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

[ten]

Drip, drip, drip.

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

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

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

Drip, drip, drip.

Pulse, pulse, pulse.

Aurélie grit her teeth. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'I was not gallivanting!'

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

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

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

Before he killed you.

Drip, pulse. Drip, pulse.

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

'I don't know!'

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

'You think I keep company like that?'

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

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

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