Sanguinis et Omnium Fractorum//Sebastian Sallow

Of Stubborn and Impatience

The ghost of a boy who'd loved so sweetly he'd stop to pick flowers for a girl, even amid the storm that had raged around them.

The boy who'd loved fiercely and unrelentingly, until the force of it tore him apart and bloodied green over their walls.

Three Sallow's had become two, and they all waited and feared the day two would become one.

In some ways, it already had.

Sebastian had disappeared without a trace; save for a single letter and a sprig of bluebells he'd left on the same table where the cold tea now took up residence. Clara had long since given up trying to figure out how he'd managed to access the girls' dormitories. 'Impossible' had only ever been a word to ignite his stubborn determination and Sebastian had a curious knack for finding his way into places he shouldn't be.

Almost of their own accord, her fingers fumbled the rough edges of the pages. Leafed through them, past the little jotted notes and inked sketches. Past the pages pressed with heather and hyacinth to where that single bluebell pressed its pigment against the parchment and the violet painted over cream.

Gratitude and everlasting love.

Her fingers brushed the places the pigments bled against the parchment, and not for the first time, Clara wondered if Sebastian had known the language of flowers.

Had it been a coincidence the first had been baby's breath?

Hope, new beginnings, and innocent love.

An image of messy brown curls and sun-kissed freckles tipped the edges of her memory. Tiny white flowers offered with a roguish smirk that had done little to distract from the way his gaze had darted too quickly between her eyes and the flowers held with trembling fingers.

Had it been a mere chance he'd offered heather before each of the brutal trials the Keepers had demanded of her?

Luck, protection, and admiration.

Could it have been happenstance he'd offered a hyacinth when she'd stubbornly refused to speak to him after his anger had exploded over her involvement with Lodgok?

Sorrow, regret, and forgiveness.

Somehow she didn't think so. Sebastian may have been a lot of things. Playful, charming, and confident? Yes. Wildly chaotic and infuriatingly stubborn? Definitely. Insatiably curious and much too intelligent for his own good? Absolutely. But naive? Naive, was never a trait she'd been able to attribute to the Slytherin.

Perhaps that was the reason she'd never read his letter.

It had been discarded in a fit of anger, to be lost to the bottom of her trunk, and conveniently covered by a scattering of miscellaneous items. Out of sight, and pushed to the edges of her mind where she'd refused to acknowledge the places where the corners of it dug into her thoughts.

Neither of them had ever fully acknowledged whatever had been between them. Sewn with intricate strands of sugar-spun glass, and left unspoken. As though to touch it would have been enough to shatter the delicate balance in which they'd found themselves. Instead, it had been said in the furtive glances during long hours in the library. In the leaning closer until their shoulders touched, and in the uneven crashing of her heart when neither of them moved away. It had been found tucked beneath their palms in the moments they'd spent seated amongst fields of heather; his fingers curled around hers and brushing absentmindedly along the back of her hand as she'd used the other to connect the freckles across his cheeks.

In a single stolen kiss, under starlight by the lake. The softest brush of his lips over hers, and the stars had found their home, scattered across her skin.