How to Make a Villain - [Sebastian Sallow x F!OC]

[four]

'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.' Lowering her head 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 before coming to Hogwarts. I suppose the trauma was too much for them, you know?'

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 that it looked almost black.

'That's awful.'

Though it made her feel terribly guilty to feel it, 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 what he's like. Anyway, 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. It hit the glass wall with a dull thud and then slowly slid to the ground.

'What's his sister like?' Aurélie asked, hoping to bring her back from whatever dark place she'd gone to before her enthusiastic dung-flinging shattered 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.

Poppy flushed and 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.

-x-

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, her mother trailing happily behind them. But for Aurélie, the experience had been rather dampened by the cacophony of screaming children, shouting parents and irate French zookeepers.