Aurélie's first month at Hogwarts washed away in sleety rain and blustery winds as grey September became auburn October, and though the jar of Sebastian's bluebell flames was a comfort in her pocket - keeping her fingers warm in the Thestral stables with Poppy, and brightening the dim corners of the library when she studied late - Aurélie had avoided meeting him in the Undercroft, fearing that sharing the seclusion of his secret place together would only make things harder when she ultimately went back to France.
No more goodbyes, she had to remind herself. It'd been hard enough leaving her friends in France for only a year; saying goodbye again forever was simply unbearable.
Still, when an owl arrived in her dorm one Saturday morning bearing a letter from the world's most persistent Slytherin, she couldn't suppress the warmth that bloomed like bluebells through her chest.
No more goodbyes, no more goodbyes.
Sebastian's handwriting was not the untidy scrawl she'd been expecting, but a surprisingly elegant script for somebody who embodied so much chaos. His owl, on the other hand - a rather aggressive tawny - refused her owl treat when she offered it, shrieked at her once and cuffed her across the head with its wing as it took off. So there was that.
'Frenchie,' began the letter, and Aurélie rolled her eyes.
'If you're still interested in joining the extracurricular study group I mentioned back on your first day' - Aurélie snorted at this, vividly remembering the day he'd invited her to join his unsanctioned duelling club - 'meet me at the statue of the confused unicorn on the third floor in an hour. Tell nobody, and come alone!' - This he underlined several times. - 'If you happen to get stopped on your way there, just say you're lost. Ominis tells me he's already rescued you half a dozen times wandering about the far-reaching corners of the castle, so at least the excuse will be believable.
Destroy this letter.'
Aurélie groaned as she set the letter aflame with her wand; even in writing, she could hear the teasing lilt of his voice in every cursive loop, envision his roughish grin as he'd penned the letter, his freckled face full of wry amusement.
She leapt to her feet, grateful that the empty dorm granted her the freedom to grumble aloud without one of her roommates sticking their noses in for fresh gossip about her so-called boyfriend.
Who did he think he was to summon her on short notice? To assume she had nothing better to do than hunt down one specific statue in a castle full of statues simply because he owled her? The sheer audacity had her stewing as she snatched her hairbrush from the nightstand and dragged it roughly through her hair.
And yet, despite her frustration, she dressed in her favourite blouse, finished her braid with a blue silk ribbon, and secured his bluebells in her pocket as she set out to track down a statue of a confused unicorn, the existence of which she half expected to be some kind of prank.
Forty-five minutes later, out of breath and inwardly cursing every square inch of Hogwarts' nonsensical floor plan, she finally managed to find the stupid statue against which stupid Sebastian Sallow was waiting for her, his arms crossed and his expression one of utmost impatience.
'You're late,' he said curtly, not even bothering to uncross his arms as he pushed away from the wall. 'I told you not to get lost again.'
Aurélie shot him a severe look, her patience wearing dangerously thin after having traversed what felt like the entire castle to meet him.
'Oh, yes,' she snapped at once, 'because I went off and got myself lost simply to be contrary to you!'
'Wouldn't surprise me.'
'It's these portraits!' she exclaimed, throwing her hands out to her sides. 'They play tricks on me! I asked for directions to meet you here and they all pointed me to the dungeons!'
'The dungeons?' he said with a smirk. 'Again?'
'Yes, again!'
Sebastian pressed his lips together, evidently holding back a laugh. Donned in a cream knit jumper and brown trousers, the tall Slytherin looked simply so grown up that one might've easily mistaken him for an older brother come to visit a sibling, someone who ought to be done with silly trifling things like homework and exams and secret clubs. And with shoulders like that...
'Well, you must be asking the wrong portraits,' he said with a slow infuriating smile.
Aurélie tsk'd impatiently. 'You know, if a portrait at Beauxbatons gave such cheek, it'd be packed up and shipped out so fast its rude little head would spin! And we'd certainly never allow a poltergeist to take residence, and our staircases do not move!'
Sebastian's grin only grew as he listened to her furious diatribe. 'Beauxbatons doesn't sound like much fun,' he observed, his tone full of mirth.
'Beauxbatons is plenty fun!' she shot back, swiping her hair out of her eyes with an impatient huff. 'What's fun about getting lost every time you step outside your common room? Oh, stop laughing at me!'
'Sorry, sorry,' he said, raising his hands placatingly. 'You know, you sound much more French when you're angry.'
'Yes, I know! My French side is my angry side!'
She swiped her hand across her face and sighed.
'It's my mother's temper,' she explained. 'She only ever spoke to me in French, which meant I was always scolded in French too; I suppose it... had an impact on me somewhat.'
Had her mother been around to witness the illicit activities she was about to partake in, Aurélie knew the scolding would have been particularly French. Her father on the other hand, who'd embodied the more chaotic side of Hufflepuff, would've thought a duelling club run by a duo of rebellious Slytherins quite a thrilling adventure - though he'd have been loathe to ever mention it to his wife.
'My English side just wants a cup of tea and a nice place to sit,' she said wistfully, 'but apparently that's impossible at this school.'
'Well, you're not likely to find tea and comfort at a duelling club,' said Sebastian in a much softer voice, 'but I can help you with your awful sense of direction. Here, take out your wand.'
Ignoring her vehement protestations that her sense of direction was just fine, thank you, he taught her a simple spell that would point her wand true north.
'There. Once you know the layout of the school a bit better, you'll know which direction to head in,' he said patiently. 'Now, c'mon, I won't hear the end of it from Ominis if we're any later than we already are.'
Hurrying to keep up with his long strides, she followed him down a series of long corridors and winding staircases until they arrived in the very same dungeons she'd just come from.
'Yeah, yeah, knew you wouldn't be impressed,' he muttered, catching sight of her withering glare as he pushed open a nondescript door in the stone wall; but as he stood aside to let her pass, her jaw fell open, silencing whatever sarcastic quip she might've been about to give him. Whatever she'd been expecting from an illegal duelling club, it certainly wasn't something so, well - impressive.
'Welcome to Crossed Wands,' Sebastian grinned.
The room was as tall and spacious as any other she'd seen at Hogwarts, with rough stone walls and ancient candelabras hanging from vaulted ceilings, but there was an air about the place that felt as if no professor had ever stepped foot past the threshold.
Watery autumn sunlight filtered through tall narrow windows, glinting off a nearby glass cabinet full of oddities and casting prisms of light over several battered and charred training dummies along the far wall. Piles of large, squashy pillows were stacked haphazardly about, some grouped in front of towering wall-to-ceiling bookcases, while others were arranged in twos or threes by the sun-brightened windows.
Before them, a dozen or so students were assembled in a semi-circle, their wands drawn but held loosely at their sides. In its centre stood Ominis Gaunt, looking as stern and fed-up as he had in the music chamber, his shiny Head Boy badge pinned to his chest in an ironic display of responsibility that he clearly was not upholding. His gaze shifted ever so slightly to where she and Sebastian stood by the door as if he could sense their presence in the room, his gaze omnipotent and unsettling. Eager to avoid his wrath, Aurélie focused her attention instead on the well-stocked bookshelves and wondered how on earth a room like this went unnoticed by the faculty.
'The door we just came through is enchanted,' Sebastian told her in an undertone, answering her unasked question. 'Unless you've explicitly been told about the club by Ominis or myself, it looks like a blank stretch of wall. That's why nobody's ever discovered us here before.'
'Really?' She turned to him, impressed. 'Who came up with the enchantment?'
'Me,' he shrugged. 'It wasn't too difficult, but it took a few goes to get it right. The first time I cast it, I turned the entire length of the wall into doors. Took me ages to find the real door again.'
A few members of the group cast them cursory glances as she stifled a laugh behind her hand; most of them were Slytherins - unsurprising, given the secretive nature of the club - but there were several staunchly-built Gryffindor's, a solitary Ravenclaw boy whose panic-stricken expression suggested he'd stumbled in by accident and was trying to figure out how to leave, and, standing apart from them all, was little Poppy Sweeting.
'Poppy's here?'
'Never missed a session, the little maniac,' replied Sebastian, chuckling as the maniac in question grinned over at them, bouncing on the balls of her feet.
'Go on, I'll check in on you later,' he murmured. 'I do believe I promised to teach you some fun spells, did I not?'
Poppy beckoned her over with an excited wave, her face positively beaming with excitement.
'You're here!' she exclaimed the moment Aurélie was in earshot. 'Sebastian invited you, I suppose? Oh, I so wanted to ask you to join, but we're not supposed to talk about Crossed Wands to anyone who isn't already a member.' She lowered her voice as Ominis stepped forward, silencing the room with a rather severe look. 'Anyway,' she went on in a whisper, 'I didn't think you were speaking to Sebastian.'
'I wasn't,' Aurélie whispered back.
'But?'
'But now I am,' she shrugged.
Ominis, in his usual disdainful fashion, greeted the room at large with a haughty sneer, while behind him, Sebastian leaned against the wall with all the nonchalance of someone about to partake in a book club meeting, not oversee a duelling match. He caught her eye and wiggled his eyebrows. Her heart flipped as she grinned back.
'Welcome to another season of Crossed Wands,' said Ominis in a tone that suggested he'd wish they'd all go away. 'I trust you've all signed your names to the members list?'
At this, Aurélie cast a questioning glance over at Sebastian, who returned it with a small shake of his head. She frowned; she certainly hadn't signed her name to any list.
'Good,' Ominis nodded. 'For those who don't know, or those who might need a prudent reminder, the member's list has been jinxed. Speaking about Crossed Wands to anyone other than a fellow member will result in very obvious disfigurement of the face that I doubt even Nurse Blainey knows how to cure.'
Sebastian raised his brows at her as if to say that's why, and she inwardly endeavoured to sign her name to the stupid list if it was the last thing she ever did. Sebastian, as if he knew precisely what she was thinking, rolled his eyes.
'New members may only be invited by myself or Sebastian. If you wish to invite a new member, requests must be made in writing to either of us. If approved, we will personally extend an invitation to the potential new member ourselves.'
One of the Gryffindor's - a tall, broadly built boy with a rather disproportionate jawline - cast an unfavourable glance in Aurélie's direction.
'So who invited the Frenchie, then?' he sneered.
Sebastian straightened. 'I did,' he said without missing a beat. 'Why? Do you have a problem with that, Abbott?'
A cloud of palpable excitement arose from the watching crowd; hands twitched eagerly for wands, Poppy bounced on the balls of her feet, her little fingers digging into Aurélie's arm, and from somewhere at the back of the room, someone exclaimed, 'I'll bet two galleons on Sallow!'
Sebastian, however, who didn't so much as flinch when the Gryffindor raised his wand, was stoic in his displeasure, straight-backed and stiff, not a single twitch betraying his contempt but for the slightest tightening of his jaw.
Aurélie looked on helplessly, knowing all too well what brewed beneath that calm exterior.
'Gosh,' Poppy breathed, her wide eyes darting between the two, 'he's rather protective of you, isn't he?'
For a long tense moment, nobody made a move.
'Try it,' Sebastian urged, unblinking. 'Go on.'
Aurélie's arm was just starting to go numb under Poppy's grip when finally, to the very obvious disappointment of almost everybody in the room, the sneering Gryffindor conceded defeat under the unwavering glare of his opponent.
'No need to get your knickers in a twist,' he mumbled, with an unconvincing try at indifference. 'I was only having a laugh.'
But Sebastian did not take his eyes off him; not when Ominis called the group to order, nor when he had them split off into pairs to practise disarming, and it was only when Poppy tugged her over to a relatively quiet corner by the sunlit windows that Aurélie finally released the breath she'd been holding.
Rather protective was an understatement: Sebastian Sallow was going to be the death of her.
'Oh, I've been looking forward to this all term!' Poppy, undeterred by overzealous Slytherins, whipped her wand out with a flourish.
Aurélie couldn't help but laugh.
'I didn't take you as an avid dueller,' she commented. 'How did you even end up here? Did Sebastian invite you, too?'
'Ominis, actually, back in our fifth year. I think he was lonely.'
Over at the far end of the room, Ominis was glaring up at the ceiling, arms crossed firmly across his chest as Sebastian whispered urgently into his ear. If Ominis was lonely, she thought, it was likely a deliberate choice.
'He started coming down to the Kneazle enclosures, back in fifth year. Always alone, he was.' Poppy told her, her voice tinged with empathy. 'I think people underestimate him because he's blind, but he's got this sixth sense, you know? Nothing gets past Ominis.' She smiled then, a soft thing she usually reserved for her beloved Beasts. 'He even managed to win over Highwing's affections, even though he couldn't make the proper eye contact needed to initiate the first meeting. Highwing just trusted him immediately.' She trailed off, and then, as if suddenly remembering herself, raised her wand with renewed vigour. 'Disarming spell incoming!'
'Er, Highwing?' Aurélie deflected Poppy's cast easily enough, even without the warning.
'Oh, sorry, I keep forgetting you're new. Highwing is my pet Hippogriff. Alright, now you disarm me.'
'A Hiffogriff? What, like as a pet?' Aurélie kept her wand at her side.
'Oh, yes!' Poppy's eyes widened. 'I rescued her years ago from a group of poachers. She lives here at the school. Have you much experience with Hippogriffs?'
With all thoughts of duelling forgotten, Poppy told her about Highwing the Hippogriff; how she'd saved her from poachers in her fourth year and become fast friends. Aurélie, in turn, told her about Neige, the first friend she'd made after her parents had moved them to France when she was eight; the unicorn who'd gifted her the tail hair in her wand, who'd kept the loneliness at bay in a strange country she didn't know. But when she got to the part when her magic manifested and Neige had become fearful of her, her happy memories turned once more into regrets, and she became pensive, quiet.
'Bit hard to practice duelling when you've both put your wands away, don't you think?'
Sebastian had evidently been enjoying duelling club far more than the two animal lovers had; cheeks flushed and eyes bright, his knit jumper had long been discarded and his shirt sleeves were pushed up to his elbows, but there was something beyond his appearance that held her attention captive, a sense of exuberance she'd not seen on him before, a brightness in his eyes that shone right through her creeping sadness and made her feel light again.
'Oops,' she said with a sheepish grin.
'Oops,' he agreed, smiling as he folded his arms across his chest, his sparkling gaze lingering on hers.
Poppy, ever the observant Hufflepuff, cleared her throat. 'I'll, uh, just partner up with Andrew, then, shall I?'
'Go easy on him,' replied Sebastian without looking at her. 'Bit skittish, that one.'
'Having fun?' Aurélie asked him, once Poppy was out of earshot.
Sebastian arched a brow. 'I've been winning, so yes,' he said, fervently. 'Are you having fun?'
'We, er... We got distracted.'
'So I heard.' He sauntered closer, twirling his wand in his hand. 'Fond of unicorns, are you?'
'Fond of eavesdropping, are you?'
'Hard not to with all the twittering going on back here,' he chuckled. 'I don't think I've ever seen you so animated before.'
'Oh.' Her responding laugh was breathy and ridiculous. 'Yes, well, I... I tend to get carried away when I'm excited about something.'
Sebastian quirked a brow. 'Does that come from your French side or your English side?'
She hummed thoughtfully. 'My Aurélie side, I think.'
'Ah. That's the best side.'
'People revere them,' she blurted. 'Unicorns, I mean, for - for their beauty and their magical abilities, but actually, you'd be surprised how funny they are, and stubborn.' She twisted her fingers together. 'They've a wicked sense of humour; very mischievous, too, once they warm up to you.'
'Sounds like someone I know,' he said, giving her a pointed look.
She flushed again, bloody suffocating. 'I'm hardly a unicorn.'
'What are you, then?'
'A Thestral, I suppose.'
'A Thestral? Nah, you're far too pretty.'
Aurélie blinked.
Sebastian blinked back.
'I mean -' he fumbled with his wand, '- not that Thestrals aren't pretty, they're just not very pleasant to look at. Not that I think you're unpleasant to look at, because you're the opposite, actually -' his eyes widened, panic-stricken, '- not that I'm looking at you, I just meant that you - that you're -'
'Shall we duel?'
'Yes.'
With a short, slightly frantic nod, Sebastian wordlessly conjured a training dummy from across the room.
'Right, yeah. So, um, Confringo,' he said as the dummy came to a rough stop a few meters away. 'It's a long-range fire spell. Good for offensive work, which you are terrible at.'
With a determined set of his chin, Sebastian pushed his hair back from his eyes and launched into a detailed rundown of his favourite spell, lecturing her in much the same way Hecate did in their Defense classes: focused, thorough, and with a certain reverence for combat spells that bordered on being a bit obsessive. Only, Hecate's voice wasn't nearly as pleasant to listen to as Sebastian's, nor was she a tall, broad-shouldered Slytherin boy with lovely freckles and nice lips who'd just called her pretty...
Needless to say, Aurélie's first attempt at casting Confringo was a complete failure.
Sebastian was unimpressed.
'No,' he said sternly. 'Your movements are wrong; you're flailing all over the place.'
'I do not flail!'
'Here.' He slipped his wand into his robes with a sigh and gestured for her to come closer. 'May I?' he asked, reaching for her arm.
'May you what?'
He rolled his eyes. 'May I have your hand in marriage,' he said sarcastically. 'I want to show you how to cast properly.'
'Oh.'
He positioned himself beside her, his arm pressing along the length of hers as he gently took her elbow.
'First of all, relax,' he said, his voice low in her ear. 'You're too tense.'
Aurélie froze.
Sebastian sighed, exasperated. 'Do you enjoy doing the opposite of everything I say?'
'Yes, actually, it's my favourite thing in the world.'
His low chuckle danced across her cheek and tingled down to her toes. She swallowed audibly.
'Well, if you just relax,' he said, his voice lowering, 'this will be much more enjoyable for the both of us.'
Aurélie almost dropped her wand.
'As I said...' Sebastian's hand trailed down her arm, lifting her wrist, adjusting her grip with gentle fingers. 'You're flailing too much. You're trying to conjure fire, not prancing around a maypole. Your arm -' he gently squeezed her wrist, '- is coming out too wide. It's more of a flick at the end, not a wave. See? Like this.' He guided her arm through the movement, his free hand resting on her shoulder to keep her close. Across the room, Poppy had abandoned her duelling practice with Andrew and was grinning over at her so suggestively that for the first time since she'd arrived in Scotland, Aurélie felt hot.
'Keep your elbow close to your waist.' Sebastian readjusted her position. 'Like this.' His voice dropped an octave still, until, like the last key on a piano, it struck something deep and resonant inside her.
'Yes?' he whispered.
Aurélie nodded, breathless.
'Good.' He lingered a moment longer, his fingers just barely brushing along the curve of her waist before finally stepping away.
'It also helps if you channel some anger into it,' he suggested, his signature smirk returning in full. 'Makes the spell more potent. Imagine the combat dummy is a portrait who just gave you wrong directions.'
'Haa haa.' Trying to imagine anything but Sebastian's hands on her, she took aim at the dummy, raised her chin determinedly, and, with an embarrassingly shaky voice, said, 'C-confringo.'
When nothing happened, Sebastian's eyebrows crept slowly upwards.
'Your accent is making it weird,' he said finally.
'My accent is not weird!' She lowered her wand with a huff of frustration.
'I didn't say that, I said your accent is making it weird. You're putting too much emphasis on the end. It's Con-frin-go.'
'That's what I'm saying!'
'No, you're saying con-fring-go. Confring is not going anywhere.'
'But -'
He stepped closer. 'Your French side is showing again.'
Aurélie pursed her lips. 'Believe me, you haven't seen my French side yet,' she said under her breath.
Sebastian's grin almost split his face. 'Do you want to learn the spell? Or would you rather argue with me all afternoon? Because quite honestly, I'm happy to do either.'
Scowling, she crossed her arms and bit back the retort she longed to throw at him.
'Good,' he said, correctly interpreting her begrudging silence as consent to continue. 'Now, let's try it again. It's Confringo. Try to say it less like a Frenchie and more like a Brit.'
Grinning, he took a very deliberate step away from her, gestured at the dummy, then shielded his eyebrows with his hands.
'Safety precaution,' he said in response to her questioning look. 'My eyebrows have fallen victim to Confringo one too many times.'
'Wait, what? Sebastian, I don't want to lose my eyebrows!'
'You'll be fiiine, they'll grow back.'
She threw him a fleeting look of distress, covered her eyebrows with her free hand and, trying to sound as British as she could, conjured not the powerful jet of fire she was trying for, but the world's most pitiful poof of steam.
A moment of silence passed between them, and then Sebastian was laughing, his wand clattering to the ground as he bent over double.
'What was that?' he gasped, laughing so hard he could scarcely draw breath. 'That was like a baby dragon burp!'
At first, her laughter came out like drips from a leaky tap: slowly, and then all at once. Next moment, they had both lost all composure, laughing themselves silly amid the chaos of Crossed Wands.
How strange it felt to laugh again.
But, oh, how nice.
'On the bright side,' Sebastian went on, wiping tears of mirth from his eyes, 'at least you've still got your eyebrows.'