Hogwarts Legacy X Reader || One-Shots ||

Arranged Heartbreak • Act III // S.S. • ღ☂

The first time Sebastian got his heart broken was at the beginning of their seventh year.

He had spent the last few weeks counting the days until her birthday. It was still months away, but that did not stop his heart from leaping with excitement at the prospect of her turning seventeen. Of her freedom.

And she was too perfect not to be free.

He had come to that conclusion that summer when he had invited her to stay in Feldcroft.

Of course, it was Anne who had to meet with her father to make sure no injudicious business was going on. It seemed the Sallow twin had enough of a silver tongue to convince an entire aristocratic Muggle family to let her daughter stay in their house. Adequate parlance, he recalled.

Sebastian had spent that week basking in the presence of the object of his affection in his very home. He made sure she did not have to lift a finger while he hosted her at his place, but as usual, she got her way most of the time,and was constantly out and about doing something to help around.

Most of the time, however, she stayed with Anne.

She had made Anne a simple perfume as well, using flowers from the meadow around the farm, not to mention the wide range of essential oils the brunette had bought from Aromatica in the weeks prior to the girl's visit.

The house never smelled better.

Sebastian would walk in after a day of helping around and studying new spells to find the two girls engrossed in an activity here and there.

She taught Anne Muggle embroidery. She had sewn her a small handkerchief. She had braided her hair with flowers.

It was not difficult for him to imagine a whole life that way.

That week was his personal idyll, and he wanted to believe it his near future as well.

When she left, he had to spend some time getting used to her absence, and that was nothing short of agonising, especially throwing his twin's teasing into the mix, but one thing gave him more hope than anything else: the fact that, perhaps, he might not have to get used to her absence in his home.

When he returned to Hogwarts for his seventh year, he made sure to spend every appropriate moment with her. They studied together, he let her play with his hair, they duelled — and she won, again and again, as she always did — and talked. They talked. A lot. But not as much as he imagined. Because Sebastian Sallow was always imagining lately.

Every time he looked at her, he imagined.

He imagined a ring of white gold on her finger, engraved with their initials. He imagined her telling him that yes, she wanted to marry him, her neck adorned with those embroidered white frills that weren't seen contrasting lilac that time. He imagined her in his arms, telling him with her beautiful, radiant smile that she loved him. He imagined and imagined until his brain was too small to fit any further, and he didn't want it to be just a fantasy anymore.

But with it came the nightmares, seeping through the empty spaces of bliss in his mind, plaguing most of his nights, when he felt his heart tearing in his chest.

That night was one such.

Sebastian had spent it tossing and turning and breaking out in a cold sweat as he saw her being ripped away from him. As he saw her say yes to another, albeit behind empty eyes and hollow words. As he saw the complacent smiles of her parents as she brought even more wealth into the family.

"No!" He awoke with a jolt for what seemed to be the hundredth time that month and looked around desperately, as if asserting that, once again, it was only a nightmare. That she was still there. That she could still be his.