and empty.

Only one set of footprints tracked through the snow, yet two figures stood in the yard together, their cloaks drawn and hoods up.

'Anne, this is the only way I can keep my promise.' Though he fought for restraint, the despair in Ominis' voice carried clear across the yard as if he were shouting it for all of Feldcroft to hear.

But Anne was too distraught for discretion.

'Marriage?' she shrieked. 'To her?'

'Please, Anne,' Ominis begged. 'If he goes to Azkaban, you'll lose us both.'

Anne shook her head, one hand clutching her stomach, the other curled into a fist by her side. 'She's the problem,' she spat, rapidly backing away through the snow. 'Everything was fine until she showed up.'

'Anne...'

'I'll fix this, Ominis. I'll make sure no one has to suffer for her.'

'Anne, wait—!' Ominis reached out, but where the girl once stood, a small, brown cat streaked away into the trees.

Suddenly, Sebastian was jolted back into a cold, stark reality. He stumbled, thrown backwards into a shelf full of burnt books.

'You made the Unbreakable Vow?' he said raggedly, pressing his blood-stained hands to his temples. The room spun. He fought not to throw up.

'Yes. To keep you out of Azkaban. To stop the prediction from coming true. If you go to prison, I'll have broken the vow — and I will die.'

'But —' Sebastian's mind rebelled against the truth he'd just witnessed, rejecting a reality in which Anne was... Where she was...

'B-but Anne is dead. The Vow is voided if one party dies.'

Ominis remained quiet.

'Anne is dead,' said Sebastian again, but this time with less conviction. 'I saw her, Ominis. I saw her.'

With a long, drawn-out sigh, Ominis slumped wearily against an old desk piled with junk. The red light of his wand blinked once, twice, then went out completely, leaving the space between them darker than it had ever been.

'Do you remember that evening in the detention chamber?' he spoke after a long silence. 'You told me you talk to Anne every day...'

'I do, but —'

'Sebastian,' he said meaningfully. 'I talk to Anne every day.'

Hours later, without any sense of reality or direction, Sebastian found himself back at Aurélie's bedside, stumbling with exhaustion, his spine bent with the weight of his sorrow.

Lifting her head, she called his name through the silence, her face drawn and her eyes bleary, and he came to her, crawled right into her bed with his blood-stained clothes and broken heart, and she took him in even though he was a murderer, and a failure, and the very worst kind of person, and held him tight as he completely fell apart in her arms.

Chapter Text

'I shouldn't have lied to you,' he moaned into the crook of her neck, his voice almost inaudible with despair. 'I should've told you about Solomon but I — how could I —'

Sebastian smelled tangy, and when she reached up to touch his hair, she found it matted together in clumps, sticky with sweat and dried blood.

Her blood.

She held him tighter.

'You killed him?' she whispered.

'I had to.' His fingers dug into her waist, pulling her closer. 'He was attacking us. He wouldn't stop.'

'But you used the killing curse?' Too tired for shock or anger, she simply asked the question like they were practising exam revision: Explain your reasoning for using an Unforgivable Curse over another, less harmful spell.

Sebastian was silent for so long that she wondered if he didn't want to answer, but eventually, he lifted his head. His eyes were dark, and there was blood on his face. She tried to wipe it off with the end of her sleeve.

'I don't know...' He averted his eyes. 'I tell myself it was self-defence, but...'

But. 

The unfinished sentence hung over them like a spectre, haunting the infirmary with unspeakable truth.

Failing to scrub the mess from his face, Aurélie reached for her wand and uttered a cleaning charm instead. 'Are you sorry?' she asked as she siphoned bits of blood and dirt from his hair.

Sebastian frowned at the question. 'I'm sorry it came to that,' he said slowly, leaning into her touch, 'but I'm not sorry for protecting my sister.' He closed his eyes and dropped his voice to a whisper. 'Do you hate me now?'

In a bed too small for their bodies, there was no space for lies between them — so she spoke the truth instead.

'When I first came here,' she whispered, 'everyone told me to stay away from you.'

'I know,' he said brokenly.

'I should have listened to Garreth — to Ominis. They warned me.'

'I know.'

'That curse killed my parents —'

'I know.' He buried his face in her shoulder.

'And yet,' — she took a deep breath, — 'I think even if I'd known it from the beginning, it wouldn't have made any difference.'

Tentatively, Sebastian raised his head.

'If that Acromantula had been a person...' she began, holding his face between her hands. 'If it had been Ominis — or anyone... If they were hurting you... How can I judge you for what you did,' — her voice cracked, — 'when I would have done the same thing?'

'It's instinct,' he said solemnly, 'to protect who we love. Just as I protected my sister. Just as I'll protect you.'

She traced her thumb across his stubbly chin, drawing him closer until his breath was sweet on her face. 'It doesn't make any sense, but... I think we're meant to be together.'

She didn't expect the kiss that crashed against her lips, but she accepted it as if she'd been waiting her whole life to feel it. Different to any other kiss he'd ever given her, this one struck like lightning, crackling from her lips down to her toes until every nerve hummed with unbearable sensitivity under his touch.

For so long, she'd toed the line between two halves of herself: the British girl at the French school, the French girl at the British school, the wielder and the suppressor of Ancient Magic, both good and bad, powerful and scared — a dichotomy between light and dark.

She couldn't fight it any more.

Tired of being split between two, Aurélie yearned to be whole.

Panting into her mouth, Sebastian pushed up on his elbow and leaned over her, deepening the kiss until she couldn't breathe, couldn't see, couldn't feel anything but the overwhelming presence of him. Her sore muscles protested his weight, but soon she softened against him, yielding to the inexorable pull that kept them tethered together.

What was pain compared to the taste of his tongue?

'You almost died,' he moaned between kisses, his breath ragged on her face. 'Fuck, Aura, you almost died.'

She couldn't remember much after her magic had torn free: scraps of sound, the pressure of warm hands, a dull ache in her shoulder — but there'd been a voice, bright and clear over the chaos. His voice:

Aura, I love you...

I love you.

'Did you mean it?' she gasped.

She didn't need to clarify. He simply knew.

'Fuck, yes,' he moaned, dragging his mouth up the length of her throat. 'You have stitched my soul back together.'

That was it. As if the entire world outside of them ceased to exist, as if Nurse Blainey wasn't mere meters away in her room, and every movement didn't illicit a too-loud moan or screech of bed springs, Aurélie threw her head back and made a sound that ought to have embarrassed her but didn't.

Sebastian rolled on top of her, and her legs wrapped around his hips, and his teeth scraped over her pulse point like her heartbeat was something he could eat, and she was hit with the absurd realisation that she wouldn't mind being devoured.

Wouldn't mind it at all.

'Say it,' she barely whispered, threading her fingers through his hair.

'I love you,' he gasped, pressing the words into her collarbone. 'I love you so much it hurts.'

He found her lips and said it again, right into her mouth as if she might taste it, consume it; and she swore she did — tangy and sweet, like salt and iron tinged with sugar and mint; it saturated his breath and dripped from his tongue, and she thought that if he stopped kissing her right then, she might actually die.

Wrapping herself around him, her hands grasped at every part of him she could find, pulling his hair, clutching his shoulders, tugging his jumper. Already out of breath, she broke the kiss long just enough to plead, 'No more lies,' into his open mouth.

He pulled back to look at her, his eyes wild and dark, and she wondered how she'd ended up here, desperate to be held by hands that had once felt the rush of the killing curse flowing through them.

Maybe she was bad, after all. Maybe they both were, drawn together and doomed by their darkness.

Maybe she didn't care any more.

'No more lies,' he vowed, and he kissed her again, pressing her body down with his hips. Beneath them, the bed springs screamed a warning for self-control that went unheeded as she slipped her hands under his jumper. His skin was hot, and his muscles shivered and contracted under her touch, and still, he kissed her — deeper than before, harder, as if the antidote to pain was in her mouth.

Spurred on by his clawing hands and hungry lips, she dragged her nails across his chest then down, down to his stomach, his navel. In turn, he slid a warm, calloused palm up her leg, from her ankle to thigh, from her thigh to her —

'Fuck.'

A second later, he rolled off her, wrenching himself away with such disorienting speed that Aurélie's hands grasped at thin air. She froze, expecting Nurse Blainey to barge in demanding an explanation for all the moaning, but the only sound that broke the perfect silence was that of Sebastian panting hard beside her, flat on his back with his fists clenched in his hair.

'I'm sorry,' he groaned. 'I'm — I'm not myself right now, I shouldn't... Not like this...'

Equally as breathless, she shifted on her side to look at him: his hair was a mess, his blood-stained jumped was askew, and somewhere in the heat of the moment, one of them had removed his tie. But worse than all that was the pain etched across his face.

'What's happened?' she asked, pushing up on her elbow. Shadows darkened his face; she soothed them away with her palm.

'She's alive,' he uttered. 'Anne's alive.'

The news of the Acromantula attack spent a comparatively short time in the Hogwarts' gossip mill before it was buried under mountains of homework, much to Aurélie's relief. With only eight weeks out from exams, the seventh years had very little thought to spare for anything outside of gruelling revision: curfew was extended until midnight for N.E.W.T students — provided they used the extra time for studying — and emotional breakdowns were so common that every time Aurélie nipped into the ladies' room, she found another seventh year in tears. She was surprised she wasn't among them, what with all the additional stress she was dealing with, but so far she hadn't been driven to crying alone in a toilet stall.

Sebastian, on the other hand, was faring much worse. Though he kept up with his studies with an ease that made virtually every seventh year jealous, remained committed to his Healer training, and even won Slytherin the Quidditch cup, he nursed the knowledge of his sister's betrayal like an open wound. No longer the self-assured, charming menace she'd met at the beginning of the school year, he'd become uncharacteristically quiet and reserved. Even his posture was different, his shoulders slumped like the weight of the knowledge was too heavy to bear upright. It would've been easy to attribute these changes to the stress of exams, but Aurélie knew that the return of his sister had hurt him as much as her "death" had.

'She faked her death to get away from me,' he'd told her in the infirmary that first night, his voice cracked and broken. 'She'd rather die than be my sister.'

He refused to speak of Anne again afterwards, nor so much as acknowledge Ominis' existence, and Aurélie had no choice but to take his lead, holding her tongue while her frustration grew unchecked like a weed. What was the point of possessing great, unrivalled power if she couldn't use it to soothe his pain? If it only imprisoned her in her own life, caged like a phoenix with its wings torn off?

Surely she hadn't been destined to be married off and used as a tool for certain evil.

Surely her future held more than this.

She tried not to imagine it, but while her friends excitedly made plans for their lives beyond Hogwarts, Aurélie lay awake most nights and saw nothing for herself but a grim, uncertain future. Because even if she and Sebastian fled, the Gaunt's would only draw her out of hiding by hurting the people she loved.

She could see no other way out: if marriage was the only way to keep them all safe, what other choice did she have?

She was just finishing her nightly rounds in the Thestral stables when the cat found her again. Poppy, as was her habit with any animal that strayed across her path, fussed and cooed over it, offering scritches behind the ears and treaties from her pockets, but the cat only kept its intelligent, knowing gaze trained on Aurélie, who glared back in a way that made Poppy look a little nervous.

'I think she likes you,' she said unconvincingly, and it took all of Aurélie's strength not to burst into hysterical, slightly unhinged laughter.

Watched over by their furry companion, they fed the last of the Thestrals, changed the hay in the stalls, and made sure to give extra smooches to Sugar, to whom Aurélie had grown quite attached. But when Poppy made for the exit, Aurélie stayed behind.

'Will you tell Sebastian I'll be up in ten minutes?' she asked as she stroked Sugar's bony snout. 'I just need a minute of alone time.'

When she was alone, Aurélie looked at the cat. The cat looked at Aurélie.

'You're not a cat, are you?'

The cat shook its head. Aurélie sighed.

'Fine,' she relented. 'You lead, I'll follow.'

Slinking soundlessly through the stables, the cat led her to the edge of the forest by the Unicorn pen before disappearing behind an oak. A moment later, a small figure emerged from the tree line.

Anne Sallow looked nothing like her brother — except for her eyes. Though hers were set in a thin, pallid face, perhaps a little wider, a bit shrewder, they were identical in both colour and intensity. She had no freckles, no curls, no height, yet her eyes seemed to penetrate the darkness as if she could see things no one else could. Aurélie knew that look well — she'd been held captive under Sebastian's intensity since the day they'd met, but where Sebastian's gaze held love in its depths, Anne's reflected only hatred.

'So you're the French girl,' she said, looking her over with disdain.

'And you're the dead sister,' Aurélie snapped back.

Crossing her arms over her chest, Anne fixed her again with an unblinking, distinctly feline stare; she was small, quite a few inches shorter than Aurélie, and judging by her drawn face and hunched shoulders, still suffering from the curse Sebastian had fought so hard to cure her of — but her clothes were new and good quality, and her hair was neat and clean, brushed back from her face in a tidy bun. Had she not known the truth, Aurélie would never have guessed she'd been living as a cat in the wilds of Scotland for two-odd years.

'I assume you know everything, then.' Anne kept close to the trees, half-shrouded in the rapidly deepening darkness.

Aurélie straightened. 'Everything,' she said coldly. 'The vow, the so-called prophecy. — The only thing I don't understand is how someone so heartless could be so closely related to Sebastian.'

Forgoing pleasantries was easy when Aurélie thought of all the pain Anne had inflicted on her brother. Did she realise what she'd done to him? Did she even care?

'I've seen what you can do,' said Anne, regarding her with the same dislike reflected in her eyes. 'You're powerful. No wonder Sebastian likes you.'

Aurélie bristled. 'What is that supposed to mean?'

'I don't blame you for getting sucked in by his charm; he's so good at manipulation that I don't think he even realises he's doing it any more. But most of them —' she nodded toward the castle in the distance, '— have known him long enough to be wary. You came stumbling in blind.'

'I don't stumble. And Sebastian hasn't manipulated me!'

Anne narrowed her eyes. 'Hasn't he?' she scoffed. 'The only thing Sebastian cares about is power. He's been powerless his whole life: powerless to save our parents, powerless to stand up against Solomon, to cure my curse, to free Ominis from his family's influence.' The words flowed from her like she'd been waiting a lifetime to say them aloud. 'Why do you think he was drawn to the Dark Arts to begin with? My curse might've been the catalyst, but by the end, finding a cure was only the facade he used to justify what he was doing. The deeper he got, the more powerful he felt. That's what Dark magic does — it promises your deepest desires and asks only that you ruin your life in return.'

'You seem to know a lot about Dark magic for someone who died to avoid dealing with it.'

Anger hardened Anne's features, and Aurélie finally saw the Sallow likeness in her tightened jaw and stubborn chin. Sebastian had once described her as a rule breaker, smart enough that she was never caught nor punished for her misdemeanours. Aurélie supposed he was right, but had failed to mention how very calculating she was.

'I've never touched Dark magic!' she barked. 'But I've been watching it destroy my brother for years now! I've seen it hurt Ominis! I've seen it kill my uncle! Do you have any idea what that's like?'

'Yes, I do, actually!' Aurélie argued back. 'But there's a difference between someone using it for good like he did and —'

'For good?' Anne gave an incredulous, high-pitched laugh. 'Oh, no wonder he likes you!'

Aurélie clenched her fists, reeling in a surge of anger that flared hot with Ancient Magic. 'Maybe he likes me because I haven't turned my back on him!'

As night settled in around them, the darkness from the forest seemed to seep out like oil, wrapping around Anne's slight frame like a protective cloak. Half-hidden in shadows, she pressed on as if Aurélie hadn't spoken.

'I was there at Hogsmeade, you know —when that man accosted you near the Hog's Head,' she told her. 'After Sebastian discovered your secret, he never left you alone again, did he? He was persistent, wasn't he? Got obsessive about researching your magic? Possessive, like you belonged to him?'

'He only wanted to help me!'

Anne snorted. 'Oh, yes, in the same way he helped me? He only wanted to help you so he could help himself!'

'You talk like he's evil!'

'I talk like he's been corrupted by Dark magic!' she retorted. 'But you? He killed a man with the Killing Curse and you still defend him?'

Aurélie forced a steadying breath through her nose. 'I don't understand,' she said tightly. 'Why go to all that trouble of faking your death only to watch over him for two years? Did you really believe that making him grieve you would set him on a better path?'

'The only way to make him stop was to make him believe I was dead! So long as I was cursed, not even committing murder was enough of a wake-up call to make him stop!'

'But he did it to protect you! Your uncle was attacking you, was he not?'

Suddenly, a gust of wind came howling from the depths of the forest, scattering leaves and bending branches overhead. Aurélie huddled around herself while Anne gripped the tree for support, one hand clutching her stomach, the other shielding her face. When finally it died down, they looked at each other, breathless, all the anger blown away between them.

'My curse is a result of Dark magic,' Anne explained, her voice weaker than before. 'Sebastian was convinced that that's where the cure lay. He tracked down a relic through entries left in Slytherin's spell book.'

'The one he went into the Scriptorium for.'

'That's right,' Anne nodded. 'The one he cast the torture curse on Ominis to retrieve. The book led him to find the relic in the catacombs beneath Feldcroft. It... changed him. Granted, before he found it, he was still impulsive and reckless — he always has been. But afterwards...' She shook her head and sighed. 'I believe, as all Dark magic does, that the relic demanded a sacrifice.'

'You think your uncle was the sacrifice?'

Anne laughed bitterly. 'Uncle Solomon, then me, then his friendship with Ominis — and now you. Dark magic takes and takes and takes. The sacrifices won't ever stop. Everything in his life is tainted by it.'

The silence that followed hurt Aurélie's heart, and suddenly she didn't want to be standing in the dark with a stranger — she wanted to be with him in the Undercroft, or sprawled out under their oak tree, or whispering together in the library past curfew...

She wanted Sebastian, no matter how tainted his life was.

'What do you want from me?' Aurélie sighed. 'Why are you here?'

Anne's eyes sharpened on her. 'I want you to Obliviate him.'

'What?' Aurélie almost fell over.

'Wipe his memories of you and go into hiding. Leave.' Anne pointed vaguely over her shoulder. 'I know a thing or two about faking your death. I could even teach you how to become an Animagus — I don't care, as long as you're gone.'

'You want me to wipe his memories?'

Two years of living as a cat had evidently broken Anne's brain.

'With your magic, you could do it in a way that ensures he never remembers who you are.'

'Absolutely not!' she balked.

Like a cat stalking its prey, Anne took a slow step forward. 'If you don't,' she said, her voice low and fierce, 'he'll go up against the Gaunt's to protect you and he will lose. At best, they'll kill him, but more likely they'll hand him over to the Dementor's to play with until his mind breaks and he emerges with some kind of distorted power unlike anyone's ever seen. Ominis will die, everyone you love will die, and you'll still end up as a puppet for the Gaunt's only they'll marry you off to Marvolo instead!'

Anger struck like a match through the darkness.

'Ominis will die because you made him pledge an Unbreakable Vow!'

'Is it really worth it?' Anne stepped out from the tree line for the first time, her fists clenched. 'For someone who only loves you for your power? To put everyone at risk for something that isn't real?' Her voice lowered. 'If you don't do it, Ominis will. I'm giving you a chance to say goodbye!'

Holding her ground, Aurélie jabbed a fierce finger at her. 'I will not treat him the same way you and Ominis have! Like he's irredeemable. Like he's a problem to get rid of. I won't. If the only way to keep everyone safe is marrying Ominis, then I'll — I'll just have to —'

'Do you love him?' Anne interrupted.

'What?'

'Do you love my brother?'

'More than anything.'

'Then save him,' she implored.

But Aurélie drew herself up.

'How dare you speak to me of love!' she cried, sounding so very much like her mother when she was offended. 'You, who gave up on your own flesh and blood! What do you know of lo—' And then it clicked — the real reason Anne hadn't left the Highlands, why she was dressed in new clothes instead of rags, how she'd managed to stay hidden for so long when everyone believed her dead.

'Wait.' Aurélie gaped at her. 'You don't want to me marry Ominis, do you?'

Anne's face reddened. She opened her mouth, but Aurélie cut her off —

'You want to marry Ominis. That's why you're still here — this whole time?' She almost laughed. 'What, is he going to fake his death, too? And then you both disappear together?'

'He was finally going to be free of his family and start a new life with me!' she shrieked. 'Without Dark magic! Without murder! And then you came along!'

'So do it! Disappear with Ominis! Go off and have kittens for all I care but leave your brother out of it!'

'Don't you understand? If Sebastian goes to Azkaban, terrible things will happen! And so long as he thinks he loves you —'

'Perhaps you don't realise just how powerful my magic is — how powerful I am!' When her magic hummed again, she let it flow unrestricted through her veins. 'If Sebastian's been powerless his whole life, then he's welcome to share mine. — But I will not turn my back on him like you did!'

Whirling on the spot, she turned her back on one Sallow only to come face-to-face with another.

'Sebastian!' She rushed forward. 'It's her. Do you want to speak with her?'

Shock had drained the colour from his face. He shook his head, his eyes wide. 'I can't.'

'Okay, then we go. Come.'

Without looking back, she took his hand and marched him across the lawn toward the castle. Sebastian followed her quietly, his eyes glued to her like she were the one who'd miraculously arisen from the dead.

Anne did not follow.

Reaching the castle without incident, they passed the brightly lit Great Hall where the dinner was in full swing. Aurélie peered in as they passed, marvelling at the normality of it all. She spotted Poppy at the Hufflepuff table, laughing animatedly with her friends; someone over at the Gryffindor table was levitating — likely another victim of Garreth Weasley's experiments; and Madam Kogowa, the Quidditch referee, was attempting to confiscate a Beater's baton from a sixth year Slytherin who was using it to whack dinner rolls at the Ravenclaw's.

How strange it was to be on the outside looking in, separated from those whose lives hadn't been irrevocably changed by grief.

Still, at least she wasn't alone on this side of the proverbial curtain — she never had been. Even on that first night when she'd stood before a room of strangers, horrified at the idea of wearing a manky old hat and so homesick she thought it would kill her, he'd been there, watching along with the others, perhaps wondering who she was and why she was there, oblivious to the fact that she'd crossed an ocean of loss to find him.

As if reading her thoughts, Sebastian squeezed her hand in silent understanding, and they hurried on.

When they finally reached the seclusion of the Undercroft, she led him directly to the sofa, sat him down and climbed into his lap. The enchanted flames above them, still burning as bright and hot as the day he'd conjured them for her, threw the angles of his face into sharp relief

'Are you alright?' she asked, thumbing the dark circles under his eyes. 'That must have been a shock for you.'

'I'm okay,' he said vaguely, his gaze tracing her features like he'd never properly seen them before.

'How much did you hear?'

'Enough.'

'The Obliviate thing?'

'Yeah...'

She brushed his hair away from his face. 'You know I would never.'

'You should.'

'I won't!' Gearing up to argue with him, she was cut short when he squished her cheeks between his forefinger and thumb. Effectively silenced, she could only pout like a fish while he sighed impatiently.

'Aura, I heard what you said to her. About me.'

'I said 'lotta things 'bout you,' she mumbled.

Sebastian's lips twitched with suppressed amusement, but he let go of her face and looked at her with such profound tenderness that she was struck silent under the intensity of it.

'No one has ever defended me like that,' he told her steadily. 'No one's ever taken my side before.'

'Oh.'

'I mean it. Nobody. Not her, not Solomon, not Ominis. Nobody.'

'Well —'

'I killed someone.'

'Yes.' She resisted the urge to say, 'and?'

'With Dark magic.'

'I know.'

'My own twin faked her death to get away from me—'

'Sebastian!' She crossed her arms. 'If you're asking me to Obliviate you —'

'No, I'm asking you to marry me.'

Chapter Text

Aurélie was halfway across the Undercroft before Sebastian caught her and scooped her up in his arms, but it was several moments before she could stop yammering in French long enough to squeeze in an English word.

'Let go of me!' were the first one she shrieked as she wiggled uselessly in his grasp. 'Marriage?' was the next. 'We're facing unfathomable dangers and your solution is marriage? Have you completely lost your mind?'

Not bothering to hide his amusement, Sebastian marched her straight back to the sofa and settled her in his lap, ignoring her protests as she kicked and squirmed for freedom.

'It's not a solution,' he snorted, wrapping his arms securely around her waist. 'It's just what I want.'

'It's just a fine way to create more trouble for us, that's what it is!' she moaned, slapping his wandering hands away from her bottom. 'Like we're not in enough as it is, now you want to add marriage to the ever-growing list?'

Sebastian's amusement only grew. 'Will you just say yes?' he laughed, leaning forward to nuzzle his nose against her cheek.

'No!'

'Why not? You said yourself that we're supposed to be together.'

Still feeling quite fiery after her confrontation with a girl who was supposed to be dead, Aurélie didn't much feel like being proposed to — again. Still, Sebastian only drew her closer, tightening his grip around her waist as he traced his lips along her jawline.

'I love you,' he murmured, his voice low and husky.

'I know...'

'And you love me —'

'I do.'

She felt him grin against her ear.

'So say yes.' When lips found hers again, sweet and dizzying, she could only yield to the inexplicable control that his mouth held over her until he slipped his hands under her skirt and squeezed her bum.

'Eh oh!' she yelped, slapping his hands away. 'Are you feeling matrimonial or just —'

'Horny?' he snickered into the crook of her neck. 'Both, definitely both.'

'Merlin, give me strength!' She pried his lips from her skin while he shook with laughter. 'You're the one who refuses to touch me!'

'Oh, believe me, I want to do more than touch you,' he smirked, leaning in again to kiss languidly along her collarbone. 'But once I start, I won't be able to stop...'

With a long, low groan, he palmed the small of her back with his big, broad hands, anchoring and pressing their bodies together in a way that overwhelmed her.

'Seb—ahh...'

'We'd never leave this room...' He dragged his mouth up the side of her neck, making her shiver. 'We'd fail our exams because we wouldn't show up... Nobody would see us again for months. Years, even.' His voice lowered, as scratchy as the stubble on his jaw. 'Why do you think I've been trying so hard to restrain myself these past months?'

Restraint, she thought, was a relative concept.

'Seb-astian...'

'I can barely stop kissing you long enough to finish my homework,' he rambled, digging his fingers into her waist. 'Or thinking about you when I'm supposed to be dodging Bludgers. Or fall asleep when you're up there in your tower, so far away from me you might as well be in fucking France... But if you agree to marry me,' — he nibbled her earlobe and murmured, — 'maybe I'll make an exception...'

Aurelie struggled to catch her breath, her fingers tangled through his hair as he mouthed a particularly sensitive spot below her ear. 'Are you... trying to bribe me to marry you?'

'Bribery?' he chuckled, feigning innocence. 'Not at all. I'm just telling you what to expect when you accept me.'

'And if I don't?'

His expression was nothing short of wicked. 'Then I'll persuade you.'

'You're such a Slytherin.'

'Just say yes,' he pouted. 'Please? Pleeeease? Come on, what's the problem?'

'The problem?' She shifted in his lap to put some breathing room between them. 'First of all, I refuse to be proposed to in the bowels of a dirty old castle in the soggy marshes of the Scottish Highlands! Secondly, you're the most impulsive person I've ever met! You can't just propose marriage the moment it pops into your head, you know! And thirdly!' She leapt off the sofa and began pacing before him, gesturing wildly with her hands as she ranted on. 'The Gaunt's will undoubtedly perceive a proposal as an act of defiance, and since they've already threatened me, you, and everybody we know, I hardly think threatening them is your finest idea. Honestly, Sebastian,' she finished, as breathless as if she'd just run a great distance, 'it's almost like you want to be sent to Azkaban!'

Having watched her performance with growing amusement, Sebastian sobered at the mention of Azkaban. He stood up and moved toward her, his expression devoid of all his previous humour.

'But what if it's my destiny?' he said quietly. 'What if I'm supposed to go to Azkaban? What if I deserve it?'

There were shadows on his face again. They'd been there since the Acromantula attack, lurking in the dark circles beneath his eyes, the crease between his brows, tainting his voice with melancholy. There one moment, gone the next, they were too fleeting to pay a second thought to — but she saw them now, an unmistakable hue of melancholy across his features. As she always did, she reached up and brushed them away, running her palm across his freckled cheek and up through his long mop of unruly hair.

She wasn't afraid of shadows any more. Not with all the lightning in her veins.

'You just asked me to marry you and now you're talking about going to prison? Why?' She narrowed her eyes. 'So we can have an Azkaban wedding? Invite the Dementors as guests of honour? You in your shackles and a striped suit, and me in a —'

'Hang on.' His eyes fluttered open, and the shadows were gone. 'Is this — are you saying yes?'

She stomped her foot. 'Sebastiiiaaan, please be serious. You can't go to Azkaban, I –'

'Alright, alright, drama queen. Listen.' He wrapped his arms around her, enveloping her so completely in his solid embrace that she struggled to breathe. 'If going to Azkaban means letting them take me away from you, I'd rather spend the rest of my life as a fugitive. I mean it.' He gave her a good, long squeeze. 'I'd transfigure myself into a worm if it was the only way to be together. And secondly...' He pulled back to look at her affectionately. 'As much as I detest him right now, I'd prefer not to be directly responsible for Ominis' death.'

'You're not the one who made the Vow, Sebastian, it'd hardly be your fault.'

'Mm, still,' he said, smoothing her creased brow with his thumbs. 'One untimely death to my name is more than enough for me. Besides, according to that prophecy, it's in everyone's best interest that I stay out of that place.'

Aurélie heaved a deep, mournful sigh. 'Ugh, the prophecy,' she lamented.

'The prophecy!' he enthused. Then, adopting a deep, theatrical voice, he swept his arms wide and quoted, with perfect recollection and far too much enthusiasm: 'Terrible power unlike anything in existence. A distooortioooon.'

'Sebastian, that's not funny!'

'Power like poooison...'

'Oh mon dieu.'

'When the dark one consumes —' he paused for dramatic effect, his eyes bright, 'the sacrifice of one will make many. — Sounds sort of tempting, if I'm being honest.'

'Sebastian!'

'What?' he laughed. 'Power unlike anything in existence? Who'd dare challenge me then?'

'I would.' She pinched his stomach, and the way he laughed again made everything seem a little bit less terrifying. 'What do you think would happen to you in there? Don't most people just go insane?'

He shrugged, seemingly unconcerned. 'Most, yeah. Guess I'm just special.'

'Or you're already insane,' she grumbled. 'Anyway, do you really believe it?'

'The prophecy? Yeah, I do,' he nodded. 'Ominis says it was made by Cassandra Trelawney herself, the greatest Seer who ever lived. Anne went to see her after the Solomon incident. She didn't know what to do with me — on one hand, she believed I deserved Azkaban for what I did and that if she didn't turn me in, I'd only descend further into darkness. On the other, well... I'm her brother. The only family she has left... I suppose she was right, though,' he added thoughtfully, twisting a lock of her hair around his fingers. 'I wouldn't have stopped so long as she was suffering. Who's to say where I would've ended up or what I would've done to save her. But she died. Or — left, I suppose. So I had no reason to keep fighting. And then you showed up.'

'Me?'

'Mhm. If only Anne had asked about my love life, she'd have known that everything was going to be fine once you showed up.'

'Sebastian, literally nothing is fine right now.'

'It will be.' His grin widened. 'Once you agree to ma—'

She slapped her hands over his mouth.

'The only way to appease the Gaunt's,' she said in a voice loud enough to drown out his muffled giggling, 'is if I agree to marry Ominis, and I can't exactly do that if I'm already married to you, can I?'

'Mmphh hmmph mph?'

'Pardon?'

Sebastian twisted his face away from her hands, his eyes bright with amusement. 'So that is a yes?'

'I will not,' she repeated with emphasis, 'be proposed to in an Undercroft.'

'Fine, fine. How about this, then?' He plunged his hand into his trouser pocket and began rummaging elbow-deep within its enchanted depths. 'Hang on, it's here somewhere. Nicked it from Ominis.'

Sighing, Aurélie held out her hands expectantly. 'I need to get you a bag,' she commented as he piled his usual assortment of Every Flavour Beans and scraps of parchment and bits of mallowsweet into her waiting palms.

Sebastian snorted. 'I'm not carrying a bag around, I'd look like a girl. Besides, it'd be too easy to steal from.'

'Well, what if someone steals your pants?'

He cracked a wry grin. 'If you're trying to get my pants off, all you have to do is ask.'

She chose to ignore him. 'Who'd want to steal a bit of old parchment? Or a twig?'

'Those have sentimental value,' he muttered, snatching them back and tucking them into his shirt pocket. 'Anyway, it's this I need to keep safe.' With a flourish, he held up a small vial full of what looked like swirling silver liquid. 'Who says appeasing the Gaunt's is the only option we have? I think threatening them is exactly what we should do.'

On the morning before exams began, Sebastian met her outside the Ravenclaw common room brimming with nervous agitation

'I was thinking,' he began after he'd stopped kissing her long enough to speak. 'Why don't we study in the Ravenclaw tower today instead of the library?'

Classes for the seventh years had officially let out a week prior to allow time for exam revision and existential meltdowns; they'd been splitting their time between the library and the Undercroft to do both.

'I suppose,' said Aurélie, quirking a brow. 'But you'll have to solve the riddle to get in...'

'Easy.' Sebastian turned his attention to the door knocker. 'Give it to me.'

The door knocker cleared its brassy throat. 'If all Wibbles are Criggles, all Borkins and Kwumblins, no Hoggles are Borkins, and all Criggles are Borkins, is it true that all Borkins are Criggles?'

Sebastian blinked. 'What the fuck is a Borkin?'

'Incorrect,' declared the door knocker.

'No, wait, that wasn't my ans—'

'Incorrect!'

'But —'

Sighing, Aurélie took his elbow and dragged him down the long, spiralling staircase.

'Do you even know what a Squiggle is?' he demanded, clearly in half a mind to stomp back up the stairs to argue with the eagle.

'I think you mean a Criggle, and no, I have no idea.' She levelled a critical look at his dishevelled hair and bagged eyes. 'Did you even sleep last night? You look crazy.'

Sebastian ignored her. 'Do you know the answer, then?'

'No.'

'See? You can't solve a riddle if it's total nonsense!'

'No, Sebastian —' She sighed impatiently. 'The answer to the riddle is "no", not all Borkins are Criggles.'

'What? How? How is a Borpen not a Krickle? Explain it to me.'

Down several floors, around the central staircase and through the Entrance Hall, Aurélie explained and Sebastian argued until the sound of raised voices stopped them in their tracks.

Aurélie turned her head in the direction of the commotion. 'What is that? Is someone fighting?'

'Shit.' He yanked her behind a statue of a monkey in a tuxedo juggling dirty, wadded-up socks. 'I've been dreading this day since first year,' he admitted, pressing himself flat against the wall.

'What are they chanting?' She poked her head around the monkeys top hat. Sebastian pulled her back.

'Lake jump.' His voice shook.

'Lake jump?'

'It's exactly what it sounds like. The day before exams, the seventh year's jump in the lake. Don't worry,' he added, seeing the look of horror dawning across her face. 'Only the boys. The girls watch.'

'Why?'

'I don't know, because they like copping an eye-full of our —'

Her indignant squeak cut his sentence short.

'It's a dumb tradition,' he explained instead. 'Don't you have any graduation traditions at Beauxbatons?'

Aurélie stared at him. 'We have a ball.'

'I should have gone to Beauxbatons,' he muttered distractedly.

'You don't speak French!'

'Doesn't matter, as long as I don't have to go anywhere near a lake. Bloody hell.' He ran his hands through his hair. 'I wonder if it's too late to get myself stuck in detention? Quick, c'mon, let's go to the library and set some books on fire.'

'Wait!' She pulled back on his arm. 'Are you afraid of the lake?'

'Petrified. I fell out of the boat in first year and,' — a violent shudder rolled through him, — 'the giant squid pushed me back in.'

She'd have giggled if he didn't look so genuinely distressed.

'Well, that was... nice of it?' she tried.

'Not nice.' He shook his head. 'I've lived under the lake for seven years. I've seen what's down there, I —'

'Sallow!'

'Fuck.'

'There you are!'

'Fuck off, Weasley!'

Garreth Weasley's usually manic expression bordered on being downright scary as he bounded over to them, his eyes wild with excitement and his red hair stuck up in every possible angle.

'Oh, come now,' he laughed, slinging an arm around Sebastian's shoulders. 'This is the only day in our entire lives that Gryffindor and Slytherin are legally allowed to get along.'

Sebastian's mutinous protests were drowned out by a rousing chorus of 'Lake jump! Lake jump! Lake jump!' as several additional seventh year boys joined them: Leander Prewett, the lanky Gryffindor Sebastian had been duelling on their first day, Everett Clopton, the Ravenclaw who thought setting off dungbombs in the common room the funniest thing anyone could ever do, and a bespectacled Hufflepuff boy who Aurélie knew not by name but by his worrying obsession with treasure maps.

'He's right, Sallow!' cried Leander, slapping Sebastian on the back. 'Today we let bygones be bygones!'

'May the murky depths of the Black Lake wash away our animosity!' sang Everett. 'Er, not that I have any animosity toward you, Sallow,' he added, shrinking under the intensity of Sebastian's death glare. 'Heh, nor will I ever. You're a stand-up guy, as far as I'm concerned.' He gave Sebastian's arm a supportive little pat before scampering away to allow passage for the Gryffindor's and their captive Slytherin down the hall. But Sebastian, looking on the verge of casting the most destructive Bombarda the world had ever seen, dug his heels in.

'Can't you see I'm busy?' he glowered, gesturing at Aurélie as if she ought to be doing something more productive than standing idly by with her arms crossed.

Garreth rolled his eyes.

'Get a grip, Sallow, there'll be plenty of time for snogging after the —'

'— Lake jump! Lake jump! Lake jump!'

'Unless you're tired of snogging him, Aurélie,' grinned Leander, waggling his eyebrows. 'I'd be more than happy to take over. Show you how a real man kisses.'

Sebastian aimed a kick at Leander's shin. 'I'll drown you, you fucking weasel.'

'Ah, if you want to drown me, you're going to have to –'

'Lake jump! Lake jump! Lake jump!'

Beneath a watery, insubstantial sun ("early summer", according to Scotland), Aurélie found herself following a boisterous group of seventh years down to the Black Lake. Sebastian, firmly secured between two overexcited Gryffindor's and looking downright murderous, turned every so often to level her a look that said please can I drown every last one of them? Each time, Aurélie suppressed her giggles and shook her head no.

It wasn't long before she was joined by Poppy, who linked their arms together and bounced along as chipper as ever.  

'Isn't this exciting?' she grinned. 'Lake jump!'

'It's... bewildering,' answered Aurélie, watching two boys she didn't know wrestle each other down the slope of the lawn to the water's edge. 'Why is it only the boys who jump in?'

'Because boys are idiots.' Samantha Dale fell into step beside them, cradling a potted Dittany to her chest like it was a beloved pet she was taking for a walk. 'Still, it's fun to watch them take their clothes off.'

Aurélie choked. 'S-sorry?'

'Well, you can't expect them to jump in with their clothes on,' laughed Samantha. 'They'd all drown!'

'Surely they don't get completely naked?'

'Some do,' Poppy shrugged. 'I bet Garreth will.'

'I hope Garreth does,' giggled Samantha.

After nine months at Hogwarts, Aurélie was still as scandalised by their antics as she'd been on arrival. Muttering indistinctly in French, she clapped her hands over her ears just as Imelda Reyes marched up to them, her dark ponytail swinging aggressively from side to side.

'If one of them gets naked, they'll all get naked,' she said. 'Trust me, being the only girl on a Quidditch team full of boys has taught me things I wish I didn't know. Oh, don't look so worried, Frenchie,' – she rolled her eyes, — 'me and Sallow have our history, but never liked each other like that. Besides, the moment you showed up in the Great Hall, I knew he was soft on you. The way he looked at you made me want to throw up in my mouth.'

'Oh—'

'Don't forget the way he looked at her in Defence Against the Dark Arts,' Samantha added, nodding fervently. 'I swear his pupils were heart-shaped.'

'What? No, he hated—'

'And in Herbology,' Poppy put in.

'But the dragon dung—!'

Imelda pulled a face. 'Ugh, I'm gonna be sick.'

By the time the girls reached the old pier from which the inaugural lake jump was set to commence, the boys were already lined up like swimmers before a race, each in various stages of undress. As predicted, Garreth had already stripped down to his underwear, while beside him, Leander and Everett were beating their chests and chanting 'lake jump, lake jump, lake jump!' like they were performing a ritual to the giant squid. Meanwhile, still fully clothed down to his shoes, Sebastian stood stock-still in the midst of it all, fists clenched and shoulders tensed as if waiting for the squid to rear up and drag him down to a watery death, scorned and vengeful for having been summoned by half-naked boys with ties around their heads.

When no such tentacle appeared, Garreth began what sounded to be a rousing speech, though his voice was carried away on the breeze so that those watching on the shoreline caught only scraps of phrases such as: '...rite of passage!' and '...emerge as men!' and '...guard your arses from the Grindylows!' Whipped into a distinctly masculine frenzy, the boys hollered and whooped and wrangled off their shirts and ties. Sebastian glowered and kept his jumper on, arms folded.

'And they do this every year?' Aurélie asked, her eyes glued to Sebastian's back.  

'Oh, yes!' Poppy nodded. 'Nobody knows exactly when it began, but it's supposed to be good luck for the upcoming exams.' 

Aurélie was just opening her mouth to argue that passing exams had very little to do with jumping naked into a cold lake when a small, blurred figure flew past them and pelted down the pier, almost knocking several boys prematurely into the water.

'Oh, mon dieu.' She rushed forward, recognising at the last moment who the flash of mousey brown hair belonged to, but it was too late: with a gigantic splash for such a small boy, Mouse belly-flopped into the water fully clothed and was off swimming before any of the assembled seventh years realised what had happened.

A stunned moment passed, and then a great roar arose from the boys as each of them jumped in after the errant first year, disappearing one by one under the rippling black water until only Sebastian remained on the pier. Turning around, he cast her a long, hard look of exasperation, then (with unmistakeable reluctance) removed his shoes, his socks, his jumper, his tie and finally (Aurélie's eyes went wide) his shirt, revealing only a fleeting glimpse of a toned, freckled back before he, too, dove head first into the water.

Barely registering the eruption of giggles around her, Aurélie could think of only one thing:

Once I start, I won't be able to stop...

'You're drooling,' giggled Poppy.

'She's blushing, too,' observed Samantha.

Aurélie snapped her mouth shut. 'I'm not!'

She was.

Why do you think I've been trying so hard to restrain myself these past months?

Restraint was a relevant concept.

Thinking seriously about throwing herself in the lake, she turned away to hide her flaming cheeks only to come face to face with —

'Ominis!' Poppy beamed. 'You're not lake jumping?'

Like the rest of them, Ominis wore a sleepless, slightly frenzied look that, to the casual observer, was simply the expression of an overburdened seventh year on the eve of their NEWT exams. But beneath the clear signs of stress lingered something sad that Aurélie recognised as the same sad thing that lingered in her. She steeled herself against it; she couldn't afford to feel sad for people who intended to hurt her.

'No,' Ominis answered, his lips curling into something close to affection. 'The Gaunt's have a long tradition of not partaking in the long traditions. Besides, I can't swim.' 

The sound of Sebastian shouting obscenities floated across the water as Mouse, who seemed more fish than rodent, evaded capture by splashing him full in the face and diving out of sight.

'That first year idolises Sebastian,' Ominis frowned, his wand pointed toward the commotion. 'Follows him everywhere, seems to believe he is Merlin-incarnate.' He shook his head. 'Reminds me of myself at that age when Sebastian first befriended me.'

Aurélie sniffed, decidedly unmoved. 'I thought Anne befriended you first.'

'She did,' he agreed curtly. 'She was the only one who wasn't afraid of my surname.'

She bit her tongue: must be easy not to fear the Gaunt's when they hadn't killed your entire family.

'Oh, Anne,' Poppy sighed wistfully. 'I wish she were here today. You know, sometimes I swear I can feel her presence still. Like she never really left...'

Aurélie and Ominis cleared their throats in unison.

'Yes, well, those we love never really leave us, do they?' Ominis muttered unconvincingly. 'I wondered if I might have a private word with you, Aurélie, while Sebastian is —'

'— Mouse, stop splashing, you little shit —!'

' — otherwise engaged.'

Seeing no polite way to refuse him in present company, she followed him a short distance along the bank, keeping one eye on Sebastian lest she needed to rescue him from either giant squid or tiny menace.

'Malific is here today,' said Ominis once they were safely out of earshot. His voice was soft — but still the voice of a Gaunt. Aurélie crossed her arms. 

'Oh, you're giving us some warning this time?' she said cooly. 'No surprise visit? No Imperio?'

'I didn't know he was going to do that.'

'But you did nothing to stop it.'

'I was quite upset about it, I —'

'So was Sebastian,' she bit back. 'Quite upset about his sister being alive, too, and his best friend keeping it from him while he blamed himself for her death for two years. How could you watch him suffer so and do nothing?'

The conversation shattered into silence.

Eventually, Ominis sighed. 'Since I can't find the vial of Anne's memories anywhere, I presume that Sebastian has taken them.' His expression pinched. 'He does realise that if he exposes Anne's secrets, he puts her at risk of an Azkaban sentence, too?'

Aurélie snorted to herself. Anne's secrets? More like Anne's crimes. She threw Ominis a severe glance.

'I take it you're not planning on Obliviating him and being done with it, then?'

'No.' He almost smiled. 'I admire many things about Anne, but she is undoubtedly a Sallow. Impulsitivity runs in the family.'

'Don't I know it.'

They shared a small, reluctant smile.

'I know neither of us want this,' he pressed on, 'but marrying me is the only way to keep us all alive.'

'Your family murdered my parents.'

'Then perhaps I should clarify: marrying me means nobody else will die.'

Aurélie let loose a long, tired sigh. 'Don't you want to be free of them? To live your own life without looking over your shoulder? To marry who you want to, not who you're forced to?' She looked out across the water. 'Because I certainly do.'

'I assure you, no plan of Sebastian's will grant any of us freedom from my family. They're too powerful, and his plans are... Well, they're ill-conceived at best and disastrous at worst. Eliminating the Azkaban problem only ensures they'll kill him — likely on the spot if Marvolo decides to get involved. Is that something you're willing to risk?'  

In the distance, she watched Sebastian's head bobbing above the water and decided, yes: for love — for him — she'd risk everything.

She smiled to herself.

'Oh, I've no doubt they'll try to kill him, but I don't think they'll succeed.'

Ominis stiffened. 'What do you mean by that?'

But a breeze kicked up, a sudden, cold blast that whipped across the water, and Sebastian climbed out of the lake. Dripping wet and shirtless, he reached them like a shadow borne on a storm wind, eyes fierce, water-dark curls stuck to his face.

With her mouth slightly agape, Aurélie stared unashamedly at the long, lithe shape of him, the broad expanse of shoulders quivering with anger, freckled skin stretched over ridges and bumps she'd only touched but never seen. Water beaded down his bare chest like drops of sweat. She traced the slow drip of them right down to his stomach.

'I told you never to speak to her again,' he snarled at Ominis. Then he looked at her funny. 'Are you okay?'

She mouthed yes even though she wasn't entirely sure she was.

Restraint was... What was restraint again?

'Sebastian!' There was a plea in Ominis' voice, but Aurélie had stopped paying attention. 'Whatever you're planning, you can't just go rogue and leave me out of it!'

But Sebastian only turned away, tugging Aurélie by the wrist toward the castle.

'Why not?' he spat over his shoulder. 'You and Anne did.'

Under ordinary circumstances, Aurélie would've kicked up a stink over being dragged about like a rag doll, but she only stumbled along in Sebastian's wake, her eyes glued to the protrusion of veins along his forearm as he kept a tight hold on her wrist.

She only found her voice again when they were several twists and turns deep into the castle.

'Malific's here,' she said breathlessly. 'I assume he wants my answer.'

'Good,' he growled, dragging her down a deserted corridor. 'You've still got the memories?' 

'Of course.'

Without warning, he pulled her through a tapestry into a narrow alcove. His eyelashes were wet. He smelled of lake water and sweat. Somehow, it was the single most intoxicating scent she'd ever smelled.

'Then we stick to the plan, yes?'  

Water dripped from his hair onto her cheeks, her lips. She caught one with her tongue. It tasted like salt.

'Together,' she nodded.

'Together,' he growled.

Then he pinned her to the wall, chest-to-chest, nose-to-nose. Water and heat seeped through her clothes as he pressed and pressed into her, rolling and grabbing and grinding. His lips were hot; his tongue was hotter. She touched his biceps and giggled stupidly when he flexed them.

'Marry me,' he moaned into her mouth.

'Sebas—mpphhff.' He kissed the breath right out of her mouth, gripping her face with his big hands.

'I want you to be mine,' he said raggedly, all muscles and hot, damp skin. 'All mine.'

'I am yours.'

'Not yet, you're not.' He pressed her to the wall with his hips and groaned, 'This is fucking torture.'

'What is?' She palmed his chest, hands splayed over surprisingly soft skin. 'Not marrying me, or not touching me?'

When he raised his eyes, the last of her restraint was swallowed up by his wide, black pupils.

'I want to marry you,' he said deliberately, 'as badly as I want to f—'

The tapestry tore open just as Sebastian slid his hands under her jumper.

'Well, well.' Malific Gaunt had never looked so terrifying. 'Isn't this cozy.'

Chapter Text

Deep in the come and go room, surrounded by things lost and things hidden, Malific Gaunt, coaxed reluctantly by his younger brother, had gone into the Pensieve to bear witness to the secrets hidden in swirling silver memories: a prophecy, an unbreakable promise, and a girl long thought to be dead.

Echoing in the distance, the self-playing piano still repeated the opening bars of Fur Elise, stumbling over the timing and misplaying notes as if its invisible player had grown clumsy with weariness.

Sebastian, still slightly damp from his foray into the lake, was neither clumsy nor weary but so keyed up that he had half a mind to dive into the Pensieve and yank Malific out by his over-greased hair.

Before him, Ominis paced, restless with anxiety; beside him, Aurelie clutched his arm, surprisingly calm; but Sebastian, despite the gravity of the situation at hand, wished Ominis hadn't thought to bring his shirt up from the lake and that he was still holed up in that alcove with his tongue in his girlfriend's mouth.

Fuck, he was certifiably going mad.

'This is a bad idea.' Ominis stopped pacing long enough to glance fleetingly into the bowl of memories. 'He's been in there too long.'

'Maybe he's stuck,' said Sebastian, unbothered by the thought.

'Maybe he's dead?' Aurélie offered, and the hopeful tone in her voice made Sebastian want to cart her back to that bloody alcove and kiss her stupid.

'Or maybe,' Ominis put in, his voice slightly shrill, 'he's plotting how to kill all three of us the moment he jumps out!'

Sebastian snorted. 'With three against one, I doubt he'd get very far.'

'You don't know what he's capable of,' Ominis hissed.

You don't know what I'm capable of, replied the dark thing that dwelled in Sebastian's blood.

When Malific Gaunt finally did slither out from the pensive, seething with a cold, quiet fury, any murderous inclinations he might've been harbouring were quashed by two wands to his chest and an Ancient Magic-wielding French girl whose fingertips sparked with magic.

Outnumbered, Malific smoothed back his hair, straightened his lapels and, with the dignified air of a politician, said, 'Well, well, it seems we have a lot to discuss. Let's do try for civility, shall we?' he added, eyeing Sebastian's wand with barely concealed disdain.

Not for the first time in his life, Sebastian was glad that if he was forced to deal with a Gaunt, that it was the politician of the family and not the cold-blooded murderer: had Marvolo gotten involved, they'd all be long dead.

He tightened his grip on his wand. 'Where was your civility when you put me under the Imperious curse?'

'Simply a precaution.'

'I'll show you precaution!'

As was usual whenever he raised his wand in anger, a small hand of reason caught his wrist and reeled him back from the edge of hysteria; Aurélie flicked him a sideways glance, a silent reminder to be calm.

Malific seemed not to notice. 'Well, well,' he said again, looking about the room with faint interest. 'A rather unorthodox place for a meeting, but certainly not the strangest place I've discussed business. Shall we conjure some tea?'

The words had scarcely left his lips when from within the piles of junk hurtled a spindly-legged table. It settled before them with a clatter, already laid with lace tablecloth, tea set and delicate silverware.

Malific, delighted, clapped his hands together.

'How lovely!' he beamed. 'And perhaps something to nibble on?' he added, and a small platter of shortbreads squeezed itself between the sugar dish and the milk jug. When he lifted the lid of the teapot, fragrant steam curled up around his face, giving Sebastian the bizarre impression of a vulture at a tea party.

It took all of his rapidly-declining self-control not to Bombarda the whole lot into oblivion, vulture along with it.

'So, let me see if I have this straight...' After taking his time with tea and milk and sugar, Malific turned to Sebastian, teacup in hand. 'Your sister, who is not only alive and well but an unregistered animagus, has made an Unbreakable Vow with my brother to keep you out of Azkaban in a harebrained attempt to thwart some questionable back-alley prophecy about...' He paused to raise a dubious eyebrow. 'Special powers?'

Sebastian clenched his jaw. 'I can't imagine Cassandra Trewlaney would appreciate the inference that she's a hack,' he said tightly, 'but yes, that is correct.'

Malific's spoon stilled. 'Trewlaney?' he frowned. 'The Trewlaney? I find that harder to believe than the fact your little sister's been running about the Highlands as a cat all these years.'

Sebastian wanted to smack the fucking teacup out of his hands.

'Check the records at the Department of Mysteries,' he growled. 'You'll find a prophecy with my name on it.'

'But it's near impossible to secure an appointment with her,' replied Malific with polite disbelief. 'Not to mention staggeringly expensive for someone of your sisters means.'

'I organised it,' Ominis spoke up, his posture as rigid as Sebastian's. 'I paid for it, too. A record of the prophecy is indeed at the Ministry. You know very well that all prophecies must be recorded —'

'Yes, yes, but prophecies are often unreliable!' His brother waved an impatient hand. 'My main concern now is this ridiculous Vow business. Father isn't going to be happy about this, Ominis. — Nor Marvolo. We've been fixing your mistakes for too long now and frankly, you haven't been repaying your debts.'

After a long sip of tea, he set down his empty cup and sharpened his black gaze on Sebastian again. 'Now... If I send you to Azkaban, my family loses an Heir.'

'And gains an extraordinarily powerful enemy.' Sebastian straightened. 'Not a good move for a family on the brink of ruin, now, is it?'

Malific eyed him reproachfully. 'The very idea of "inheriting powers" is a laughably childish concept, Sebastian. If it were possible for wizards to do such a thing, I'd have killed her from the beginning and saved myself the trouble of —'

Two long strides were all it took for Sebastian to ram his wand into the underside of Malific's chin. Forget calm, he'd break his face with his bare hands if he had to.

'If you don't like it,' Sebastian snarled, 'then I suggest you lodge a complaint with Trelawney.'

'Seers can be wrong!' 

'Not this one!'

Malific's face twisted with fury. 'I could have the Dementors here for you within the hour!'

'Then do it!' Sebastian's wand burned hot in his hand. 'But you heard the prophecy: wherever this dark, cold place is, I'll emerge with magic the likes of which no one has ever seen — a distortion. And let me make this clear...' He cracked a wicked grin, and the dark thing inside him purred. 'No matter how it happens,' he said, each word deliberate, 'you will never meet an enemy as vengeful as me.'

'You stupid, stupid boy. Don't you know what we do to our enemies?'

Oh, Sebastian knew.

Malific's enemies were innocents: muggles, children — even animals. His enemies were those who witnessed the Gaunt's cruelty and tried to stop it. His enemies were half-bloods and Muggleborns and so-called blood traitors: parents, sons, and daughters.

But not any more.

Now, his greatest enemy was Sebastian Sallow and the strange new darkness inside him; a darkness that fed him a heady, dizzying rush of power as he rammed his wand harder into Malific's face.

'You're not the only one who knows Unforgivables,' he snarled. 'I'd be happy to demonstrate how all those Muggles in your basement felt when you tortured them for fun.'

Brown eyes bore into black while the curse danced on Sebastian's tongue, hot and tangy like blood.

He could do it so easily.

He knew the spell.

Malific deserved it.

'Might be fun to watch you beg for mercy.'

'What do you want, Sallow?'

Sebastian took his time in answering, enjoying the thrill of finally having an enemy at his mercy. 'If you touch her,' he began slowly, 'I will turn myself into Azkaban. If you touch her family, her friends, her acquaintances — her fucking pets, I will turn myself into Azkaban. If you ever so much as look at her again —'

Malific cut him off with a laugh, but it was tinged with panic. Too high. 'And what? Leave your little betrothed to fend for herself while you're rotting away in prison?'

'Oh, no, no.' Another twist of his wand had Malific gritting his teeth. 'See, I suspect you know very well what Ancient Magic can do, which is why you've been so desperate to get your slimy fucking hands on it. My betrothed,' — (oh, he loved the way that sounded), — 'is more than capable of looking after herself until I emerge. And when I do, all bright and shiny and powerful, you'll have the might of both of us baring down on you.'

Malific's nostrils flared. 'You have no idea the people I've killed —'

There was a CRACK and a blinding flash of light. Malific was thrown backwards into the table; tea and sugar and milk crashed to the floor, china shattered, the table lost a leg, and between them stood Sebastian's small, furious girlfriend, her clenched fists alight with swirling magic.

'Don't touch him,' she seethed, her accent so thick the words sounded almost French.

Power radiated off her in waves, prickling his skin, raising the hair on his arms. Sebastian barely fought back a giggle, then a moan, then a great many number of things that would have been inappropriate to enact in front of present company. Instead, he took his place at her side — no longer just her protector, but a partner.

'You think you can threaten me?' Malific's black eyes flashed with rage. 'Stupid, weak girl! You're as foolish as your parents were!'

Rage launched Sebastian into action, curses on his lips and fire in his blood, but it was Ominis who got there first. Wand pointed at his brother's face, he drew himself taller than Sebastian had ever seen him.

'Enough, Malific!' he barked, baring down on him. 'This is madness! You heard the prophecy, sending him to Azkaban will spell certain demise for the entire family!'

Malific reeled back as if he'd been slapped across the face.

'You forget your place, runt!' he screeched, his eyes wide.

'Father is already furious that you haven't secured "ancient magic for the bloodline",' he spat with disgust. 'Do you think he'll forgive you if you lose one of his precious Heirs of Slytherin?'

'You don't know what you're talking about!'

'There's nothing more important in his collection than his sons! — Yes, even me, the weak one.' Ominis stepped closer. 'You remember our sister? Whose punishment for being born a girl was to die?'

'She was born frail and ill!'

'That is a lie!' Ominis bellowed. 'She was perfectly healthy! Aunt Noctua offered to take her, but father deemed a daughter useless to him! Useless to his precious bloodline! And he'd have done the same to any of us had he not thought us valuable!' His wand-light shone steady: blood-red, unblinking and unrepentant. 'I can not — will not be a part of this any more! If you mark Sebastian as your enemy, then consider me your enemy, too!'

In the distance, the piano hit a final, resounding note then fell silent.

Breathing hard, Ominis kept his wand raised, red light illuminating his brother as the demon he truly was.

Finally, Malific retreated. Broken china crunched under his feet.

'You'll regret this!' He spat, casting them a final contemptuous glare. 'All of you.'

Only after the vast room had swallowed up the last of his brothers footsteps did Ominis begin to pace.

'I need to find Anne,' he muttered. 'Tell her what's happened. Need to be extra careful —'

'Wait, Ominis.' Sebastian caught him by the arm. 'Anne, is she — is —' he faltered, surprised by the shift in his voice; he could threaten and curse and lie with ease, but when it came to talking about his sister, he couldn't get a word out.

— Then again, wasn't rejection worse than torture?

'Is she safe?' Aurélie finished for him, squeezing his hand with her tingly fingers.

'Of course she is,' Ominis snapped. 'But she'll be safer if she's not in the Highlands. We'll need to leave —'

'Leave? But —' Sebastian's shoulders sagged. The adrenaline was wearing off; he suddenly felt very tired. 'But I only just got her back.'

The decision to expose Anne's secrets had not been one Sebastian had made lightly, but to get the Gaunt's off their back, he'd had no choice but to show Malific proof of everything that had transpired under his nose.

If Anne suffered the consequences, it would be Sebastian's fault. Again.

'I think I'll lose my mind if I lose her twice,' he confessed after Ominis had left them alone in the great room. Surrounded by mountains of lost things, Sebastian felt himself a mislaid object, left behind in a dark place to gather dust.

Aurélie's reply came muffled against his chest; he'd enveloped her in a suffocating hug the moment they were alone and hadn't realised how tightly he'd been squashing her. He loosened his grip enough to let her breathe.

'You won't,' she promised, twisting her face to look at him. 'But right now, the most important thing is keeping us all safe...'

'Yeah.' He smoothed her hair down and planted a kiss on top of her head. 'Safe...'

She fiddled with his shirt buttons. 'Did we — do you think maybe we just won? Against Malific, I mean?'

'I don't know if we've won,' he muttered. 'But we've definitely scared him, which in itself is a win: the Gaunt's aren't afraid of anyone.'

'Oh.' She paused to chew her lip, and then, almost as if she couldn't quite believe it, 'We're a bit formidable together, aren't we?'

Sebastian swelled with pride: oh, how he loved his little lightning girl, full of butterflies and rage.

'We're a lot formidable together.'

On his last day at Hogwarts, Sebastian packed his belongings into his small, tattered trunk and wondered where he'd gone so wrong that his entire life's contents had been reduced to nothing more than books, unfolded clothes and an alarming number of odd socks.  

He was quite used to navigating life on his own. Captain of himself, he was his own guardian, decision-maker and provider all rolled into one; but with exams under his belt and the precipice of a new life beyond Hogwarts at his toes, he'd never felt the absence of a family as keenly as he did now. While his peers received letters and gifts from home, Sebastian got nothing: no owls came for him baring congratulatory letters from proud parents, nor were any words of advice imparted upon him from distant uncles or older cousins. He'd pre-emptively been offered a traineeship at St Mungo's provided his N.E.W.T results were up to par (they would be), but a letter from a faceless Ministry employee was hardly comparable to a loving letter from your mother.

He missed his parents. He missed his home in Norfolk.

He missed his twin.

He knew, of course, that it was far worse for Anne, who'd never take exams, or graduate school, or get that job as an Auror she used to dream about. Dead without being dead. It made him sad; sadder than if she really had died. Because at least Sebastian had options — a life waiting for him beyond Hogwarts

What sort of life had Anne secured for herself when a grave in Norfolk bore her name?

More importantly, how was he going to help her if she still believed him to be irredeemable?

Having already lingered behind too long, Sebastian allowed himself a final glance over the Slytherin common room before ascending the winding staircase for the last time in his life.

At the top of the stairs, standing just beyond the snake archway, his future awaited him: red-haired, slightly impatient, bound in her thickest cloak as if she were standing amidst a snowstorm. But she smiled at him, and as he set his old trunk next to her little blue one, he brightened at the realisation that his entire life's contents was actually twice as big as he'd thought.

'What's this?' he asked, surprised when his ever-wandering hands slid beneath her Hogwarts robe to glide over pale blue silk.

'My old robes. — What?' She laughed at the look he gave her. 'I didn't spend six years at Beauxbatons to graduate in a Hogwarts uniform.'

'Fair enough,' he smiled, and then he cupped her face and kissed her long and slow and soft until someone in the background made a retching noise: their peers would be glad to see the back of them, he was sure of it.

'Ready?' he asked, taking her hand.  

'Ready,' she replied.  

The graduation ceremony was a small banquet held outside in the bell tower courtyard. Long had Sebastian dreamed of the pranks he'd pull on this day: exploding bonbons in the punch bowl, a hoard of pixies set loose during the speeches. But those plans had always involved Anne as his mastermind planner and Ominis as the voice of reason they both ignored.

Now that he was here without either of them, he just wanted to be done with it.

Speeches were made, laughs laughed (not his) and tears cried (definitely not his), but eventually, the main group split up into smaller parties to share memories and anecdotes over butterbeer and cauldron cakes.

Sebastian listened, mostly amused, a little bit sad — but everywhere his gaze lingered, memories of his own rose up like curls of smoke: him and Anne, first years, racing each other on school brooms while Kogawa shouted at them from below. By the fountain, sharing sweets with his new friend Ominis: Sebastian, utterly flabbergasted to learn that the youngest child of one of the most affluent families in existence had never tried Bertie Botts, had shared his entire stash that day and had consequently gone to bed with a sore stomach and a happy heart.

But there were other memories — newer, brighter; memories with red hair and blue eyes that shone like warm rays of sunshine. Across this very lawn, carrying her over snow to the Thestral's stables so her feet wouldn't get cold; under those eaves just ahead, dashing to safety after a downfall caught them by surprise, kissing raindrops right off her nose; in the distance, the Quidditch pitch, winning every match in her honour while she wore his colours in the stands.

After all those years of longing to belong somewhere beyond these ancient walls, he'd finally found his place in her.

Finally, when the enchanted boats were readied to carry them back across the lake, Sebastian clamoured in after her, settled her snugly between his legs and watched the castle grow smaller and smaller until the only home he'd known since childhood was nothing more than a distant silhouette on the horizon.

At Hogsmeade station, the Hufflepuff's cried, the Gryffindor's hugged, the Slytherin's made connections with those worth keeping, and the Ravenclaw's (all but the one whose hand he refused to let to of) quietly slipped away without a fuss. Ominis, too, had left without saying goodbye, and the thought that he'd likely gone to meet Anne only worsened Sebastian's sour mood until he was quite literally itching to be alone with the only person that fucking mattered to him any more.

It was for Aurélie's sake that he endured the long, drawn-out farewells as best as he could, but after what felt every Hufflepuff had said their tearful goodbye's at least sixteen consecutive times each, Sebastian's patience finally snapped when Garreth fucking Weasley sauntered over and tried to gift her one last potion; without a word, Sebastian picked her up and marched her decisively the cross platform while she called "au revior!" over his shoulder.

'You're grumpy,' she commented once he'd deposited her back on her feet.

'I'm tired of sharing you,' he grumbled back, gripping her hand like he might otherwise sink into the ground and never return.

They walked most of the way to Feldcroft, apparating between villages to avoid the long stretches of forest and road where Acromantula might lurk or (worse still) the mud might make a mess of Aurélie's shoes. They were quiet, mostly; Sebastian was lost in thoughts of his parents, trying to picture them young and freshly graduated with the world at their feet.

Had they had held hands during their final journey across the lake together? Had they looked upon their futures and felt the same conflicting mix of excitement and fear that he did? Had his father looked at his mother and felt compelled to whoop and laugh and cry and throw himself into the ocean as he did when he looked at Aurélie?

Had they been as happy as he was?

Or as terrified?

He wondered if he ought to visit them before he left for France but didn't dare speak the thought aloud, afraid the lump in his throat would betray the heavy, happy, empty, strange ache in his heart.

By the time they reached Feldcroft, the village was tucked in for the night between ocean and rocky peaks, too sleepy to acknowledge the two newcomers on the hill. In the distance, the cottage was dark, windows black and chimney empty; beyond it, his old garden-shed-turned-bedroom was swathed in shadow, still standing, still crumbling.

Perhaps he ought to blow it up.

But instead of homeward bound, his feet took him further up the hill to a small, ancient graveyard where the old souls of Feldcroft slept eternal, his uncle among them.

Though he'd never visited before, he found Solomon's headstone easily. Clean and tidy and laid fresh with flowers, it bore only his name and dates but nothing more, and Sebastian felt a sharp, awful pang of shame; upon the stone, he felt the truth deserved a place:

Here lies Solomon Sallow, murdered by his nephew.

Aurélie, who'd followed him quietly through the rows of the dead, laid her head on his shoulder and stood with him in silent vigil; and as dusk settled and stars brightened overhead, he looked down at the grave of the man he'd killed and felt sorry.

Lumos light guided their way back to the cottage sometime later, but before he could open the front door, Aurélie stepped around him and laid her palms flat over his chest.

'Wait,' she began, her eyes darting between his face and his chest. 'Um.'

Intrigued by the nervous change in her demeanour, Sebastian raised a brow in question. 'Um?'

'Well... We — that is to say, you and me...'

He raised his other eyebrow.

'Well, we —' she tried again. 'We're going to be all alone in there.'

'I bloody hope we'll be all alone in there,' he grumbled, thinking of surprise cats.

'What I mean is —' She swallowed audibly. 'Alone alone.'

'Ah,' he said, cottoning on. 'Is that a bad thing?'

'No!' she squeaked. 'I just — I'm not sure I want to do the thing,' — her eyes widened meaningfully, — 'in there.'

Sebastian softened with understanding; in a place so brimming with pain and regret, Solomon's cottage hardly seemed a fitting place to begin their new lives, even if it was only for one night.

Relieved, he put his hands on her waist.

'What do you think I'm going to do?' he laughed. 'Ravage you the moment we step over the threshold?'

'I mean...'

'Please,' he snorted. 'I've been waiting near on ten months, I can wait a bit longer.'

Her gaze flashed down to his... trousers. 'Can you?'

He grinned sheepishly. 'Ignore that. I have, uh... little to no control over it when you're around me.'

'But I'm always around you!'

He snaked one arm around her waist and lifted her off her feet. 'Oh, trust me, I am well aware,' he said, reaching for the door. 'But whatever you want to do tonight is fine by me. After all, we have the rest of our lives to do the thing.'

'Wait.'

His hand paused over the door knob.

'Are you absolutely certain you want to –'

'Live in France with you? Yes, Aurélie.'

'And you still want to —'

'Marry you? Yes, Aurélie.'

'But —'

'Shut up, Aurélie.'

Snickering at the indignant little face-scrunch she gave him, he turned the door handle.

But he never made it into the cottage.

With a force that left him breathless, he was suddenly yanked backwards. His feet left the ground – time and space and sound rushed past him in a blur, the cottage gone, the salt air gone, the only solid thing was the weight of the girl in his arm and the small, hot doorknob in the other.

Fucking portkey.

He slammed into solid earth; damp and musky — an oddly familiar smell of fire and decay. In the resulting tumble, he lost the girl and the door knob. Disoriented, he tried to stand but was roughly pulled upright by his hair, head yanked backwards, a wand jabbed painfully hard into his throat.

'One move...' A chilling voice sounded in his ear.  

Fucking Malific.

Across the catacomb, lit by the eternal torches Sebastian himself had conjured two years prior, Aurélie got slowly to her feet. 

Sebastian struggled to free himself. 'Aura! Run!' he shouted, but Malific jabbed his wand so hard into his windpipe that he choked.