Chapter Text
The air hung heavy, still crackling with the remnants of the dark magic that had flown from him moments earlier. His breathing was laboured, chest heaving and heart galloping from the fight. Adrenaline was still rushing through his veins, fingers shaking where he clutched his wand down by his side.
At his feet lay the body of his uncle, crumpled and folded in ways that were altogether unnatural, limbs twisted and broken. Looking closely, Sebastian could still see the waves of green magic running across Solomon’s skin, which was turning shades of pale grey and purple with an unnerving speed. Unforgivable, something whispered to him, as if he needed reminding.
“What have you done?” Came a small, shivering voice from behind him. It was wrong to hear her sound so tiny, so broken. She usually stood tall, so brave and confident that she seemed untouchable. The tremble in her words that betrayed her horror nearly brought Sebastian to his knees.
He could feel her gaze boring into his back, a chill running through him and turning his body to stone as the realisation dawned that nothing could ever be the same again. It took all of the energy left in his tired muscles to resist turning, throwing himself to her feet and begging her to forget this, to tell him that he wasn’t a monster and that it was going to be okay.
But it wasn’t going to be okay. It was never going to be okay. He had killed him. He had thrown the killing curse and there wasn’t a cell, an atom of his body that hadn’t meant it.
This wasn’t how it was supposed to be. How had it ended up like this?
“You should go.”
He didn’t recognise his voice as the words left him, sitting cold in the air between them. Somewhere inside him he could feel something screaming at him to stop, to take back everything he was going to say and just bury this somewhere deep down where he would never have to touch it again.
“What do you mean?” She choked from behind him, and Merlin's beard she should never have to sound so hollow, no word she uttered should be so dripping with pain that he could taste it from across the room.
“No, Sebastian we need to leave, we have to go before they find us here, if we just head back to Hogwarts we can-” He could hear her starting to pace behind him, could picture the hand that she ran through her hair as she ran a million different scenarios through her head, trying to find the one that let them both get out of this unscathed. The ease with which his mind conjured the image of her should have shocked him, but he found it soothed him a little, the conviction with which he had started speaking only growing. At least he would always have this part of her with him.
“No.”
The word came out loud and blunt, and he winced as her steps faltered and stopped. He knew what he had to do, but it was almost as painful as the day that Anne had been cursed, as agonising as the grim smiles and ‘I’m sorries’ from the healers that his sister had been taken to.
With a deep breath he drew himself to his full height, fixing his eyes on the wall in front of him and pushing any shakiness from his voice.
“You need to leave. Go, and tell nobody of this.”
A bitter laugh escaped from her lips, but the tremble that cut through her words was undisguisable.
“You’re joking. You seriously expect me to leave you here after this.” It was too easy for Sebastian to picture the way that she gestured to the room around them, every deft movement of her hands and the incredulous shaking of her head.
He could hear her walking towards him then, tentative steps and a new softness in her voice that felt like a punch to the gut. “After everything we’ve been through, everything we’ve seen, you really expect me to believe that you don’t need me here.”
The laugh that burst forward from him was harsh and cutting, because of course that was what he needed, and it was so typically like her to put her finger on exactly what it was he was yearning for. She was always a step ahead of him, reading him like his every need was written in the pages of a book - it had drawn them close, closer than he had realised until now, when the only option he had left to him was to push her away.
“You have no idea what I need.”
The tone in his voice was foreign even to him, something dangerous between pain and anger. He knew she felt it, something in the air changing between them. He was like a wounded animal, filled with an aching rage that longed to lash out. He couldn’t let it be tamed, not until it had burned her out of his life, placed her somewhere safe where he could never reach her again.
“Sebastian, I’m not just going to give up on you. I know you’re hurting right now but we can fix this…”
Somewhere deep inside, Sebastian was screaming at himself to leave this alone, that she was right, but her quivering voice had shown him a chink in her armour, and he knew that if he didn’t push it now he never would.
Whipping around on his heel, he fixed her with a glare, a cruel smile tugging at one corner of his lips. A hand lay outstretched between them and his heart shattered all over again. She had been reaching out to him, soft hands aching to salve his wounds, to comfort his woes.
“What is there to fix? I’ve got everything I wanted.” They both knew it was a lie, but it didn’t matter. The words were flowing forth without permission now, vicious and remorseless. “I suppose I have you to thank for that, who else would have been stupid enough to follow me to the end like this?”
He tilted his head back in a laugh devoid of any kind of humour, and only hoped that she didn’t pick up on how false it sounded leaving him.
“And all because of what? A kind word?” He stepped into her space, the movement smooth and predatory in ways that felt alien to him, as if someone else had taken control of his body. “A pretty face?”
Her features fell slack as she stared up at him, pain crossing through her eyes as Sebastian spoke. Neither of them had ever touched on what rested unspoken between them, the thread of possibility that had drawn them together from the first day they had met in the common room. He knew that she had felt the same pull that he had, both of them paralyzed by the ‘what ifs’ that came with moving on what they felt. They had simply danced around it, revelling in the tension and pretending that they couldn’t feel the gravitational pull that was tugging at them.
She squeezed her eyes shut, and he felt the catch in her breath as it ghosted across his face. He had found the soft spot. The only thing left to do was twist the dagger.
When she finally returned his gaze her eyes were watery, pleading with him as she looked up at him pitifully.
“Sebastian, please, you’re being cruel.”
He knew. He hated it. The voice from earlier was back and making itself hoarse screaming and yelling at him to take her face in his hands and beg forgiveness, grovel and promise that everything could go back to how it was. His heart was pounding as they balanced on the precipice between the safe and the unknown, bodies pressed up against the wall that held back a future where they were something even worse than enemies - the future where they were strangers.
A tear ran down her cheek, and he wiped it away with the back of his fingers, soaking in the only opportunity he would ever have to touch her face. Leaning in, he lowered his face to within inches of hers, so close it would have been easy to forget all of this and simply kiss her until they were both breathless, a million apologies whispered into the space between them. Her eyes drifted closed of their own accord, holding back the barrage of tears that was given away by her uneven, hitching breaths.
“And you have been a truly spectacular means to an end.”
The dam broke, and as she lost her battle with the tears she pushed against his chest with a solid shove, backing away from him. The betrayal sat there in her eyes clear as a summer day, a hurt so deep that it threatened to pull him down with it as well.
“Ominis was right about you,” She finally choked out, a shaking finger pointed at him accusingly. “You just don’t know when to fucking stop.”
A sad smile spread across Sebastian’s face. Ah, Ominis. He hadn’t thought about his best friend, about how this was going to destroy him. It was better that he learned this from her, that Sebastian cut them both out in one fell swoop and gave them each other to lean on. It would be easier to protect them both from himself this way, and he knew it. Selfishly, he knew it would be easier for him too. It was one thing to cut the new fifth year out, someone who until a few minutes ago he saw in every image of a future he dared imagine, but the look of disgust and absolute heartbreak that Ominis would give him would be unbearable.
“You can’t say you weren’t warned,” he offered with a shrug.
A hardness formed over her features as he stared at her, the sadness that had been there snatched away and replaced with a sickening hatred that rippled through every inch of Sebastian’s body.
“I hope this destroys you,” she spat at him as she backed away, venom dripping from every word. “Truly. When you are crippled and twisted by this, I hope the face of every single person who loved you haunts you. I hope you see Ominis and I every night before you go to sleep, and you remember that we would have given everything to save you.”
Sebastian simply scoffed and shook his head, holding her hostage in his gaze for as long as he could. He knew that after this he would never - could never - see her again.
“I don’t love you. Ominis, maybe, a long time ago. But you? Nothing,” he sneered, the words as cold as the tomb they stood in. For a moment he thought that the echoes off of the cave walls would give him away, that they would whisper the truth into her ears and she would see through the rapidly developing cracks to where he was being pulled down into an ocean of pain as if there were bricks tied around his ankles.
But she didn’t, and with one final shake of her head she turned her back on him and walked away, footsteps quickening into a sprint as she left him standing alone in the dark.
He waited for what felt like hours, attuning to the growing silence around him until he was sure she had left and he finally allowed the agony to take over, pulling his legs out from underneath him. His whole body shook with long, racking sobs that clawed their way out from his chest and had him gasping for breath.
His final words echoed around him as if they were freshly spoken, breaking him over and over again until he was a shivering mess curled up on the stone floor beneath him, a cold sweat soaking through his clothes.
I don’t love you, he thought, eyes so sore from tears that he could barely stand to open them. It had been a good lie.