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Chapter Text

Dear Ominis, 

 

I have been thinking. About me, about you. About us kissing and holding han

The parchment crumples in the press of Sebastian’s fists and tumbleweeds off the desk. The gaping maw of the rubbish bin swallows it avidly.

Dear Ominis,

 

A lot has been going through my mind lately. N.E.W.T.s, graduation, my post-graduation pursuits… One of them is you And, more importantly, where I belong. With whom Who I truly am.

 

I am not a man

The words catch fire; the Blasting Curse toasts the parchment into flaking ashes. Regretting her hot-headedness, Sebastian puts out the smoldering heap before it can set off on a conquest of the dormitory.

Get it together, twat.

Dear Ominis,

 

You once told me you’d spent your days and nights lamenting why you’d been born the way you are. Different. Lacking. The odd one out. 

 

A freak.

 

Our circumstances are not the same, yet I think I’m starting to understand your struggle.

 

You are not a freak—you’ve never been. But me? 

 

Always been one.

 

I thought Anne’s passing was the toughest challenge I’ve had to face, but it seems I’ve found a worthy contender. I’m not sure where to begin or how to put into words the vortex of thoughts that accost me ceaselessly. Some—most—of it feels too abstract to explain. But I want to try. I will do my best to shed light on what it is that has affected me my whole life, even if I myself have barely sorted out this “anomaly”. 

 

I am going to do it by confessing not only one, but two truths about myself. Brace yourself.

 

I, Sebastian Sallow, your best friend of six years, am female.

 

And I am hopelessly in love with you.

 

… Too much? 

 

Forgive me. But now that I’ve caught your attention, I know what you are thinking: that this is no more than one of my crass jokes.

 

It isn’t.

 

For years I’ve felt like I was born broken. Unfinished. Like I was someone’s beloved pet project they lost interest in halfway. Like someone created me without a fail-safe, got their parts mixed up and did a ham-fisted job at finishing what they’d started. Good enough, they said. In reality, the final product came out all sorts of wrong.

 

No one else noticed something was amiss; for them it was good enough. Passable. Convincing, even. The creation itself, however, did not feel comfortable in its own skin, nor liked the myriad parts they’d been constructed from—all disproportionate and disfigured, bits and bobs that were superfluous and alien. The societal role it had been assigned didn’t fit, like an instrument of war in the hands of a musician. A dragon told to put out a wildfire.

 

What I’m trying to say is… I was born in the body of a boy, but I never felt as though I belonged in it. It is a costume I wear, one that has shrunken too tight to ever remove. And because of it, I’ve had to conform to its restrictive shape. To pretend I am what it forces me to be. 

 

A boy.

 

I don’t look like it, I don’t sound like it—Merlin, I’m not sure I act like it—but I am a girl. 

 

A young woman.

 

You must think me raving mad. Be that as it may, I am the Sebastian you’ve always known. Nothing has changed; my body may lie, but my heart does not. 

 

I admit, though, that I don’t know if that name applies to me anymore. It feels… distant. A dissenting voice in a crowd of millions, calling out, proclaiming truth over falsehood. 

 

What is the truth then, you ask?

 

I’m not sure yet.

 

But that’s neither here nor there. For now, this is all you need to know. What I want you to try and internalise, whether it takes weeks or months or years or multiple lifetimes. I’m not known for my patience—but with this, I will gladly make an exception.

 

Then there’s my feelings for you. As true as a fire’s heat, as sure as the rising and setting of the sun. When the wind chimes tinkle in the breeze, I think of your laughter: clear, lilting, dancing in my ears. Those polished pebbles of sea glass we’ve salvaged from the shores remind me of your eyes: glimmering gateways to something magical. The moment your hand brushes mine, there’s a current surging through me—a gentle rill transforming into rapids that crash their turbulent waves across my being. And when you smile—when you speak and say things that make me feel loved and appreciated—like a phoenix, I combust. I am reborn as my real self. And as I do, I ascend to a higher plane, a place where I squeeze you into a hug and never let go.

 

Ever since you came into my life, my world has been heliocentric. For you, Ominis, are my sun—shining perpendicularly over me and setting my heart ablaze. Keeping me warm when the cold gets unbearable. Giving me a spring to my step, a smile on my face, and a confidence I don’t have to dissemble. 

 

 My confusion of self, of belonging, of existing… Every pain, mistake and setback I’ve sustained or made has been less daunting to cope with because you’ve never stopped lighting my path forward.

 

This—all of this—must come as a great shock to you. A colossal understatement, I'd imagine. Believe me, I understand. I’ve had sixteen years to sort myself out, and I’m still desperately trying to wrap my head around it all.

 

Now that you know me for who I am, for who I’ve always been deep beneath my skin, I hope from the bottom of my heart that you will accept the truth of me. That you’ll still want me around as someone special and important. However long that’ll take. 

 

I wouldn’t know what to do if you never did.

 

Yours Truly, 

Your Best Friend 

 

P.S. Forgive my forwardness, but perhaps since I’ve never truly been a boy, but the opposite sex at heart… There’s a chance, however small, that we could be more than frie

The creak of the bedroom’s door causes every hair on Sebastian’s arms to stand on end. Ink drips from her quill and blots out the stump of a word.

“If you’re too nervous, Ominis,” a soft-spoken female voice says, “we can always reschedule.” 

“No,” Ominis assures, stepping inside. “I’m done running away. I trust you. I’m ready—” Scarlet light blinks rapidly on his wand as it alerts him to an unanticipated presence. “S-Sebastian?” 

“Ominis,” Sebastian replies, all but stumbling over the chair’s legs and her own. “Fancy meeting you here.” She leans casually against the desk to hide the letter, her heart beating like a ritual drum. Who she finds trailing after Ominis is no one she would have ever expected to meet anywhere near the Slytherin common room. “And you, Sweeting.” 

“H-hello, Sebastian,” Poppy says, her smile stilted. She clutches the strap of her satchel and waves her hand in a tiny greeting. Sebastian returns it woodenly.

Clearing his throat—but not a lick of the awkwardness—Ominis questions, almost accusatorily, “Weren’t you supposed to be at Crossed Wands?” 

“Ah, that.” Throat tarring up, Sebastian manages, “It got… rescheduled.” The shame over her dismal lie would eat her whole were it not for the explosive twinge in her chest. Something deep and ever-burgeoning. 

Jealousy.

“I didn’t mean to impose,” Poppy starts cautiously, biting her lip. Her sheepish gaze flickers up to Ominis. “We could always, erm, study elsewhere?” 

“Yes,” Ominis agrees, sweat beading on his temple. “There’s bound to be a quiet nook available in the library. Let me grab my stationery and—” 

“No.” 

All faces snap to Sebastian. A taut but tenuous string connects Ominis’ and hers, replete with things unsaid and questions unasked.

“I was only dropping by,” she elaborates. Her eyes bound around the room as she frantically formulates an escape plan. “To… get the rubbish.” 

Poppy tilts her head. “The rubbish?” She watches keenly as Sebastian swipes the letter to the bin, scoops up the bagful of discarded confessions and seals it with an overhand knot.

“Why in Merlin’s name would you concern yourself with a house-elf’s duty?” Ominis demands with a critical raise of his eyebrow.

“Just helping out the poor things,” Sebastian mumbles, shrugging apathetically. She brushes past them, cold-shouldering the mounting ache in her chest. “Good talk, you two,” she says by the door, pulling it open. “I’ll leave you to it.” Slinging the bag over her shoulder, she, in an anxiety-inspired impulse, glances back and blurts, “Don’t forget protection!” then slams the door shut. The image of the pair’s horror-stricken expressions sears permanently to her retinas.

The mesh of the metal walkway rattles under her boots as she hastens out to the common room proper. She ignores the greetings and calls of her housemates, weaves up the spiral staircase, and skids to a doleful stop in the dungeons.

Flustered out of her wits, she mutters an Evanesco under her breath and watches the rubbish bag disappear in a reality-bending swirl. 

Amidst the barrage of humiliation and debilitating jealousy, there’s a new arrival, a feeling that overpowers them tenfold. A whetted spearhead to her breast, twisting, burrowing, bleeding her dry and refilling her with a toxin only ample time may ever hope to heal.

Heartbreak.

Chapter Text

That night, Sebastian did not return to the Slytherin common room, afraid of what she might discover there. She slept in the Undercroft on a passably comfortable troop of transfigured pillows and blankets, missing the sinking softness of her own bed. 

‘Slept’ may be too kind in terms of the events that preceded it. Screaming into the void of her makeshift bedding and lobbing the nearest objects in every direction only to have one of them rebound and strike her on the head, stoking the fires of her ire further until she passed out from fatigue falls more in line with reality.

In the early hours of the morning, she tiptoed to her dorm to fetch her school bag, finding to her relief the room empty, albeit discouragingly lived in. On Ominis’ bedside table a blush palette peeked tauntingly from its entanglement with a teal hair ribbon, and his bedspread sparkled with a scattering of glitter, catching the ambient sconcelight like a pearly sea at high noon. 

There was no question of it: Poppy had stayed overnight.

Keeping her lips sewn tight—not due to her sore throat, mind—Sebastian uttered not a word of the forgotten belongings to Ominis. 

“Nothing untoward happened,” Ominis explains in Charms after demanding to know where Sebastian spent the night. “She’s just a friend.” 

“Mhmm,” replies Sebastian dully, her fist punching into her cheek as she pretends to scribble down notes. Because ‘friends’ take each other to their common rooms to ‘study’. “Just like you and I,” she says instead.

“No,” refutes Ominis. “She’s not my best friend. You are.”

“Sure.”

“What’s with you?”

“A quill,” Sebastian says in a monotone drawl to rival Professor Binns’. “A textbook, some parchment, and…” She dunks a hand into her pocket. “Leftover Shock-o-Chocs. Want one?”

A foot stamps on hers. She hisses an ow, mirroring the glower Ominis so graciously lances her with.

“I want you to stop acting like a smartarse and tell me what your attitude is for,” he snaps.

“I don’t have an attitude.” Her foot is not spared from another assault. “It’s nothing!” she insists. She flips a page of her book and doesn’t reserve it more than a cursory glance. “Got a lot on my plate, is all.” 

“We all do,” Ominis reminds her. “But I know you. This isn’t mere pressure from studies or a sore throat. This is something else.” The hard edges of his face soften a smidge. “Is it… Anne?” 

Sebastian gulps. Anne. Her dear twin sister. Almost a year has passed since her death; she would be nearly seventeen too now. She succumbed to her curse thinking she was leaving behind a mourning brother, all because Sebastian was too preoccupied with trying to save her to tell her the truth. Or perhaps that is an excuse. In reality, she was too cowardly to confide in anyone—even her other half before it was too late.

“No,” she replies truthfully—ish.

“Then what?” 

She says nothing. Only stares at the students across them attempting to perform vinegar-to-wine charms with all the interest of a maladaptive daydreamer.

“You’re jealous.” Ominis, unfortunately, has caught on. “Because you think I’m going to stop spending time with you.” 

“Ha,” she says, joyless, dry. Her stomach drops like she’s on a temperamental broom and not the grounding safety of a classroom chair. “You’re entitled to having friends. Plural.” 

“So why are you making it seem like I’m not?”

“That’s not it,” she claims half-heartedly. “I told you, I’m just—” 

“Trouble with the charm, gentlemen?” 

The bickering pair turn to greet the jolly face of Professor Ronen. He has glided soundlessly to the front of their desks, a trademark twinkle ever-present in his eye.

Sebastian sucks in a long, wobbly breath. Gentlemen. She tries her damndest not to fixate on that ill-fitting denoter of gender, even as it echoes relentlessly in her brain, ricocheting like a burr.

“Contrariwise, Professor,” Ominis manages before her, indicating their wine-filled goblets. “I believe we have succeeded without issue.” 

“We shall see, won’t we?” Professor Ronen gives their goblets a once-over and claps his hands together briskly. “So you have indeed! Well done, well done.” He taps the rim of the goblets with his wand. The burgundy of the wine reverts to the pellucid stillness of vinegar in each. “While I expected nothing less from you two, it would be a shame to not let you show off a little, don’t you think?” He sticks his fists to his waist, smiling a grandfatherly smile. “Now then: let us see what you young men have learnt today. Why don’t you start, Mr. Sallow?” 

“Can you not—” 

Discomfited, Sebastian cuts herself off with the brutal swiftness of the severing charm. She wouldn’t lash out like this normally; misgendering is a regrettable byproduct of others’ ignorance, bolstered by her reticence. But with the recent, unfavourable developments, her head is a bottle with a tempest trapped inside, the spitting image of the ones sold at Zonko’s. She wears her heart on her sleeve and bares her teeth at anyone who so much as inadvertently dares say the wrong thing to her, for bombs do not defuse themselves. They seethe on until there’s nothing between a close call and an inevitable explosion.

Professor Ronen stares at her with inquisitive and speculative blinks. Even Ominis has his eyebrows sailing close to his hairline, an amalgamation of second-hand embarrassment and worry twisting his facial expression.

“Is something the matter, Mr. Sallow?” queries the professor.

“No, Professor,” Sebastian forces out, biting back another outburst. She retreats her hands to her lap, wringing them there, face hot with shame as she averts her gaze. “Slept unwell, is all. Please, forgive me. It won’t happen again.” 

With something verging on understanding in his shrewd eyes, Professor Ronen smiles and says, “A foregone conclusion, young one. But what of forgiving yourself?” 

For want of words, Sebastian smiles back—stiff, jerky, painful. Like trying to stretch the bones out of her cheek. Fortunately, the professor accepts this as an answer and steers them back to a less volatile track.

“Let’s see that impeccable wandwork of yours in action, yes?” 

Grateful for the chance to do something right, Sebastian gladly obliges. She and Ominis demonstrate their know-how by turning the vinegar back to wine with as much finesse as a simple pointing of wand and incanting enable. Surprising them with his jocund eccentricism, the professor indulges in a rather generous sip from both of their goblets, sighing out loud his satisfaction. Judging by the lack of jaws hitting the floor, theirs weren’t the first wines to be sampled for what surely was only professional purposes. 

Praising them for their outstanding success and awarding each with ten house points, he slides the goblets back to the desk, a few tantalising inches away from their hands, and chuckles. “Go on,” he stage-whispers. “I won’t tell.”  

Bemused but preening on their achievements, the duo thank the professor and, per his exhortation, flip the pages of their books to the verbose origins and instructions of the gouging spell. Sebastian’s comments on having self-taught it at the start of the sixth year and being eager to prove it fall to deaf ears as the professor hums an upbeat tune and strides to examine the results of their untried classmates. 

“What was that?” Ominis demands, full attention on her again. It hardly takes a genius to know what precisely he’s hunting down.

“What was what?” Sebastian says stubbornly anyway, and downs her wine for the hell of it. A mistake that makes her dangerously close to gagging.

“You just drank the wine, didn’t you?” 

Ominis can hear the face Sebastian is pulling too—of that she is sure but uncaring. “Of course not,” she says, pushing the empty goblet away with distaste. Arguably a more pleasant experience for her throat than last night’s wailing; given the choice, she would rather slug Ominis’ goblet dry as well than play an encore of that disgrace.

“Once a terrible liar, always a terrible liar.” Ominis sighs, tone veering towards disapproval. He eviscerates the oncoming counterarguments with, “I’ll ask again: what was that, Sebastian?” 

Don’t call me that, she snaps in her mind. Which is stupid, of course. What else would he call her? 

“What,” she drawls, “was what, Ominis?” 

“Snarling at one of the nicest professors Hogwarts has ever known.” 

Sebastian slips her tongue under the gentle bite of her canine, prodding as if to get a feeling for its shape and size. Perhaps if I draw blood and outhurt the existing pain, this nightmare will end. 

“Nothing,” she mutters. She pops the last remaining Shock-o-Choc in her mouth and dredges up a half-truth. “Stress, sleep deprivation. Like I said.”

Ominis’ hum is low and measuring. He leans forward, eyes blind to everything but her deflections. “Swotting for N.E.W.T.s—is that really what’s going on?”

“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.”  

A pause. Pregnant. Heavily so.

“You should slow down a bit,” Ominis says. Each word is enunciated with utmost care and precision.

He doesn’t believe her. Great.

“Noted, mum,” she deadpans. She begins reading the introductory paragraph to the gouging spell, wishing on her whittled sanity that Ominis will give up the fight, if only to lend her a much-needed breather.

And bless Merlin and his tits, he does—with an approximation of an amused snort. Sebastian allows for the gentlest release of air to blow out of her nose too. Sadly, it does nothing to distract her from the pit of self-pity where scenarios that serve her interests to a tee await her with open arms. 

They lapse into the pseudo-silence of classroom chatter, spellcasting and page-flipping. Not for long, though.

“I’m not going to abandon you,” Ominis proclaims mid-reading, voice firm in its softness. Upon Sebastian’s unwillingness to acknowledge the statement, stiff as she has grown, he sighs and continues, his tone gaining a near-plaintive edge towards the end, “On the off chance that you still need a refresher: You are my best friend. You of all people should know I am the least liable to do such a thing to another. Especially you.” 

An undertow of delicate warmth laps over the choppy currents of Sebastian’s hurt and irascibility. She flounders for a crude facsimile of a genuine smile, catching it with a slippery hold. “I suppose,” she says—and she says it to his face. “Thanks.” 

Ominis, too, smiles—a hollow imitation like hers.

Consequently, they snipe at each other no more. Sebastian endures the rest of her classes, donning strained smiles, forcing laughs and joking with the credibility of a subpar charlatan, concocting a cornucopia of excuses to brush off the occasional plummets in mood. Ominis’ terminable resignation to them evinces their frailty, but mercifully, he badgers her not a word more on the subject.

For all intents and purposes, she does what she does best: acts a role she is unfit for. 

She soldiers on even as her heart weeps for a miracle: that this truly is all a bad dream she will soon wake up from, in a body she can proudly call her own, with a voice and the words to outdazzle Poppy’s.

The advent of night lulls her to fitful sleep. She heaves herself up dejectedly the next day, still shackled in a nightmare—still straitjacketed to her too-masculine body with nary a hope of Ominis ever courting her.

Chapter Text

As the freckles are conspicuous on Sebastian’s face, so is Ominis’ gravitation towards Poppy. The time they spend together grows incrementally over the next several days, one always seeking the other out and spinning stories that are unnecessary and transparent, mendacious to a fault. In a way, it is a comfort. If the truth is never made patently clear, perhaps it’ll hurt less. In due time.

They never set foot in the Slytherin common room again. Instead they frequent the Hufflepuff accommodations or other private nooks of the castle, whispering and gossiping and being mawkishly in love and possibly doing… things best left unimagined. Sebastian avoids them like dragon pox, but they, like the disease itself, are like an infection waiting to pounce on her when she least expects it. 

Once, after lunch, Sebastian encountered the two just outside the Great Hall, tucked into one of the surrounding colonnade’s corners. They were discussing—and almost as though brainstorming—something. Poppy had a parchment and a quill in hand, the latter of whose feather she was lightly tapping against her cheek as she pondered something Ominis said; their voices were hushed and Sebastian did not dare nor wish to get too close. 

Then, too suddenly, Poppy’s hand shot up to pluck Ominis’ perfectly coiffed hair like lyre strings. Ominis started and recoiled, but didn’t seem offended. Flustered, Poppy, presumably, apologised and asked if it was all right to continue. Face a mask of thinly veiled vulnerability, Ominis nodded slowly. Poppy’s delicate fingers sank back in his hair, brushing and petting it the way only a lover would. 

When her hands fell lower, alighting on Ominis’ shoulders and gingerly turning him to face her, Sebastian couldn’t bear to watch any more. She fled their cloying display of affection before she was discovered.

The second notable mention was hardly less conniption-inducing. One day after Potions class, Ominis had slipped to the Hufflepuff common room like a hungry snake after its prey—at least that was the direction Poppy steered him in. Sebastian spent that time in the Undercroft exercising some pest control; how beautifully spiders burn to crisp, and what music their screeches are to her ears. She even invented a new sport: spider-fighting. All promises of not using the dark arts since the traumatising events of their fifth year were as if a frayed rope finally snapping as she pitted the loathsome arachnids against each other with the Imperius Curse and watched, channelling her negativity into exultant jeers. 

Negative emotions. She had those in spades of late.

“I’m not looking forward to being near those blasted plants again,” Ominis bemoans as he drops beside Sebastian on a bench inside the greenhouses an hour later. “Donning ourselves in full-body armour should be standard practice when handling Venomous Tentacula, if you ask me.” 

“But who am I going to save from their snapping jaws and spiky prehensile vines if there’s no real danger?” Sebastian quips mid-reading, mostly to distract herself from the blitz of images of Ominis doing this, that and—Salazar curse him—that with Poppy within the past hour. The Hufflepuff entered the classroom alone some five minutes ago, as though wanting to cast aside suspicions by arriving without Ominis, so perhaps that serves as an indicator of sorts, one she doesn’t wish to entertain further.

“You got to play hero once, and I am ever grateful for your assistance,” says Ominis lightheartedly. “But I did tell you to not let it go to your head.” 

Sebastian closes her book and stretches. “Well, you know me,” she replies and leans against the wall with her hands on the back of her skull, making it a point to stare at the bustle of students and not a certain blonde who unknowingly broke her heart. “One word of praise from Professor Garlick and I’ll never be the same again.” 

Yes: she may have fancied the youthful professor, and may still hold her—ahem—assets and the like in high regard. An utterly confusing chapter of her life that crush was, considering her struggles with gender and consequently sexuality. She once thought she might exclusively prefer women, but an Ominis-shaped conundrum proved that theory false. 

In all honesty, though, she doesn’t care much either way. Ominis is all she wants and needs, as inconvenient as that has recently become.

“You say that like it’s something to be proud of.” 

“It is.” Snorting, Sebastian jests, “Don’t tell me you’re jealous.”

Ominis huffs a laugh. “Of a grown woman with more suitors than there are plants in the castle grounds? Hardly.” 

What Sebastian thought Ominis’ takeaway would be was that she tends to be accorded more praise than Ominis, having more horticultural experience and all, so this alternative interpretation leaves her dumbstruck for a breath. 

She fixes Ominis with an arched brow and blinking eyes of assessment, opening her mouth to ask him to clarify. But that’s when Ominis turns his whole handsome smiling face to her and she sees it.

The cherry-red smudge by the corner of his lips.

Sebastian’s face falls, heart lurching violently. She swallows the lump of nausea that builds in her throat and hugs herself discreetly, eyes nailed on her feet. “You’ve always loved to gorge on strawberry jam,” she says with a humorless laugh.

Ominis’ smile falters a tad. “What?” 

“Might want to wipe your mouth better next time.” 

The smile is displaced by a thin-lipped and wide-eyed look of someone who has been caught elbow-deep in one of Honeydukes’ sweets jars without the intention of purchasing a thing. His fingers launch for his mouth, skin blanching as he feels what most assuredly is not jam, or any other edible for that matter. 

“Oh,” he whispers. Momentarily frozen by mortification, he soon wipes the stain on his sleeve. An uncharacteristic impulse for someone usually more fastidious. “Is it gone?” 

“Yes,” Sebastian says without sparing another glance. One would think the building is about to collapse the way her knee bounces in tandem with her heart.

Ominis sighs, cheeks splotchy with embarrassment. “How careless of me.” A tremble besieges his voice, though he does a commendable job covering it. “Thank you. For letting me know.” 

“Don’t mention it.” I’m serious, Sebastian thinks tetchily. Don’t.

Ominis doesn’t. He segues smoothly back to topics that loosely fit under the umbrella of herbology and ushers Sebastian to the classroom with him. 

For the entire duration of the class Ominis, oddly enough, avoids confronting Poppy. Things go swimmingly between Sebastian and him though, if one can look past the smiles, jokes and laughter that remain mere ghastly revenants. As soon as the class ends, however, Ominis makes it no secret that he urgently wishes to speak with Poppy, and off the two skip to discuss the importance of snogging less messily next time. Meanwhile, Sebastian gags and all but retches at what once was an attractive verb commonly located in her daydreams about her best friend.

Less than a week into Ominis and Poppy’s courtship everyone with a working pair of eyes and ears knows the two are an item. Whispers, rumours and gossip percolate through the student body in bite-sized treats. It is only a matter of time before members of faculty, inhabitants of Hogwarts’ paintings and resident ghosts start waxing poetic about young love.

“It does sort of make sense, if you think about it,” Garreth unhelpfully supplies one afternoon when intercepting Sebastian in the west tower—for her knack for stealth and flouting rules, as always. “If he isn’t lounging somewhere all by his lonesome, Ominis only ever spends time with you. And Sweeting? She isn’t interested in company unless you’ve got wings, talons, beaks or are covered in feathers or fur—or both. According to hearsay, the only human she considers a friend is her gran.” 

He’s said it all conspiratorially, as though Sebastian has never entered the orbit of the most actively circulating rumours. Sighing, he laments, “I was hoping you’d be privy to when and how the sparks started flying between them. I can’t shake the feeling that it was quite sudden. Everyone’s dying to know more. You’re thick as thieves, aren’t you? I was sure Ominis would tell you everything.” 

Silently seething, Sebastian doesn’t get a word in edgewise as Garreth ignorantly grins and prattles on. “But hey, what’s important is that they’ve finally found each other. They really needed that, and I’m happy for them.” Beaming, he claps his hands together flat and tilts the tips of his fingers at Sebastian in supplication. “Well, anyway! About that boomslang skin—” 

“For once, Weasley,” Sebastian spits out venomously, “steal your own bloody ingredients!” And with that she flounces out of the hall, leaving behind a goggling redhead. Alas, she forgot where she was, and so ended up sprinting and coughing through the rancid vapours of the Pungent Passage. There are no sutures strong enough to patch her wounded pride if she were to turn back.

Harrowing is too light of a word to describe these encounters and discussions collectively. Yet  none of them hold a candle to her run-in with the root cause of her woes.

“Sebastian.”  

Crossing the bridge at Viaduct Courtyard on her way to her common room, Sebastian turns on her heel and nearly defaults to hurling daggers with her stare at who she finds. She is only brought up short by her desire to keep up appearances. “Sweeting.” 

“There you are,” says Poppy. “I was hoping to find you.”

“Me?” 

“Mhhm!” Her chipper attitude is already grinding Sebastian’s gears. “Do you have a minute? I’d like to talk to you about something.” 

Sebastian can count the times Poppy has requested to talk with her with one hand. She resists balling her fists. “Sure,” she says tightly.

“Wonderful! Let’s go to the boathouse, if you don’t mind,” suggests Poppy. “We’ll be safe from prying ears there.” 

Acquiescing grudgingly, Sebastian trails behind her through the courtyard and down the zigzagging stairs to their destination. As they descend, she fails miserably at occluding the apertures wherefrom the tendrils of comparison creep in and take root. 

If she grew out her hair like Poppy has, would Ominis take an interest? If she were as short as Poppy, would Ominis’ heart beat for her instead? If she spoke softer and comported herself more ladylike, more mild-mannered, and did away with her spitfire personality, becoming more wallflowery, a girl next door type—would Ominis at least give her a chance?

The what-ifs keep spiralling as she sizes the Hufflepuff up from behind, picturing the shape of her underneath the swallowing darkness of her school robe. Ominis is into petite girls—is that it? Not the more voluptuous and buxom physique Sebastian herself would kill to woo him with? 

She should have known. This is Ominis, after all: a prince of traditional tastes and prudish sensibilities. One bawdy comment about Professor Garlick’s hearty bosom or curvaceous hips and he’s beside himself with shame and scrambling to change the subject. One foolhardy act of Sebastian’s or, Merlin forbid, even chewing too loud for what’s considered proper and she’ll get an upbraiding from him in a heartbeat. Poppy does and is none of that. 

Of course he would prefer someone with less of what makes Sebastian who she is and who she aspires to be.

She forms fists at her sides, eyebrows drawing close enough to tempt a headache. She refuses to dwell on this line of thought any longer, lest she accept her inferiority on all fronts. Lest she do something she’ll enjoy and belatedly regret, such as but not limited to tossing the Hufflepuff into the Black Lake.

Poppy pulls to a stop by a pyramid of crates, backdropped by the Celtic knot patterning of the boathouse’s outer wall. “Here we are.” 

Inhaling the spring breeze and the earthy smell of algae riding on its back, Sebastian parks herself a respectable distance away from the other girl, minding the wave-lapped stones of the platform's edge. “Well?” she asks, affecting cluelessness. “What did you want to discuss, away from prying ears?” 

Poppy intertwines her hands behind her back and gently rocks on the balls of her feet, a demure smile adorning her lips. “You know Ominis better than most.” 

Sebastian’s jaw clenches. “Suppose so.” 

“Do you think…” She trails off, eyes cast on the rippling lake behind Sebastian as she works her mouth soundlessly, indecisively. “Do you think he—” there’s a subtle emphasis on the pronoun “—is happy?” 

Sebastian frowns. She was troubled over such an asinine question? “Don’t think I’ve seen him happier in recent memory,” she forces out, and it pains her to say it. Lies are fickle, but oftentimes they’ll offer even passing comfort, a false sense of security. She would much prefer that to the hurt of what she hasn’t come to terms with yet.

“That’s what I’ve been thinking too,” concurs Poppy. Her gaze darts up to Sebastian again, curiosity aglimmer in her eyes. “Have you any clue why that might be?”

Sebastian groans inwardly. What is this? First they pull out all the stops to try and convince him that they’re only friends, and now she wants Sebastian to spell the truth out for her just to maximise her anguish? “I’d rather do without this beating around the bush preamble,” she cautions.

“Pardon?” 

Sebastian sighs but keeps her temper in check. Crossing her arms, she kicks a loose rock and takes the bait. “Ever since you… befriended him, he’s been smiling like a lovesick moron. Believe me, that is not lost on anyone.” 

“O-oh.” Poppy has the gall to look taken aback as though she never considered the excruciatingly obvious. She waves her hands frenetically in denial and says, “I assure you, that’s not what he is! N-nor am I, although you may hear otherwise… I never meant for anyone to misunderstand our, er, meetings. I feel awful about that—poor Ominis. I do admit that my, uh, recent associations with him may contribute to that though. To his good spirits, I mean!” She’s not exactly doing herself any favours by stammering and blushing pinker than a fuchsia if she wishes to convince Sebastian of the supposed non-romantic nature of their relationship. “I just, um, well… It’s not really me sh—he!” she suddenly yells. Sebastian raises a high brow at her. “S-sorry. I only meant that I’m not truly the source of it. It’s more about… something we have in common?” 

“I see,” Sebastian says tonelessly.

“Let me start again,” she says sheepishly. She wrings her hands in front of her as she quests for the correct words. “Ominis cares about you more than anyone else.” 

Used to, in any case.

“And because he cares so much,” Poppy goes on, “he’s nervous, afraid even, about what you might think of him.” 

This gives Sebastian pause. And not just that: she’s flummoxed. She exhibited her darkest, most shameful side to Ominis not too long ago, and he, against his better judgement, forgave her. Didn’t tattle on her crimes although he’d threatened to. Although she would have deserved a bleak end to her story. And now she has secrets, highly personal ones she’s been too anxious and unsure to reveal or even accept herself until recently. Secrets she might never have the chance or courage to try and confess again in light of Ominis’ diverging interests.

Moreover, Ominis himself has a dark pedigree and even darker childhood, both not by choice. He chose to disclose his trauma and regrets to her and Anne when their bond stood at its strongest, leaving no gruesome detail out.

All that being said, how could something as innocent as finding love be something he is afraid of admitting to her? 

“I’m not following you,” Sebastian says, hoping for Poppy to fill in the blanks.

“I…” Poppy dithers. For someone eager to talk with Sebastian, she doesn’t seem to have thought the progression of this conversation through much. “I haven’t told anyone about this,” she eventually says, haltingly. “But for the sake of…” She cuts herself off and sighs, then fixes Sebastian with a look of conviction. “I’m going to tell you something deeply personal. I hope I can trust you to keep it between us?” 

“Well, yes,” Sebastian says honestly and warily. “But there’s no need—” 

“My parents are poachers,” Poppy blurts out. 

Sebastian baulks, arms uncrossing slowly. “I— What?” 

“I know.” Poppy sighs and deflates a little. When she next speaks, raw emotion bordering on resentment carries her voice. “But I am not on speaking terms with them; it has been years since I last saw them. I do not condone their way of life. I decry their crimes and do my best to undo as much of the harm they have caused as I can.” She smiles wanly. “Even if we never saw eye to eye, I still loved them… I think I never truly stopped. But I couldn’t stand it, the way they treat beasts like currency and trophies and not the intelligent and misunderstood equals I see them as. So I left one day on the back of a Hippogriff their cronies were about to kill. They didn’t follow. I suppose I’d been too much of a disappointment for so long that the natural course of action was to use that opportunity to disown me.” 

Sebastian has been absorbing this recounting in courteous silence, the surprise in her features ebbing to unbidden sympathy. She senses there’s more to the story, more hurt and trauma underneath that survivor’s smile. Although she has grown curious, she isn’t going to display an iota more interest nor sympathy than necessary. “I’m… sorry,” she manages, then reasons, “So that’s why you live with your gran.” 

Surprise shapes Poppy’s expression. “Yes. She values beasts as much as I do. She researches them, especially the endangered species, ethically and tirelessly in order to save as many as she can from poacher hands. We’ve always been rather alike, and I’m glad I get to be with her now. It’s where I belong.” She pauses, tilting her head. “I wasn’t aware you knew of my living arrangement.” 

“Well,” Sebastian says carefully. Inside the rumour mill that Hogwarts is, who doesn’t know? “Ominis told me,” she fibs.

“Ah. Of course.” To Sebastian’s relief, she seems to genuinely believe that and doesn’t take umbrage. “But enough about me—thank you, by the way, for listening and understanding. I was a little nervous and afraid of your reaction.” Realisation dawns on Sebastian; she parts her lips, but Poppy beats her to it. “I’m not sure it was the best example, but I thought it might help you get an idea of the—gravity, I suppose?—of what Ominis is going through. The enormity—yes, that’s a better word for it. It’s difficult for him to expose something so sensitive about himself.” 

Wait. Poppy’s backstory, the gravity of Ominis’ apparent situation, the two of them having something in common… It sounds as though she’s referring to Ominis’ past, but if Ominis is afraid of what Sebastian will think of him if she knows whatever there is to know, then that can’t be it, can it? Wouldn’t he have told Poppy that she isn’t the only person who he’s spoken to about his childhood?

“So he told you instead of me, just like that?” she says, a thin sheet of ice cooling her tone.

“No!” Poppy refutes, round-eyed. “No, I, er… We sort of found out by accident that we had this thing in common, so to speak, and things just, well… escalated?” A surefire way of convincing Sebastian of what she has fruitlessly fought to unconvince her of. She realises this and shifts nervously, hands held defensively before her. “But that isn’t the point! He wants to tell you. He’s just anxious about your reaction, fearing he might lose—” Unsurprisingly, Poppy breaks off, seeming horrified as if she’s said too much. “I only wanted to tell you that— To make sure that— To ask you that—”  

Sebastian makes no pains to hide her groan. She is tired of Poppy’s overly circumspect approach to the matter she so desperately wants to impart. “Then ask.”

For what it’s worth, her overt hostility does finally knock some sense into Poppy. “Do you love Ominis?” she enquires solemnly.

Muscles tensing and heartbeat accelerating, Sebastian schools her face into delicate impassivity and says astonishingly evenly, “Of course. He’s my best friend.” 

Poppy nods. “And no matter what he might tell you one day,” she articulately ploughs on, “what you might discover about him… you won’t judge him? You’ll still love him no matter how he feels and who he ends up becoming?” 

At this point Sebastian is sure to have a wealth of wrinkles before she hits twenty, what with her pursing eyebrows working overtime. “What do you mean ‘ends up becoming’? Are you implying he’s—”

“Please, Sebastian,” Poppy interjects before Sebastian can dish out wild guesses about Ominis’ potentially yet implausibly dark intentions. “I would appreciate it if you answered honestly.” 

Poppy’s imploring look bridles Sebastian’s waspish tongue. Exhaling deeply, she decides it’s easier to play along. “Ominis means everything to me,” she confesses. “Always will. Nothing could change that.” Perhaps the answer leaves something to be desired, but it’s swaddled with sincerity and a bit of unintended vulnerability all the same. Poppy must hear it, for after a long, quiet appraisal, she accepts it with a relieved smile.

“I am so glad to hear that,” she says. She sways in place again, hands locked behind her back as she beams at the setting sun. “Then there should be nothing to worry about.” 

“I could confirm that to you if I had more to go on than some cryptic and ominous hints.” 

“Do you trust him?” 

“Naturally,” Sebastian replies after a slight delay.

“Then you know he will tell everything when he’s ready.” Poppy’s gaze drops down, her smile rueful. “I just wanted to ease my own mind, I suppose. It’ll be easier to help him pluck up the courage to tell you sooner that way.” 

Sebastian stays quiet. What is there left to say? She won’t be receiving a proper explanation no matter how much she presses. That much has been made clear.

“Well, that’s all I wished to say,” Poppy announces, unlacing her hands. “It’s getting late. We should return to our common rooms before curfew sets in.” She makes to exit the pier but halts at the distinct lack of a second set of footsteps. “Aren’t you coming?”

“Think I’ll stay for a bit,” Sebastian offers tersely.

Poppy’s expression is aggravatingly sympathetic. “All right. See you later, then.” She’s conquered three steps before remembering something. “Oh, and Sebastian?”  

Sebastian lifts a subtle brow of irritation. Poppy takes it in stride.

“Please don’t tell him I came to you. He might seem happier now than before, but things haven’t been a walk in the park for him either lately. I wouldn’t wish to upset him more if he found out that I’ve…” 

“You have my word,” Sebastian says—and finds that she means it.

Poppy flashes her a warm smile. “Thank you.”  

At last the peace and quiet and space to brood Sebastian craves swathes him in its lukewarm cocoon.

Her thoughts are in utter shambles. A sandstorm in a desert, picking up more grains as it rampages through the desolate fields, filling its ranks. For the barest moment she feels as though she does not loathe Poppy as much as she has for the past week. She truly does sympathise with what she’s divulged. Were the circumstances different, she would have offered proper condolences and, who knows, maybe reciprocated the heart-to-heart.

But then she remembers what the Hufflepuff has taken from her and the resentment returns, a vile renewable resource.

A vagrant leaf sails on the wind. Sebastian pinches it off its course and stares morosely at its saw-toothed edges, thinking it resembles her own. How did Poppy gain Ominis’ trust as easily, if not faster than hers or Anne’s? Poppy mentioned their budding romance stemming from an accident of sorts. Somehow that led to them sharing their trauma and unlucky origins.

Was that it, then? Despite Poppy insisting Sebastian was the first to know of her past, they bonded over the reprehensible actions of their families and the dire straits they lived through to survive, each possessing nothing but contempt for them and a deep-seated unwillingness to partake in their transgressions again?

Sebastian knows there’s more to it than that. A secret, related or unrelated to his past, that Ominis has chosen to tell someone he practically just met over his own best friend. 

Another storm accompanies the one raging in her head. A hail of spikes, homing in on her heart. 

Crumpling the leaf as though it has personally offended her, she sends it flying toward its watery tomb. Of course. She should have known. Given what transpired last year, the mistakes she’d made and the lives she’d ruined—snuffed out, crushed, buried—it should be no surprise. She thought she’d begun to repair what she’d damaged, thought she’d succeeded in mending what she’d broken between her and him and Anne, even just a fraction of it. Now, though, she has opened her eyes to the truth.

Ominis may claim to care for Sebastian still, but he has long since stopped trusting her—and without Anne around, he was forced to find a new confidante.

Chapter Text

At record speed, Sebastian makes herself decent, flushes the toilet and all but slams the door of the stall off its hinges. 

She pointedly does not look at herself in the mirror. Staring at the hands of an overfamiliar stranger is hardly better, but better nonetheless. It keeps the bile from rising and spilling, keeps her head from spinning off its axis, her knees from buckling like a newborn foal’s. Hygiene has never mattered to her more than right here and now; the pads of her fingers are creased under the flow of water as she washes them again and again and again. To even her tremulous breaths, to still her rioting heart, to recentre herself, she will wash her hands until she bleeds if she must. 

Bleed. She would have, if she—

An ugly, horrified and wet laugh explodes from her mouth. Thank Merlin she’s alone. No one can see her like this—off her bloody rocker at last.

Things were a great deal easier when she had nothing but Anne’s well-being to fuss over. Never mind hers—she had no time to feel sorry for herself. No available slots for self-harm to insinuate itself in her mind, scarcely a gap for a fleeting thought. And now, with a shattered heart and a gender crisis thrashing her about, she had all the time in the world.

Whether she was going to do it—whether she would have had the courage, the fortitude—she doesn’t know. Stop lying, coward, she tells herself. Fine, smartarse, she grumbles back. She wanted to, but couldn’t. Too many risks, too many complications. Too much uncertainty and fear. She hadn’t prepared accordingly—it was a spur-of-the-moment act, desperation nurtured to full bloom. 

She’d emptied her bladder but didn’t let go of that thing, that disgusting, vile appendage, a malformed corpse of an alien tentacle with abhorrent hanging bits, unbelonging, horrible, horrible, horrible. It wasn’t the first time her imagination got the better of her, but this time her wand made it to her hand and she’d held it at the base of that abomination. Diffindo, she’d thought, chanted. Her wrist bent and rotated—she was about to do it. She would do it.

She chickened out. 

Wise? Indubitably. Comforting? Next question.

Turning off the faucet, she braces herself against the sink, braving the perilous and puzzling jungle of her thoughts one tangle at a time. Alas, it is booby-trapped: her mind skips too far afield, and suddenly she feels the phantom scraps of yesterday’s sausage roll roil in her stomach, her throat stinging with a threat of acid.

A false alarm, fortunately. Swallowing the burn like she’s short of breath, she exits the bathroom two minutes later with an affected air of stolidity.

That said, she’s come to know that there indeed is no rest for the weary. Her eyes trail longingly after Nerida who enters the female counterpart of the loo. Instantly, she trips and entangles herself back in the snarl of vines and roots that dominate her headspace.

Would that she passed for a girl, she would never so much as touch the handle of the boys’ room again. She can picture it: feigning confidence and cool-headedness, she steps into the girls’ bathroom—just a perfectly ordinary girl doing girl stuff like a girl—and the eyes shift to her, aghast, judging, censuring. Then the mouths open and begin screaming, and next thing she knows she’s sitting in the headmaster’s office on charges of trespassing and voyeurism. 

Not that she hasn’t ever been inside. A crafty and excessively curious child finds herself in many a place she is not welcome in, and that’s what a twelve-year-old Sebastian did: snuck into the girls’ bathroom. That was as good an excuse as any to test the Disillusionment Charm in the dead of the night. The interior was a little different from the male bathroom, chiefly in terms of the decor. She thought the room was redolent of something distinctly floral when she entered, and what did she find in every cardinal direction? Flowers! In enamel vases! 

She was so giddy with excitement that she pressed her face gently into each and every bouquet, peeked into every stall—there were so many of them!—flushed every toilet—they were all so clean!—and even sat in the bathtubs for a while, not to mention making faces at every mirror (clever, for she could not see the detestable signs of her incipient puberty under the charm’s effects). She used the toilet too—that’s what they were for, after all—and for the first time she peed sitting down. The thrill of it was supernal. It was the most happy she had been since enrolling at Hogwarts and befriending Ominis. She adopted this practice on her visits to the boys’ rooms and felt the certainty burgeon—that this was right, even with the stupid dangly bits between her legs.

And then she stopped doing it altogether, so guilt-ridden she became. Not due to her unsanctioned entry to female sanctuary, but an ill-conceived plan a year later. The one that was supposed to make her even happier, the happiest yet. 

If only she’d had the brains to think before acting, she would have never looked, much less touched—

Her eyes screw shut. She grinds her teeth until they hurt more than the memory. She won’t think about it. She won’t.

With a heavy heart and an aura of self-loathing, Sebastian shambles to the Undercroft.

༺♡༻

The more she turns it over in her head, the more she keeps arriving at the same conclusion: that Ominis promising not to abandon her despite trusting her less than ever before hurts more than being told to get lost for good.

All right, maybe she’s being a trifle dramatic. She should be and is thankful that Ominis still deigns to sit with her in their shared classes and actively wishes for her company outside of them. Yet those times become loaded with something wretchedly awkward by the day, years of friendship slowly but surely regressing to a shadow of its former self. Be that as it may, Sebastian clings to it like she’ll keel over and die otherwise.

To say she’s been thinking about yesterday’s conversation with Poppy is like saying that she merely dabbles in sorcery. A self-indulgent and imprudent idea charmed its spiteful song around her, whispering of the petty revenge she could get on Ominis by boasting that she—allegedly—knows a secret of Poppy’s that he isn’t privy to yet. To see the fires of jealousy ignite in his eyes, his nostrils flaring as he yearns to know more, but he’s too courteous, too tactful to ask. What a sight that would be. 

Sebastian, however, promised Poppy. Once, she would have had less qualms about dishonoring her vows, but she’s learnt a thing or two since. It is an alluring scheme, though—to make Ominis taste his own medicine. 

Which brings her to the real head-scratcher: Ominis’ secret. The full, true scope of it. Now, she isn’t so dim-witted as to not have noticed the connection with her own struggles. All that talk about being nervous of her reaction, of finding it easier said than done to expose something sensitive about himself, of becoming something or someone else—that struck a pealing chord with her. The details of it are already muddied, lost in the maelstrom of her mercurial emotions, but if she didn’t know better, she’d think that he might be, as absurdly risible as it sounds, having a similar, if not the same…

Each and every time she gets this far in her train of thoughts, her snort erupts loud and piglike. How laughably pathetic she is to even consider it. This isn’t a tacky romance novel for crying out loud; she more readily believes Ominis to secretly have embraced his dark lineage all along. At least then they’d have something more realistic in common.

But that wouldn’t be something he and Poppy have in common, would it?  

Sometimes, she truly despises the sound of reason using her own voice against her. And sometimes, like right now, she ignores it—because it can’t be so simple. Keeping her promises isn’t the only thing she has been educated on. Since her failure to save Anne, she has begun to perceive the demarcation between fantasy and reality more clearly. Some things simply are too good to be true, and only a fool would fall invariably for such toxic optimism.

What’s more, what Sebastian feels is not about becoming something or someone else per se—it’s about shedding the cloak of deception and showing the world who’s been hiding underneath all along. It’s not about becoming at all—it’s about finally being.  

Only one solution remains. She must cajole Ominis to tell her everything without directly implicating Poppy.

And she makes the mistake of doing so whilst still ruffled by her bathroom episode. 

“You’ve shown her around the Undercroft already, I presume?” she says more bitterly than intended. The Undercroft’s weathered training dummy receives another magical slash to its chest. She is considerate enough to fantasise it to be herself rather than a certain Hufflepuff. “Of course you have,” she huffs, cutting Ominis’ intake of breath off. “Well? Was it to her liking?” Now that she’s gained momentum, she is powerless to stop it. “I’d imagine the piles of dust weren't. The cobwebs, however, I don’t doubt being a delight. Bet she got quite chummy with our uninvited arachnid guests. I suppose I can pay more attention to where I aim my Blasting Curses from now on, but no promises. Someone as kind and pretty and perfect in every way as her will surely understand.” 

Stop talking, twat.

But anyone can see that she crossed a line long ago.

Ominis’ discombobulation is apparent in the heavy silence that wedges between them. “Stop,” he pleads. Vexation paves a path for an order, crisp and emphatic, when he reiterates, “Just stop.” 

Sebastian snorts. “Why?” She blasts the dummy with an explosion. The crotch roars up in flames. “Was it something I said?” The fire’s already petering out; the magical ward installed in most of Hogwarts’ dummies prevents it from burning to cinders. A scorch mark remains the sole evidence of her aggression. A small victory that brings her the clean-picked bones of scavenged solace.

Ominis pushes himself off the column he was leaning on and stands behind her like a physical manifestation of her guilty conscience. “I’d ask what in all the Founders’ names is wrong with you, but I’m quite positive I don’t need to. This was about her all along. About your inability to accept that I am—what was it you said?—entitled to having friends. Plural.”  

“You didn’t answer my question,” Sebastian hedges.

“You’re barking up the wrong tree if you think this is how you’ll get anything solved.” 

“So she has been here.” 

“I would never show this place to anyone I didn’t trust,” Ominis says sternly. “As you very well know.” 

It takes herculean effort not to snap her wand in half. “Figures.” 

“What?” 

“What is it you said to her?” Sebastian echoes. She pockets her wand and pivots, hands curling into bloodthirsty fists. “That day when you brought her to our dorm—you said that you’re done running away. That you trust her.” She spits it out like a malediction. Like she’s indicting him for serious offenses.

“That was…” Colour surges to Ominis’ cheeks as fast as it recedes. “It had nothing to do with this. She isn’t you. She—” 

“No, and that’s a good thing, isn’t it?” Sebastian examines her nails with a false air of boredom, as though her chest isn’t twinging and throbbing and begging her to shut her trap and listen. “Better her than a reckless and intractable loudmouth like me.” 

“Don’t put words in my mouth.” 

She turns a deaf ear to the warning in his voice. “I’m not. Doesn’t take a genius to figure that out.” 

Stop antagonising him. Stick to the mission.

Harrumphing, she folds her arms over her chest and deadpans. “But let us cut to the chase. You think you know what’s wrong with me, so allow me to hazard a guess as to what your deal is.” So much for not antagonising him.

As expected, Ominis bristles. “I beg your pardon?” 

“Let’s say I believed you,” she drawls. “You and Sweeting are friends who happen to hold hands every now and then on the pretense of it being a little chilly in this ancient stone castle—”

“We’ve never—” 

“—and, well.” She refuses to name the one thing she’s dreamt for years to share with Ominis, for the word is poisoned, forever besmirched. “That’s just the tip of the iceberg. Now, don’t play the idiot, you’ve more dignity than that.” She has to raise her voice to be heard over the onset of Ominis’ blustering. “Until last week you barely spared a smile in her direction. Then one day completely out of nowhere you not only act as though you two have been joined by the hip since birth—” 

“Stop this, Sebastian.” 

“—you waltz her right into a hotbed of gossip and risk being tattled on by some rule-stickler.” 

“She used the concealment spell. No one saw her.”

“Except me.”  

Ominis will make for a hauntingly beautiful ghost some day. His pallor right here, in this moment, could very well be enough to fool a superstitious Muggle. “You weren’t supposed to be there,” he mutters, that cadaverous complexion subsumed by an efflorescence of abashment. 

“No, I wasn’t, but sometimes things change when you least expect them to,” she says, waving the matter off. “Wasn’t it thoughtful of me, though, to hand you back your perfect opportunity to carry out whatever the two of you had planned to achieve regardless?” 

“We were studying.” To Ominis’ credit, his tone is stable. “Nothing more.” But it’s the way his eyes, though largely unfocused and wandering by default, twitch ever so slightly that gives him away.

“That was the… You know what, I’ve lost count on the exact number of lies you’ve told in quick succession. Colour me impressed.” 

“I’m not…” The objection is never finished. Sebastian pretends not to see the lines of hurt carving into Ominis’ face. The last time he looked so world-weary, like he’s aged twenty years in a few seconds, was back when she went against him at every turn and paid for it in her uncle’s—and by association Anne’s—blood. “Please, Sebastian,” he says in a small voice. “Just let it be.” 

“No.” Dropping her arms, she frowns in a manner one does when a child is too scared to expose the names of his bullies. “Ominis, I… I’m worried about you.” 

That shakes him out of his lassitude. “Worried? Whatever for?” 

“Is there something on your mind?” She softens her tone to candy floss—sweet and sugary and sticky enough to leave an impression. “Something you wish to get off your chest, perhaps? You can tell me anything. You haven’t forgotten that, have you?”

Suspicion accentuates Ominis’ features. His guards are up and blaring, protecting a flash of vulnerability. “Of course not. Why are you asking?” 

“Because I told you,” Sebastian explains, the bitter taste of hypocrisy beginning to spread like rot on her tongue. “There’s something off about all of this. I’d hate to believe that you’re keeping things from me.”  

“I…” 

Sebastian sighs. “I don’t like the idea of you sharing secrets with someone…” Who isn’t me. “Who doesn’t know you like I do.” 

“Sebastian, it’s not like that,” Ominis is quick to assure. He is just as quick to shrink back to his bubble of reticence. “It’s just…” 

“Are you,” Sebastian says, dreading the possibility, though unlikely, “sick?” 

“What? No.” 

“You’re not about to die—” her voice breaks a little “—on me like Anne did?” 

“No!” Ominis exclaims it as if she’s insulted him personally. “Merlin, Sebastian, I am perfectly healthy.” 

Well, that rules out one worry.

“Good. I’m glad,” she says, smiling feebly. “Does it have something to do with your family then?”

Surprisingly, the mention of them makes Ominis seem a little ill at ease. Immediately, Sebastian latches onto this like a leech extracting information in place of blood.

“Don’t tell me they’re marrying you off.” If so, she’ll stoop to an amalgam of Muggle violence and the darkest of arts if she has to to break the engagement off.

Ominis snorts with a wry flicker of amusement. “No, and I highly doubt they ever will. I am and forever will be damaged goods in their eyes.”

Let me at them and we’ll see who the damaged goods are after that, Sebastian thinks, but instead says, “Then…” She hesitates, venturing, “Are you finally planning to thwart your family’s crimes?” She almost adds ‘like Sweeting’, but catches herself in time. It would make sense, wouldn’t it? Ominis has spoken of it before. The desire to stop twiddling his thumbs and be the catalyst of justice has been there from the start, just not the gumption. It isn’t far-fetched to infer that Poppy stoked the fires of rebellion within him, provided that him not knowing about her tale was a lie to keep the nature of his plans a secret. That could very well be it. 

Two sparks crackle and zip to her brain: one of morbid curiosity and one of infant dread. Thinking of Ominis resorting to dark methods to ensure the downfall of the Gaunts… it’s equal parts terrifying and exhilarating.

“My family’s…” Ominis’ laugh is a bare-bones imitation of true mirth. “I wish. We both know it’s never that simple with pure-blood fanatics who have their claws around everyone down to the Ministry of Magic itself.” His eyes narrow. “Of all the things, what made you think of that?” 

Sebastian need not fake the fathomless depth of her sigh. “You’re not exactly giving me much in the way of useful information, so I’m left to hypothesising all eventualities.” 

Ominis’ sigh is a mimicry of hers. “Hypothesise all you like, but I’m done talking about this for now.” 

The finality of that only emboldens Sebastian. “It’s because you don’t trust me, isn’t it?” she says, pulling out her remaining cards. “Whatever’s weighing on you was safer to tell someone who, worst-case scenario, only has beasts to gossip with.”

“Watch it,” warns Ominis, hands flexing at his sides balefully.

“You’re not denying it.”

“Don’t act as though you’re always so open about your internal conflicts.”

“Then teach me to do better,” Sebastian pleads, refusing to let the aptness of that barb show. “You know I learn best by example.”

Ominis snorts, finding the truth of that vaguely amusing. At first it seems as though he’ll relent, that Sebastian has won him over, but all he says is, “I will, but… Give me a bit more time. There’s something I still need to—”

“How much?”

For a beat, Ominis vacillates between lying and candidness. In the end, he chooses what Sebastian thinks he convinces himself to be the latter. “I can’t say,” he says, voice gravid with regret. 

Sebastian scoffs. “Well that’s bloody convenient.”

“I promise I will,” he insists irascibly. “I just need some time. That’s never been an issue before. What’s different now? Why is it so difficult for you to understand that—”

“Because I can’t stand how I’ve stopped being enough for you!” It jets out of her like a geyser, intense and inevitable, out of her control. She can feel herself fly off the handle with each ticking second, each wheeze of breath, every two cudgel-pounds of her blood-pumping organ whilst the shards of her mental anguish eddy into an irate hurricane. The momentum is back, and the breaks malfunction. There is nothing she can do but hang on tight and see where the ride takes her.

It takes Ominis a precious moment to overcome his shock. “That’s not true, Sebastian.” He takes a step forward, a consoling hand outstretched. "I—"

Sebastian snorts in that grotesquely unladylike way of hers, resisting the pull of the boy of her dreams by backing away. “Sure it is.” And then, in lieu of curbing her folly, she hands it the keys to the final lock of its cage, setting it free to wreak havoc. “Why are you even here? With me? There are certainly better ways of spending your time. Like, say, with someone less querulous and contentious.” Someone prettier. More feminine. More desirable. “Let me give you a hint: starts with a P.” Someone who can give you what I cannot.

Ominis doesn’t counter with a jibe of his own. His hand falls, a soaring bird viciously shot down. Try as she might to unsee it, the raw hurt curdling in his unconscionably attractive face will remain yet another indelible mark in her memory. 

“If I didn’t know any better,” he says, “I’d assume you were trying to get rid of me.” His voice is permafrost, hard and frigid. Unbudging. 

No. Never. “I’m sure Sweeting would appreciate it if I did,” she says, matter-of-fact veined by glacial hairline cracks. “And so would you.”

“You don't know her! Nor me,” he adds, and the abject pain in those last words should be a wake-up call for Sebastian.

Should be.

“I know you’re dying to get back to her. Anything to get away from me, right? So just go. It’s rude to keep the princess waiting for her prince.”

She hates this—this bull-headed side of her. Wanting to have the last word, to come out on top, no matter the cost. She isn’t a sore loser, not when the odds are fair. But she, a broken would-be witch, never had a chance, did she? She’s allowed to feel aggrieved. 

Even if…

“I don’t…” The rebuttal perishes on Ominis’ tongue. His relentment, although spurred by Sebastian herself, is a clawed fist squeezing around her heart. “Maybe you’re right.” 

“I know I am.” 

… it pushes the person she loves away from her.

Silence. That intangible thing that suffocates. The force that cleaves rifts between people. Makes one fall headlong inside, the other to flee its expanding edge. 

“I see.” 

Wand out and aglow, Ominis turns to leave, his steps weighted with defiant purpose. And yet, they decelerate with each passing second, coming to a standstill by the portcullis. Spinning on his heel, he meets Sebastian’s gaze squarely, a glut of emotions quaking his jaw. “I thought,” he half-whispers, “that after everything we’ve been through together, you wouldn’t abandon me either.”

“I’m not the one walking away,” Sebastian retorts. Cold. Swift. Brutal. Unblinking. Unfeeling.

(One of those is a lie; she wonders if she simply doesn’t have the bandwidth to stop lying through her teeth, to others and herself, at all.)

Ominis’ lips, the stars of her woolgatherings, separate for a riposte. His teeth follow, forging a passage for words, for something that will cement their fallout—or perhaps prevent it.

They never find their way out.

Sebastian watches in statuesque stillness as Ominis leaves per her command.

She would laugh, if laughter was a thing she deserved to voice in its grating dissonance. Here she was, fearing that she’ll lose another piece of him when one of these days he discloses the location of the Undercroft, another closely guarded secret, to Poppy.

In an ironic twist of fate, Sebastian was more than capable of ousting every single piece herself.