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Chapter Text

The air hung heavy, still crackling with the remnants of the dark magic that had flown from him moments earlier. His breathing was laboured, chest heaving and heart galloping from the fight. Adrenaline was still rushing through his veins, fingers shaking where he clutched his wand down by his side.

At his feet lay the body of his uncle, crumpled and folded in ways that were altogether unnatural, limbs twisted and broken. Looking closely, Sebastian could still see the waves of green magic running across Solomon’s skin, which was turning shades of pale grey and purple with an unnerving speed. Unforgivable, something whispered to him, as if he needed reminding.

“What have you done?” Came a small, shivering voice from behind him. It was wrong to hear her sound so tiny, so broken. She usually stood tall, so brave and confident that she seemed untouchable. The tremble in her words that betrayed her horror nearly brought Sebastian to his knees.

He could feel her gaze boring into his back, a chill running through him and turning his body to stone as the realisation dawned that nothing could ever be the same again. It took all of the energy left in his tired muscles to resist turning, throwing himself to her feet and begging her to forget this, to tell him that he wasn’t a monster and that it was going to be okay.

But it wasn’t going to be okay. It was never going to be okay. He had killed him. He had thrown the killing curse and there wasn’t a cell, an atom of his body that hadn’t meant it.

This wasn’t how it was supposed to be. How had it ended up like this?

“You should go.”

He didn’t recognise his voice as the words left him, sitting cold in the air between them. Somewhere inside him he could feel something screaming at him to stop, to take back everything he was going to say and just bury this somewhere deep down where he would never have to touch it again.

“What do you mean?” She choked from behind him, and Merlin's beard she should never have to sound so hollow, no word she uttered should be so dripping with pain that he could taste it from across the room.

“No, Sebastian we need to leave, we have to go before they find us here, if we just head back to Hogwarts we can-” He could hear her starting to pace behind him, could picture the hand that she ran through her hair as she ran a million different scenarios through her head, trying to find the one that let them both get out of this unscathed. The ease with which his mind conjured the image of her should have shocked him, but he found it soothed him a little, the conviction with which he had started speaking only growing. At least he would always have this part of her with him.

“No.”

The word came out loud and blunt, and he winced as her steps faltered and stopped. He knew what he had to do, but it was almost as painful as the day that Anne had been cursed, as agonising as the grim smiles and ‘I’m sorries’ from the healers that his sister had been taken to.

With a deep breath he drew himself to his full height, fixing his eyes on the wall in front of him and pushing any shakiness from his voice.

“You need to leave. Go, and tell nobody of this.”

A bitter laugh escaped from her lips, but the tremble that cut through her words was undisguisable.

“You’re joking. You seriously expect me to leave you here after this.” It was too easy for Sebastian to picture the way that she gestured to the room around them, every deft movement of her hands and the incredulous shaking of her head.

He could hear her walking towards him then, tentative steps and a new softness in her voice that felt like a punch to the gut. “After everything we’ve been through, everything we’ve seen, you really expect me to believe that you don’t need me here.”

The laugh that burst forward from him was harsh and cutting, because of course that was what he needed, and it was so typically like her to put her finger on exactly what it was he was yearning for. She was always a step ahead of him, reading him like his every need was written in the pages of a book - it had drawn them close, closer than he had realised until now, when the only option he had left to him was to push her away.

“You have no idea what I need.”

The tone in his voice was foreign even to him, something dangerous between pain and anger. He knew she felt it, something in the air changing between them. He was like a wounded animal, filled with an aching rage that longed to lash out. He couldn’t let it be tamed, not until it had burned her out of his life, placed her somewhere safe where he could never reach her again.

“Sebastian, I’m not just going to give up on you. I know you’re hurting right now but we can fix this…”

Somewhere deep inside, Sebastian was screaming at himself to leave this alone, that she was right, but her quivering voice had shown him a chink in her armour, and he knew that if he didn’t push it now he never would.

Whipping around on his heel, he fixed her with a glare, a cruel smile tugging at one corner of his lips. A hand lay outstretched between them and his heart shattered all over again. She had been reaching out to him, soft hands aching to salve his wounds, to comfort his woes.

“What is there to fix? I’ve got everything I wanted.” They both knew it was a lie, but it didn’t matter. The words were flowing forth without permission now, vicious and remorseless. “I suppose I have you to thank for that, who else would have been stupid enough to follow me to the end like this?”

He tilted his head back in a laugh devoid of any kind of humour, and only hoped that she didn’t pick up on how false it sounded leaving him.

“And all because of what? A kind word?” He stepped into her space, the movement smooth and predatory in ways that felt alien to him, as if someone else had taken control of his body. “A pretty face?”

Her features fell slack as she stared up at him, pain crossing through her eyes as Sebastian spoke. Neither of them had ever touched on what rested unspoken between them, the thread of possibility that had drawn them together from the first day they had met in the common room. He knew that she had felt the same pull that he had, both of them paralyzed by the ‘what ifs’ that came with moving on what they felt. They had simply danced around it, revelling in the tension and pretending that they couldn’t feel the gravitational pull that was tugging at them.

She squeezed her eyes shut, and he felt the catch in her breath as it ghosted across his face. He had found the soft spot. The only thing left to do was twist the dagger.

When she finally returned his gaze her eyes were watery, pleading with him as she looked up at him pitifully.

“Sebastian, please, you’re being cruel.”

He knew. He hated it. The voice from earlier was back and making itself hoarse screaming and yelling at him to take her face in his hands and beg forgiveness, grovel and promise that everything could go back to how it was. His heart was pounding as they balanced on the precipice between the safe and the unknown, bodies pressed up against the wall that held back a future where they were something even worse than enemies - the future where they were strangers.

A tear ran down her cheek, and he wiped it away with the back of his fingers, soaking in the only opportunity he would ever have to touch her face. Leaning in, he lowered his face to within inches of hers, so close it would have been easy to forget all of this and simply kiss her until they were both breathless, a million apologies whispered into the space between them. Her eyes drifted closed of their own accord, holding back the barrage of tears that was given away by her uneven, hitching breaths.

“And you have been a truly spectacular means to an end.”

The dam broke, and as she lost her battle with the tears she pushed against his chest with a solid shove, backing away from him. The betrayal sat there in her eyes clear as a summer day, a hurt so deep that it threatened to pull him down with it as well.

“Ominis was right about you,” She finally choked out, a shaking finger pointed at him accusingly. “You just don’t know when to fucking stop.”

A sad smile spread across Sebastian’s face. Ah, Ominis. He hadn’t thought about his best friend, about how this was going to destroy him. It was better that he learned this from her, that Sebastian cut them both out in one fell swoop and gave them each other to lean on. It would be easier to protect them both from himself this way, and he knew it. Selfishly, he knew it would be easier for him too. It was one thing to cut the new fifth year out, someone who until a few minutes ago he saw in every image of a future he dared imagine, but the look of disgust and absolute heartbreak that Ominis would give him would be unbearable.

“You can’t say you weren’t warned,” he offered with a shrug.

A hardness formed over her features as he stared at her, the sadness that had been there snatched away and replaced with a sickening hatred that rippled through every inch of Sebastian’s body.

“I hope this destroys you,” she spat at him as she backed away, venom dripping from every word. “Truly. When you are crippled and twisted by this, I hope the face of every single person who loved you haunts you. I hope you see Ominis and I every night before you go to sleep, and you remember that we would have given everything to save you.”

Sebastian simply scoffed and shook his head, holding her hostage in his gaze for as long as he could. He knew that after this he would never - could never - see her again.

“I don’t love you. Ominis, maybe, a long time ago. But you? Nothing,” he sneered, the words as cold as the tomb they stood in. For a moment he thought that the echoes off of the cave walls would give him away, that they would whisper the truth into her ears and she would see through the rapidly developing cracks to where he was being pulled down into an ocean of pain as if there were bricks tied around his ankles.

But she didn’t, and with one final shake of her head she turned her back on him and walked away, footsteps quickening into a sprint as she left him standing alone in the dark.

He waited for what felt like hours, attuning to the growing silence around him until he was sure she had left and he finally allowed the agony to take over, pulling his legs out from underneath him. His whole body shook with long, racking sobs that clawed their way out from his chest and had him gasping for breath.

His final words echoed around him as if they were freshly spoken, breaking him over and over again until he was a shivering mess curled up on the stone floor beneath him, a cold sweat soaking through his clothes.

I don’t love you, he thought, eyes so sore from tears that he could barely stand to open them. It had been a good lie.

Chapter Text

It took months for Sebastian to leave the Scottish Highlands behind, despite knowing that he was practically begging to be caught, that to keep them both safe he needed to leave. No matter how hard he tried, how many hours he spent pleading with himself to be rational, he found himself haunting the hills, another wayward soul lingering there.

It didn’t surprise him when she came after him. It had only taken a few days, and then she was back in Feldcroft, knocking at the doors of his neighbours and asking the town merchant, Mr Ndiaye, if there had been any sightings of him. She had been so, so close a number of times, so close he had to hold his breath, but the constant practice had made Sebastian all but invisible, the shadows holding him close and keeping him hidden.

She had scoured the fields surrounding the town, checking every cave, tomb and vista that she could, calling his name for hours at a time until her voice was nothing but a hoarse squeak. Sometimes, she would just collapse to her knees and sob, mouthing words that he was too far away to hear, stolen away by the wind as she cried, face in her hands. Eventually she would stand back up, wipe her eyes, and he would hate himself a little bit more.

Weeks turned into months, and eventually her visits became less and less frequent. The townspeople watched her walk by with a deep sadness in their eyes that prickled at him, salt in a thousand tiny wounds as he watched her walk silently past them, fresh grazes on the heels of her palms from scrambling up hillsides to check for him.

Slowly, her visits went from weekly to monthly, and then she stopped coming altogether.

He had gone back to Hogwarts to check on them as they finished their year, nearly getting caught by a seventh year couple who almost ran into him as they searched for a dark corner to say their goodbyes. Lingering in the corner of a courtyard, he watched the way that her and Ominis had clung to each other as they walked out of the castle for the final time that year, looking as if they were missing a limb as they dragged their heavy cases behind them.

Sebastian had never seen his best friend look so lost, and it took a gut-wrenching moment for him to realise that now he was gone, Ominis had nowhere to go for the summer. He had condemned his dearest friend to long, hot weeks in freezing cold halls at the Gaunt estate, where the long shadows and blistering heat of summer wouldn’t dare touch him. He would spend six agonising weeks locked away, held captive in a wing where the dust lay thick so his family could ignore his presence.

He watched them turn from pin-pricks on the horizon into nothing, and once they were gone, so was he, stealing away and unsure when he would next see his friends again.

The next time he had come back was early spring of the next year, his return to the Highlands heralded by the blossom returning to the naked boughs of the trees. 

He had caught up to them walking through the grounds, talking quietly amongst themselves, heads bent together as they wandered. They drifted along the banks of the Black Lake, up towards the edge of the forbidden forest, further up again to the viewing spot that overlooked the castle on the walk to Hogsmeade. They walked aimlessly for hours, shuffling wherever their feet could take them.

He followed them at a safe distance, far enough behind that he was out of earshot but just close enough to refresh his memory on the tiny things that had begun to fade away - the strand of hair she always seemed to miss from her ponytail, the way echoes of emotion flashed across Ominis’ face as he listened to a story.

People didn’t seem to stare at them as they walked past any more, and they were no longer followed by whispers about “the missing Sallow boy”, how dreadful it was that his uncle had been murdered, and do you really think that he did it? (The general consensus was that yes, he had, and the new first years were teased relentlessly with stories of the killer who roamed the hills around the castle, looking for his next victim. If the stories weren’t about him, Sebastian probably would have laughed.) He was pleased that he seemed to be fading from people’s memories now, hoping that his friends would be allowed to move on now everyone was forgetting him.

The sun was hanging low in the sky, cutting through the clouds in rays of gold and orange that bathed the castle in a warm light that made it look like it were cut straight from a book of fairy tales, and Sebastian found himself longing for the warm fire of the common room, the echoes of his footsteps as he searched the cool stone corridors for his friends, following their laughter as it bounced off of the walls. The homesickness was more potent than it had been for a long time, heavy on his shoulders and threatening to push him under when a sound so familiar and so painfully far away cut through the air.

Ominis was leaning against the stone wall, a smile tugging at the corner of his lips, and even with her back to him, Sebastian could tell that she was laughing. She playfully swatted at his friend’s arm, and he caught her wrist deftly in the air, fixing her with that wistful smile.

Sebastian’s heart leapt into his throat, his entire body aching to leap forwards and jump in between them, protecting her from whatever that smile meant.

This is what you wanted, he had to remind himself, releasing his grasp on a branch he didn’t realise he had grabbed onto to steady himself. The sharp bark had cut through the calloused skin of his palm, but he wouldn’t realise until he was a few miles away, blaming the biting wind over the hills for the tears that stung his eyes.

Another peal of laughter broke through the silence, and he couldn’t bring himself to look at the friends he had left behind to see what was funny, turning his back on them and slinking back into the edges of the forest before the dull ache forming in his lungs could build into the scream his body craved.

It was another few long months that stretched between his last visit and the next time Sebastian found himself in Scotland, weaving through the alleys of Hogsmeade as snow fell from the December sky in thick clumps. 

He found them on another of their walks, arms linked as they huddled together for warmth - she was peering into the windows and describing the Christmas displays laid out there, her words hanging in clouds in front of her as she filled Ominis in on what colour the ribbons were, what they were made of, how many lights there were, how they were arranged and how shiny this window was compared to the last one. Beside her, Ominis chuckled and nodded along, the snow falling in his hair turning the usual dirty blonde a piercing white.

Sebastian followed them as closely as he could, hanging just out of sight around corners and standing in unlit doorways, listening intently. He couldn’t help but smile along to the sound of joy in her voice, picturing her looks of excitement as she explained. It took him back to just before he had left, when the Christmas trees had first been put up around the school and she had beamed up at him, offering him a tiny glass decoration to hang on the branches. It had made his heart skip a beat then, and it did the same now, a warmth spreading through him despite the bitter cold.

It wasn’t until they reached The Three Broomsticks that they paused their wander, hiding from the increasingly heavy snowfall under the vaulted arch of the entranceway. She took her hood down then, and the flush that the cold brought to her face made her glow. The breath caught in Sebastian’s throat as she shook her hair loose, radiant as she chuckled at some joke that he hadn’t quite caught. 

She froze as she tilted her head back, something catching her eye up on the ceiling where Sebastian couldn’t quite see. He snuck forward, trying to get a better view, when she finally choked out a word that held him in place as efficiently as any petrificus totalus ever could.

“Mistletoe.”

Ominis cocked his head in a wordless question, but the way that he stood up straighter, half a step taken towards her, had every hair on the back of Sebastian’s neck standing on end, every nerve screaming that he had to do something.

“What was that?” 

There was a tone that Sebastian had never heard in Ominis’ voice before, something hopeful but somehow nervous, soft and vulnerable. He hated the way the words sounded leaving him, thoughts venomous as he could do nothing but stare.

“Nothing, it’s just that…you know, it’s Christmas, and-”

Her words trailed off as Ominis reached up to hold her face between his gloved hands, and Sebastian couldn’t understand why he couldn’t move, he couldn’t breathe. He was begging whatever it was that froze him in place to let him turn away, to close his eyes, to do anything but sit there and watch.

From where he was crouched he could see her gaze flicker across Ominis’ face before she let her eyes drift shut as his best friend tipped her face towards him and leaned down. He couldn’t hear what it was that Ominis whispered against her lips before softly, slowly he was kissing her and pulling her close in ways that Sebastian had only ever dreamed of.

Finally, Sebastian’s body let him move and he tore away, clumsy and sliding against the ice as he fled, vision blurry. He had no right to be this hurt, he told himself. He was the one who had cut himself out of their lives to cauterise the wound he had caused, so why did it feel like he had been beaten within an inch of his life?

Breaking the village bounds he continued to run, feet pounding against the frozen ground until his legs screamed with the effort and his heart felt like it was trying to claw its way out of his chest.

He didn’t look back over his shoulder, didn’t allow himself a final glance at the village his friends still stood in. He pushed them from his mind, refusing to imagine what they were doing  - he just continued to walk, vowing to himself that he would never come back again.

Sebastian had made a habit of breaking promises he made to himself.

He had, of course, checked back multiple times since that snowy Christmas in Hogsmeade.

Once during a particularly hot summer, where he sat and watched them lying on the grass and drinking in the sunlight, sleeves rolled up past their elbows as Ominis lay his head in her lap and she read to him, fingers carding through his hair. Again on a crisp autumn morning as she shovelled handfuls of fallen leaves down his shirt to stop him from scowling, until he caught both her wrists in one hand and tickled her until she cried.

It didn’t hurt as much as the first time, the all-consuming rage that had coursed through him fading into an almost companionable pain that filled his chest despite his smile as he watched them, a longing for what might have been. 

In his dark, quiet nights he re-ran the scenes in his mind but swapped Ominis out for himself, daring to imagine his legs brushing up against hers as they dangled into the dark water of the lake, the warmth of her body pressed up against his chest as she leaned back into him, face turned up to the sun as he wrapped his arms around her waist. It was a delicious kind of self-torture, one that he allowed himself to revel in time and time again as lonely moments ran into lonely hours.

Once they had left Hogwarts it had been harder to track them. He tried the quaint village in Somerset she had mentioned when they spoke of home, the seaside towns down in Devon that she had described to him, homework forgotten as they sat around the fire - he had even tried hanging around the Gaunt estate, hoping for a glimpse of either of them, some sort of clue leading him to a place where he could see them, be sure they were safe before he faded away again for a year or so.

The years of searching bled together until all of his efforts were exhausted, the list of names of towns he had made all crossed through and forgotten. He had lost them. Eventually, he made his way back to Feldcroft, back to the ghost of his family home in the hopes of finding some kind of solace in the familiar walls.

As he stole towards the door under the cover of darkness he paused at the sight of something pinned into the swollen wood there. There was a cream card, wrapped in an emerald green ribbon trimmed with silver and pushed into the door with a small pin. He snorted. Even now, she was brimming with house pride.

Reluctantly, he pulled the card free, flipping it over and running his fingers along the embossing on the edges. Thankfully it looked like it hadn’t been there long, pristine as it sat there waiting for him. On the back of the card there was writing in a neat, looping hand that he recognised from scribbled notes in the margins of his books and corrections hastily made on his essays as the fire died in the hearth, late night running into early morning.

He had a date, he had a time, he had a place. All he needed now was a suit.