Misfortune, in Aurélie's experience, had a way of finding her on the tail-end of happiness.
At the age of seven, news of her family's imminent move to France had come on the same day the tooth fairy had left gold under her pillow; at fourteen, she'd been accepted into advanced classes at Beauxbatons only to lose her pet owl that same night; and on the day her magic had awoken, the long-awaited sunflowers in her father's garden had bloomed in time to witness strands of arcane energy bursting forth from her fingertips. Like a stain on her favourite dress, or a detention on her perfectly clean record, so her brightest memories were tainted with a dark spot she couldn't get out.
The latest bout of misery, however, had found her in a more appropriate setting: wrists deep in raw meat, surrounded by snorting, hungry death horses with a Hufflepuff companion whose sweet disposition belied her apparent penchant for chaos; after witnessing Sebastian's performance at Crossed Wands, Poppy fancied herself something of a match maker — much to Aurélie's mortification.
'But he fancies you! You can't honestly tell me you don't see it!' Unafraid of darkness, death omens, or belligerent Slytherin boys, Poppy Sweeting's voice trilled through the shadowy stables and brightened the dark corners like she were light incarnate.
Not for the first time that evening, Aurélie sighed, feigning a disinterest that was becoming increasingly difficult to uphold.
'Poppy,' she said evenly as Sugar the Thestral accepted her meat offering with a horsey snort of delight, 'I think Sebastian fancies all the girls.'
'Noo...' replied Poppy, dragging the word out in a sing-song voice, 'all the girls fancy Sebastian, but Sebastian fancies you.' When Aurélie gave no reaction to this bold declaration, Poppy threw her hands up in frustration. 'Oh, come on!' she implored, startling the nearest Thestral into a series of indignant snorts. 'The way he looks at you? And the way he got all close to you in Crossed Wands? He certainly didn't teach me Confringo that way!' she finished, fanning her cheeks with her hands.
Aurélie turned away, wrestling with the smile that fought to break free across her face. Try as she might to suppress it, the memory of Sebastian's touch glowed as warm as his bluebells in her pocket.
'Well, it doesn't matter even if he does like me,' she continued, picking through the meat bucket for an extra juicy morsel for Sugar, 'which he doesn't. You know I'm going back to France after graduation.'
'But does he know that?'
The question made her stomach twist into knots. 'Of course he does,' she mumbled, avoiding her friends' knowing eye. 'Everyone does.'
'But have you actually told him?'
Suddenly, there was a screech and a rustling of feathered wings as a post owl barrelled into the stable, startling the Thestrals into nervous jitters as it soared toward them. Thankful for the interruption, Aurélie smiled up at the feathered distraction only to yelp a moment later when it flung a letter squarely at her face.
Misfortune had found her again, but this time, as conveyed by her uncle in a concisely worded letter devoid of comfort or sympathy, it had chosen to befoul the lives of the Guillot family.
Long-time friends of her mothers and neighbours to the Collins' since Aurélie was eight, it was Antoine, the father, whose quick intervention had saved her the night of the attack. A retired Auror, as brave as anyone she'd ever known, he'd fought off her attackers and become a key witness to the cloaked figures who'd murdered his dear friends.
And now he was suffering for it.
His family were suffering for it.
If only he'd arrived minutes later.
If only he'd let them take her...
As it always did when danger lurked, tingly magic prickled at the periphery of her trembling form. But there was something else, too, lurking beneath the familiar buzz of her Ancient Magic.
Something darker.
Something wrong.
Beside her, Sugar pawed nervously at the ground, her scaly head thrashing from side to side. No longer interested in the bucket of feed, the contents of which were strewn across the hay where Aurélie had dropped it, the beast backed away from her, whinnying when her hind quarters bumped into the too-small confines of her stall, trapped.
A prickling of cold, scratchy darkness clawed under Aurélie's skin, rattled her rib cage, squeezed her heart.
Even death fears you.
She didn't hear Poppy's cry of alarm nor the frightened baying of the Thestrals as she fled the stables into the cool night beyond — only a voice that reverberated deep within her; like her blood had been given speech; like her bones were talking.
You did this, it said in a voice like black tar and sharp needles. This is your fault.
The world spun beneath her feet.
Stumbling over uneven ground, fighting to contain the tendrils of black and silver that were coiling around her fingers, she headed not for the beacon of light offered by the castle in the distance, but away from it; beckoned not by warmth or sanctuary, but by the darkness that lay beyond — and there she sat, wrapped in the cold embrace of oblivion until the only light that remained came from the blue flames in her pocket.
-x-
'Have you eaten?' Sebastian peered anxiously into Aurélie's face, checking her temperature with the back of his hand for the third time in a row.
The first thing she'd noticed upon waking in the hospital wing was the smell: the familiar scent of healing herbs — dittany, mandrake, and wormwood — mingled with the heady, slightly astringent smell of medicinal potions reminded her so strongly of her father's apothecary that for a moment she thought she was back home. The second, slightly more alarming thing to catch her attention had been Sebastian Sallow, whose gentle touch and look of tender concern felt like being home in an entirely different way.
But that had been three days ago, and Sebastian had scarcely left her side since.
'Yes, maman, I have eaten.'
Sebastian rolled his eyes. 'More than half a carrot?'
When she didn't answer, he tutted impatiently but continued his pointless examination unabated: temperature, heart rate, reflexes, blood pressure. Some of these he conducted with fancy little healing spells that shivered pleasantly through her body, while others he carried out with his hands. Those made her shiver, too, but in a wildly different way than his spells.
'Still dizzy?' he asked.
'Not really,' she lied.
'Tired?'
'N-no,' she replied with an eye-watering yawn.
Sebastian heaved an impatient sigh.
'You're as bad as Anne was,' he muttered, reaching for yet another vile-tasting potion she absolutely didn't need, to cure the illness she definitely didn't have, but which he vehemently insisted she drink anyway. At this rate, she was more likely to die of perpetual vexation than succumb to whatever had landed her here in the first place — which, according to Hogwarts finest trainee-Healer-who-thinks-he-knows-everything, had been a burst of destructive energy caused by the long suppression of her natural magic. In other words (and this Sebastian had told her with the smug expression of someone who dearly longed to say 'I told you so' but knew better than to say it to someone on their sickbed), she was showing signs of becoming the Obscurial he'd warned her about during her first visit to the Undercroft.
Aurélie had argued back that it was only stress, and that all his fussing over her was only making it worse, thank you very much, but Sebastian, as usual, was deaf to her remonstrances. Because no matter how she tried to spin it, stress didn't tend to manifest as swirling black tendrils of magic from the fingertips, nor did it usually leave one so depleted of energy that one couldn't stand without fear of keeling over.
Infuriatingly, Madame Blaine — who'd been debriefed on Aurélie's special condition long before the school year began — had wholly agreed with Sebastian's astute diagnosis, as if he were the bloody school matron, and had condemned her to a stint in the hospital wing on a lumpy mattress and a bed that creaked to the high heavens every time she so much as blinked. Now, her freedom lay entirely in the hands of one overzealous Slytherin who panicked at the slightest sign of discomfort.
Not that she was keen to rejoin the school after the terrible news had broken. Even cooped up as she was under the watchful eye of both Blainey and Sebastian, word of her being not only an orphan, but an orphan whose parents had been recently murdered, had spread so rapidly throughout the school that the most audacious among them had started sneaking into the infirmary to catch a glimpse of her, as if having no parents meant she'd suddenly sprouted horns. As a consequence, she'd been moved to a small, private room where she was deprived of both prying eyes and natural daylight and barred from any visitors who weren't first given a thorough debriefing by Sebastian. (Poppy was conditionally allowed in, provided she didn't stay too long or talk too much, but Garreth Weasley had been flatly refused.)
The only exception to Sebastian's scrutiny was Mouse, who, no matter how many times he'd been shooed away by the great overbearing snake that was her warden nurse, came and went from Aurélie's room as he pleased. Presently, the small squeak of a boy was sifting through the mountains of gifted sweets that sat untouched at the foot of her bed, humming to himself; Mouse didn't care who was orphaned or who had horns so long as that parentless-horned-being had sweets to give out.
Groaning as Sebastian pressed his fingers to her pulse point for the tenth time that day, Aurélie squirmed out of his reach and said, 'Sebastian, I'm fine!'
And for the tenth time, Sebastian snapped back, 'You are not fine, you are ill!' as if telling her enough times might make it so.
But she wasn't ill, she was overwhelmed. Three days of being poked at, fussed over and fed potions that tasted of bitter old socks had made her rather irritable, to say the least. When she swatted his hand away with an impatient tut, he only thrust another potion at her.
'Drink this,' he demanded.
She pushed it away. 'I don't want to drink it!'
Sebastian's expression hardened, his usually complacent nature lost to the darkness of stress and sleeplessness; indeed, with his dark eyes and stubbled chin, he looked as tired as she felt, yet whenever she suggested he get some sleep, he only frowned and vigorously took her temperature again.
'When are you going to start taking this seriously?' he snapped, frustration boiling over as he forced the potion into her hands.
Aurélie bristled and sat up straighter. 'I am taking this seriously!'
'No, you are being petulant and ungrateful!'
'Well, you are being overbearing and rude!'
Sebastian barked a short laugh.
'Yeah, I am. I am overbearing, and I am rude, but even I would have the sense to let the Healer do his job if I were ill!'
'You're not a Healer! And I'm not ill!'
'Merlin, help me,' he groaned, pinching the bridge of his nose, 'you are really testing my — Mouse!'
At the foot of the bed, surrounded by an ever-growing mountain of sweet wrappers, Mouse jumped and dropped a small glass vial he'd extracted from an otherwise innocuous box of Chocolate Frogs. Sebastian snatched it up, glowered at it, then muttered something that sounded suspiciously like Garreth fucking Weasley under his breath before vanishing its contents with a wave of his wand.
Then he turned back to face her.
'You,' he spat, punctuating the word with a sharp jab of his finger in her direction, 'are a stubborn, silly, spoilt girl, Aurélie! You can't stand to be told you are wrong, even when you are — which is most of the time, by the way; very surprising for a Ravenclaw! — and seem to lack enough self-awareness to realise that maybe you're not as smart and all-knowing as you think you are!' — Aurélie's mouth fell open at this, but Sebastian went on undeterred — 'Maybe nobody in France ever had the guts to call you out on your nonsense, but I do! So stop with the attitude!'
Attitude? What attitude?
'Oh!' she spluttered. 'Oh! I see! Well, if I'm so awful, why do you keep coming back, then? Why have you been here every bloody day, suffocating me and bossing me around? Hm? Why don't you,' — she jabbed her finger back at him — 'just leave me alone?'
A small thrill of panic accompanied these words as they left her. Beneath all her frustration lived a small, seldom acknowledged hope that Sebastian would never leave her alone, that he'd never see her as the monster she was, and that he'd keep coming back with his warm eyes and gentle hands even if it were only to call her silly and spoilt.
Gratefully, Sebastian, in what she was beginning to recognise as true Sallow fashion, resigned himself to staying put despite her demands for him to leave, his temper fixed as firmly in place as were his feet on the floor, and not for the first time, Aurélie was grateful for it. If nothing else, his tenacity was dependable.
'You listen to me,' he said, his voice strained. 'Your neighbours were attacked.'
'I know, Sebastian.'
'Their children were attacked!'
'I know, Sebastian!' — louder now.
As if she needed reminding! As if the new addition to her nightmares wasn't already a source of shame and guilt without his bringing it up at every opportunity!
By now, everybody knew it: the Hogwarts professors — Weasley, Hecate, and Sharp — who'd taken grave meetings around her bedside, discussing new safety measures, implementing stricter rules and harsher curfews to confine her to the school grounds; the Aurors and Ministry officials who'd joined them, both French and English, to ask her the same tired questions she'd answered time and time before, to ensure her of the heightened security around those closest to her — all had unanimously agreed that the attack on the Guillot family was dire indeed: after all, Antoine Guillot was an ex-Auror, his wife Marie-Louise a retired Cursebreaker, both talented, formidable opponents in a duel — and yet even they had been set upon, attacked in a vicious attempt to keep them quiet.
'Whoever these people are,' Professor Weasley had told her gently, 'they are ruthless.'
'Powerful, too,' Sharp had agreed, less gently. 'And seemingly unafraid of who they must eliminate to avoid detection. Antoine Guillot was an exceptional Auror in his day, and certainly no less dangerous in retirement.' The professors exchanged dark looks. 'The situation is more dire now than it has ever been before, Miss Collins. You must remain vigilant.'
But Aurélie simply could not face the reality that all the pain and suffering was because of her; she, who'd tried all her life to be so good only to turn out so rotten.
She squeezed her eyes closed, but Sebastian's tirade was relentless.
'There are people out there who want to hurt you — who will hurt you!' he went on fiercely. 'And not just you, but the people close to you; the people you love! And yet, you — the most powerful witch to exist in hundreds of years — do nothing but suppress your magic until it makes you ill!'
Aurélie eyes snapped open, vitriol sharp on her tongue as she said, 'You don't know when to stop, do you?'
Sebastian's eyes flashed, then dulled, the spark of anger flickering and dying between them. She immediately wished she hadn't spoken, for the wounded look on his face was one she hadn't seen before and didn't wish to see again.
'Oh, believe me,' he snapped back, snatching the potion from her hand, 'I know exactly when to stop!'
Had she energy enough to spare, she might've leapt out of bed and explained, pleaded, that she was only scared, not angry — Merlin, she'd even let him take her temperature nine times in a row if it helped! — but all she could manage was a small, plaintive groan as he turned his back to her, his shoulders stiff with tension.
'Sebastian...' she said to his back.
'I have Quidditch practice,' he said in blunt return, and somehow the finality in his voice felt far worse than being shouted at. 'Take your potions and do as Blainey tells you. I'll be back as soon as I can. Mouse,' - he plucked a half-finished chocolate frog from the boys' hands and shooed him off the bed. - 'Visiting hours are over. Out.'
'Don't bother coming back,' she called after him, 'I can look after myself!' But her voice lacked all conviction, and her only reply was a sorry sort of wave from Mouse before the door shut behind them, leaving her with a sinking feeling that no matter how hard she tried to ignore it, misfortune was only going to find her again, and again.
-x-
'It's the ghosts you have to watch out for,' Sebastian whispered, his voice reflecting the impish expression she couldn't see, given that he was invisible. 'They tend to glide through the walls just when you think the coast is clear.'
It'd been nightfall by the time Sebastian had returned to the hospital wing, and, judging by how he'd arrived — that is to say, invisible, and with an expression of unadulterated exhilaration not unlike the one he'd worn in Crossed Wands — well after curfew.
Aurélie, of course, had been wide awake and anxious when he'd slipped quietly into her room, and though she'd chastised him about sneaking into a girl's bed chamber in the dead of night, a silly grin had burst across her face at the sight of him. At the same time, Poppy's voice in her memory had asked whether she'd told him about France yet, but she'd shoved that troubling thought away for another time.
'How am I supposed to watch out for the ghosts if I can't see them?' she hissed back, thankful that it was late enough that even the ghosts were absent from the halls. 'Wait - can the ghosts still see us if we're invisible?'
Somewhere to her left, Sebastian laughed.
'We're not invisible, we're under disillusionment. I told you, they're completely different things.'
'Details, details,' she replied, waving a hand she couldn't see through the air. 'If can't see my feet, I'm as good invisible, as far as I'm concerned.'
If she hadn't been virtually imprisoned for almost four days, Aurélie might've had more conviction to stay cross with him. But when Sebastian had returned to the infirmary, bright-eyed and brimming with contagious excitement to claim he had 'something amazing' to show her, she'd only put up a half-hearted argument before giving in.
'What, no endless medical examinations tonight?' she'd teased as he pulled her out of bed.
Sebastian cracked a smile as he steadied her on her feet. 'Why?' he smirked. 'Been enjoying them, have you?'
She smacked his arm.
'Nah,' he went on with a low chuckle, 'those examinations are all useless anyway.'
'Seb-astian!'
After he was certain she wasn't about to swoon into his arms again, he scooped up her robe from the small bedside table and tossed it at her head. 'If there's one thing I learned from looking after Anne,' he grinned, wiggling his eyebrows, 'it's that a spot of adventure can be equally, if not even more restorative than bedrest and potions.'
But as to what his so-called restorative adventure entailed, he had remained tight-lipped.
'But I'm not supposed to leave the castle grounds!' she'd argued, disentangling the robe from over her face.
'We're not leaving the school grounds.'
'Well, where are we going, then?'
'For a walk,' was his final reply before placing his whole hand over her mouth to silence her. 'Now get dressed.'
Minutes later, they were creeping through the dark halls, cloaked beneath a neat little disillusionment charm of Sebastian's that'd made her squeal with surprise as it trickled down her neck like a raw egg.
Aurélie had never seen the castle after curfew before, but judging by the way Sebastian strode confidently through the darkened corridors, this was not his first foray into delinquency. If she squinted hard enough, she could just make out his grinning countenance beneath the facade of the cloaking charm. They were friends again, it seemed, and for that she was grateful.
'I can't believe you convinced me to do this,' she muttered.
'I hardly had to convince you,' he whispered back, the ghost of his grin gleaming under the still-lit braziers above them. 'Personally, I think you're not as goodie-goodie as you pretend to be.'
As they crept further into the depths of the sleeping castle, she wondered if his abrupt shift in mood from snarky Slytherin to charming Sallow was a result of smashing Quidditch balls around the pitch for half the evening, or whether it was Imelda's special company who'd raised his spirits.
Because regardless of his assurances that their situation was over, Aurélie couldn't help compare the very stark contrast between her small, soft, and, frankly, downright ridiculous personage to that of the lean, muscular, formidable Quidditch chaser who'd previously held Sebastian's attention captive. Clearly, there was something about Imelda that Sebastian valued — none of which Aurélie saw in herself.
Perhaps it was only pity, then, that kept him by her side? Some sense of moral obligation to help her since he'd been inadvertently made privy to her secret? Why else would he bother unless labouring under some illusion of personal responsibility? She'd never asked for his help, yet he insisted upon it in the way one might assist a small, helpless child. Surely, Imelda didn't need babying after a Quidditch injury, nor did she seem the sort who'd shy away from power, if she were capable of wielding it the way Aurélie could.
So why then, if he clearly preferred the company of someone stronger and more capable, did he care what happened to her?
'I thought you were cross at me,' she ventured after a time, having not the nerve to approach the subject directly but not, it seemed, the sense to leave it alone.
Sebastian's invisible hand caught her by the elbow as he checked an intersecting corridor for late night prowlers. Fleetingly, she wondered whether those hands, so warm, so large, had been touching another that night. Aurélie shook herself free of the thought; skulking about after curfew through a school full of ghosts and unsympathetic professors was neither the time nor the place to be picturing that.
'Nah, I was cross at myself,' he murmured in reply, his hand lingering on her arm. 'You were right, though. I don't really know when to stop. When I care about something, I have trouble letting it go.'
'Oh.'
Like letting go of a so-called mutually beneficial friendship with a teammate?
She worried her lip between her teeth, grateful he couldn't see her face as they crept down a long, doorless corridor.
'I'm am sorry, you know,' he said after a minute, 'about shouting at you earlier.'
'I know. I'm sorry, too, I just -'
A distant echoing bang brought them to an abrupt halt. Sebastian's hand found her elbow again, his grip much firmer now as he held her in place. And still, even as her breath caught and her ears strained for signs of impending detention, Aurélie, like an idiot, thought only of Imelda, and of his hands on her body, caught up together in the thrill of Quidditch practise, sweaty and dishevelled and —
'I think we're alright,' whispered Sebastian, misreading the sudden tension in her body as nerves.
When silence settled around them once more, they breathed a shared sigh of relief — until the sound of hurried footsteps, startlingly close, spurred them into a fresh panic.
'Shit.'
In the face of imminent discovery, Sebastian's disillusionment flickered and gave out. They stared at each other, mirrored expressions of horror on their faces as the footsteps drew nearer.
'Here, quick!' he hissed, and before she could protest, he shoved her unceremoniously into a narrow but deep alcove in the wall that housed a statue of four House Elves disguised under a long trenchcoat. Then, with all the grace of a Graphorn trying to squeeze into a broom closet, he wriggled in after her, stepping on her toes, elbowing her ribs and squashing her flat against the wall, all the while grunting a way that made her wonder whether being caught wouldn't be less mortifying than being trapped flat against him. The gap between the wall and statue was narrow, and Sebastian was — well, Sebastian was big.
'Well, this is cozy,' he whispered after a moment, looking flustered but rather pleased with himself. 'Good thing you're so small.'
'Terrible thing you're so — ugh — bloody huge!' she retorted, wedged so firmly between the wall and his body she could scarcely breathe.
'Most girls don't complain about that.'
If she had room to kick him, she would have aimed it squarely at his —
'Shh!'
They listened with frozen breath as somebody — decidedly not a ghost — made their hasty advance in their direction, until Sebastian, simply unable to stop talking for longer than five merciful seconds, lowered his head to her ear and whispered, 'Bloody hell, Aura, I can actually hear your heart racing.'
Tingles erupted down the back of her arms, her neck, her spine. She held back a whimper, mortified, praying he wouldn't notice the goosebumps over her skin or feel the sudden heat blazing across her cheeks.
'C-can you blame me?' she managed.
She felt him smile against her temple — more shivers, another embarrassing moan suppressed.
'Don't worry,' he murmured, his voice like warm honey, 'we won't get caught.'
Aurélie hadn't the nerve to point out that her reaction had little to do with being caught and everything to do being so close they were practically sharing breath. She could feel lips near her ear and warm breath on her cheek — if she turned her face up to his, she'd likely kiss him just by sheer proximity alone — and Merlin, he was so tall, and so warm, and — and would it really be so awful if she just — if just once —
As the footsteps drew level with their hiding place, Sebastian breathed a sound of caution, his soft lips grazing her forehead. His hands tightened around her waist, drawing her, if possible, closer, closer, until not even a sliver of space remained in which to breathe or think or move — and yet still she leaned into him, hands braced on his chest, fingers curling into his jumper — and his resulting moan was so low in his throat that maybe she only imagined it — and she lifted her face, just a touch, a tiny inclination, until the tip of her nose touched his lips — so warm — and he swallowed, hard, his Adam's apple bobbing in his throat, and then his nose grazed hers —
Sebastian Sallow smelled like pine and ink and parchment; like warmth and woollen blankets and fresh bread. It evoked feelings of being holed up in some secret cozy place together, somewhere with a crackling fire and knitted blankets and walls lined with books; somewhere the cold couldn't penetrate and no one could find them if they didn't want to be found.
Would it really be so awful just to —
Just to —
Someone just beyond the statue coughed.
Aurélie held her breath, nothing but trembling hands and a racing pulse betraying her concealment behind her statue. Sebastian held her tighter, his own heart pounding against hers.
There was a sniffle. The sound of someone blowing their nose. And then, miraculously, the footsteps were passing.
In the resulting silence that followed, Aurélie was struck again by the warmth of Sebastian's body, the broad lines of his shoulders, his comforting presence in the face of danger — and found that she suddenly didn't have any desire to move at all, ever again, thank you very much.
'Alright there?' Sebastian's voice was hoarse even as a whisper, but the amusement in his tone was so clear she couldn't help a breathless laugh in return.
'I hate you,' she mumbled into his chest.
'Yeah, yeah.' She could feel him smiling into her hair. 'If you hate me so much, why haven't you moved yet?'
It was with much graceless shuffling and awkward apologies that they finally extracted themselves from the alcove.
Aurélie peered down the now-empty corridor, holding herself round the middle to steady her shaky hands. 'Is it safe, do you think?' she whispered.
'Safe?' Sebastian smiled as he cast another disillusionment over her. 'It's always safe when you're with me.'
-x-
Thank you to my genuine French wifey (genuinely French, unfortunately not genuinely my wife) @mianeryh for naming the Guillot family. Ily x