Chapter Text
October 30th, 1897
There was always something he had forgotten. No matter how comprehensive his lists, how many times he read through his class notes, something always managed to slip his attention. On this occasion, it was the toad warts that he needed for potions the next day, and he knew just the person to rope into the trip.
It had never gone unnoticed how much his best friend enjoyed autumn. Sebastian had always loved watching the smile that spread across Ominis’ face at the sound of crisp leaves underfoot, the earthy smell that clung to their clothes long after they had come back inside. It was the smell of decay, of a cycle coming to a close, but to them it smelled like home.
As boys Sebastian had spent hours trying to describe the rich colours that surrounded them as the greens faded into yellows, then matured into oranges and reds. It was always accompanied by a pang of sadness that he had been too young to place as he tried desperately to explain, to sketch out the majesty of it all.
Sebastian and Anne had made a game of passing Ominis leaves and having him guess what kind of tree it came from, watching as his fingers skimmed over the edges, along the veins that passed through them. Together, they learned to recognise the nature that surrounded them, from the heather to the grand oaks.
They were older now, but Ominis still humoured him, walking amongst the trees for what felt like hours as autumn took hold of the highlands around the castle. Sebastian would pass him leaves taken from piles on the ground, snatched from the branches of the trees as they passed, and Ominis would tell him which species it belonged to with pin-point accuracy. Autumn became their home, their refuge, and in the shadows of the forest it was easy to make themselves believe that it was still the three of them, walking shoulder to shoulder.
In some ways, there was still a third piece to their puzzle, a gaping hole filled by a girl who had fallen into their lives at the beginning of their fifth year when they were still raw around the edges. It wasn’t the same, it never could be, but together they had been dragged to hell and back and had put the pieces of each other back together when it seemed like everything was broken past the point of fixing. They had clung to one another as they healed, and as their wounds had knit closed something formed there that bound them together, holding them close.
They had passed her on their way out of the common room, sat cross-legged on the floor with her back pressed up against the sofa and surrounded by thick, heavy books. Of course, they had invited her to join them, but she had simply smiled back at them and shook her head.
“I think I need a day off today, and you know what I’m like, if I catch so much as a whiff of a problem I can’t leave it be.”
She had waved it away like it was nothing, but if anything it was an understatement. There was something about her that acted as a magnet for trouble, both inside the castle and out of it. Even after the end of their cataclysmic fifth year, when it looked like everything was going to calm down, she found herself running errands for anybody who needed her help, defending anyone who couldn’t defend themselves. It was exhausting to watch.
If they noticed her sneaking back into the castle in the early hours of the morning, or the way she winced slightly when she stretched in classes, skin stained red and purple with fresh bruises, they didn’t say anything. Something went unspoken amongst them, a rule that they wouldn’t question the way they chose to soothe the scars that on some days still stung as if they were fresh. On those days Sebastian retreated into his books, Ominis would pace the halls and corridors, and she would throw herself at other people’s problems until she could fix them in lieu of her own.
She had kicked her shoes off then, laying them neatly next to her and hefting one of the books into her lap. “Just bring me back a pretty leaf and we’ll call it even.”
It had sounded so easy, Sebastian had been so sure that it would be simple that he hadn’t bothered looking on the walk up to Hogsmeade, but now that they were heading back in the direction of the castle it was incredibly frustrating. Nothing seemed right. He would pause, pick a leaf and almost immediately decide that it wasn’t good enough. One was a beautiful gold, but it was so dry and brittle it wouldn’t survive the journey back. Another had been a striking shade of orange, but when he flipped it over it was streaked through with brown veins that looked wrong, somehow.
Sebastian wasn’t the only one becoming increasingly annoyed. The first few times he had stopped them had been fine, but the more often they paused, the more frequently Ominis would huff and cross his arms. From his spot just off of the roadside, Sebastian could watch as his best friend kicked at a pile of damp leaves by his feet, and a wave of guilt washed over him.
With a sigh he dropped the latest reject to the ground, not noticing the way it clung to the damp patent leather of his shoes. He couldn’t put his finger on why this was eating at him the way that it was, how the hunt for a leaf in a forest full of them had become the most important part of his day. The look on Ominis’ face as he returned to him with nothing to show for his efforts irked him, despite the guilt that he felt at cutting their enjoyment of their usual walk short. For the briefest of moments he caught himself thinking that of course Ominis, unable to see the difference between a burning orange and a muddy brown, wouldn’t understand the weight behind the decision. He resented himself for it.
“Sebastian.”
He hadn’t realised that he had veered away from the road until Ominis spoke, lightly touching his elbow to get his attention. They came to a halt beneath a rowan tree, branches dotted with berries and covered in leaves that seemed to dance like a flame in the breeze, all golds and reds.
“You have to tell her, you know.”
Sebastian frowned as he ran a leaf the colour of wheat between his thumb and forefinger, still slick from the previous night’s rainfall. Ominis’ meaning was lost to him. “I’m sorry? I don’t follow.”
Behind him Ominis huffed out a laugh. “Come now Sebastian, even you aren’t that oblivious.”
The frown on Sebastian’s face deepened, drawing his eyebrows together. “Let's say for argument's sake that I was. Would you mind filling me in?”
From the corner of his eye he saw Ominis turn to face him, leaning on the thick trunk of the tree next to the one he was currently studying.
“Sebastian, this is a 15 minute walk, yet here we still are. We’ve stopped sixteen times-” He raised his finger to cut Sebastian off before he had a chance to interject. “I have been counting, so don’t try to argue. We’ve stopped sixteen times and we’re still a good distance away from the castle, all for the sake of a leaf.”
The way he said it made it seem like there was something obvious that he was missing, something lying so close to the surface that it should have been clear as day. Sebastian couldn’t for the life of him figure out what it was that he couldn’t see, and why his best friend was making such a fuss out of it.
“Ominis, you’ve lost me.”
The other boy looked away for a moment, and as the dappled sunlight passing through the canopy caught his hair it turned from a dirty blonde to a blinding silver. “Merlin’s beard, Sebastian, and here I was under the impression that I was the blind one.” He stepped closer, and when he spoke again it was quiet, his voice reminiscent of nights spent sat on the ends of each other's beds, whispered words meant only for one another. “Stop and think for a moment. Why are you letting this consume you? What possible reason could you have to find this ‘perfect’ leaf, when we both know that you could bring back any crumbled, half-moulded mess and she would be overjoyed?”
Sebastian pulled a neat row of leaves from the branch that hung in front of his face, twisting the thin stem to examine them when all of a sudden it struck him. He laughed, and if the sound was hollow he hoped that Ominis didn’t notice. Slowly, he turned to his friend, who was looking at him expectantly.
“You think I’m in love with her.”
“Aren’t you?”
The question was loaded and weighty. Sebastian had taken an interest with her almost immediately after her dramatic entrance to Hogwarts, and had told Ominis as much one night after their exploration of the restricted section. Since the incident though, there had been something else there, something tender that smarted when he poked at it, so he left it well enough alone.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
A smile tugged at the corner of Ominis’ lips, tinged with a soft sort of sadness that leaked into his gentle voice. “I don’t know why you’re running from this. Help me understand, Sebastian-”
“There’s nothing to understand. You’re wrong.” He wished he could take the harshness in his voice back, he knew Ominis didn’t deserve it, but it burst out of him without permission.
“No, Sebastian, you are running scared and everyone but you can see it. I don’t know if you’re terrified of letting yourself be happy again, or if you have truly deluded yourself into believing that you feel nothing, but either way you’re not being fair to yourself and it is hurting me watching you dance around it like this.”
“Ominis, please.” He truly didn’t mean for it to sound like a plea, but the voice that left him sounded so small and lost that it was impossible for it to sound anything but.
Ominis opened his mouth to continue, to push the subject further, but with a sigh Sebastian pressed the leaves he had pulled from the tree into his best friend’s hand and hoped that he would understand. He couldn’t do this right now, desperate to escape the subject before it could mar the edges of the safe parts of autumn they had carved out for themselves.
There was silence for a moment as Ominis considered, milky eyes drifting back and forth as he thought, before finally he took a deep breath and ran his fingers across the leaves he balanced on his palm, as gentle as if they were made of glass.
“Rowan.”
Sebastian let out a breath he didn’t realise he had been holding, eternally grateful for the unspoken understanding that passed between them, the kind that could only be born from years of friendship so strong it bordered on brotherhood. He nodded, taking the leaf back from where Ominis held it delicately.
“Red.” He confirmed, “Rich as velvet, warm like a fireside mid-August.”
The rest of their walk back was uneventful, pointedly avoiding the subject of the girl that sat waiting for them once they returned. As soon as they had stepped into the common room, the air now warmed by fires crackling in the fireplaces, Ominis had excused himself under the premise of going to the library to finish some last minute work before classes resumed the next day. If it was a lie, Sebastian didn’t call him on it.
The leaf they had picked suddenly felt as if it were made of lead, heavy as it rested between Sebastian’s fingers. He cursed at the new weight it carried as he approached where she was sitting, the significance of its new meaning pulling his thoughts in a million different directions at once.
At the sound of his footsteps she turned to look up at him, and if his heart skipped a beat in a way he hadn’t noticed before when their eyes met, he ignored it. Wordlessly, he held it out to her, and the grin that plastered itself over her face as she took it from him was worth the extra half an hour the walk had taken.
“What did you want it for anyway?” He asked. The question had never seemed to have arisen during the search, but there was a new curiosity that bubbled to the surface as he stepped around the low sofa to sit next to her.
Before she had a chance to answer, he looked at the splay of books on the floor around her, the thin sheet of paper in her lap and the leaves that were arranged there. It was all so familiar to him, striking him with nostalgia like a slap across the face. “Wait, are you pressing these?”
“How did you know?” She asked, watching him with bright eyes as he slowly came to kneel on the floor beside her.
“My mother used to do this.” He muttered, gently lifting a stack of books and opening the bottom one to the pages where she had placed the paper, an arrangement that sang the colours of autumn nestled there. It was almost exactly the same as the way he had watched his mother do it, down to the way she had placed the leaves, the way she turned down the corner of the page to mark which one she had used.
A silence hung between them for a few moments as he lost himself in just how natural it seemed that of course, of course, of all the people to enjoy the simplicity of holding nature in its place, she was one of them.
“When we were young, Anne and I used to run off on these adventures.” Even as he began to explain, he couldn’t understand why he was telling her this, fingers moving of their own accord to take a sheet of paper from the pile in front of her. “We would be gone for hours, playing up on the highlands, and when we were heading home we would snatch up a handful of heather, or a few leaves from the tree we had played under.”
He could feel her eyes on him as he spoke, flicking between his face and his hands as he folded the paper, wedging it between the pages of the nearest book that lay open. Silently, she passed him a few of the wild flowers that lay in the shoe box between them, and he wondered if maybe she had spent long enough with him and Ominis that their personal brand of telepathy was starting to rub off on her. She didn’t try to ask questions, didn’t press him for more details. Instead, she waited patiently for him to continue, the moments of quiet passing with an understanding that when he was ready to talk, she would be ready to listen.
“When we got home, we would gather around my mother’s desk to tell her and my father our stories, put on little plays to show them what we had been up to. As we talked my mother would press our trophies in the pages of her books, and she would leave little notes next to them.”
He smiled against the weight of the memory, trying to push away the growing ache that always built up inside him when he thought of his parents, of his sister.
“‘Sebastian and Anne’s pirate ship’, ‘Princess Anne saved by gallant Sir Sebastian’. It always felt so important to bring something back to show them, something to prove that we had definitely defeated a dragon this time. I think once we even held up some grass to a street lamp so it would get singed.”
She chuckled next to him, passing him the next stack of books to be balanced on top of each other, the weight pressing out whatever moisture was left in the plants held amongst the volumes.
“Afterwards - after they…” Sebastian took a deep breath to steady himself. He didn’t realise that he had begun to shake until she took the page he had been working on away from him, freeing him to draw his knees up to his chest and hug them close. She continued to work in silence, waiting for him to carry on, never once looking over at him as if she expected him to do so. There was something about sitting there, her shoulder brushing up against his as she moved, that calmed him, taking the edge off of the pain.
“After they died, Solomon auctioned off all of their books. I didn’t even realise that we had lost all of those pages, all of those stories, until months after the last one had been sent away. I suppose it’s stupid to miss them now, long after they’re gone, but I would do anything to see them just one more time.”
She shook her head, looking down at the arrangement they had made together one last time before she softly shut the book, sneaking it to the bottom of the pile they had created. “I don’t think so.”
It was his turn to watch her now. There was a comfort to be found in the way that she flicked through the pages of the next book, hands steady as she held up flowers and leaves before the light of the fire to contemplate them. He wished that he had been born a legilimens so he could see the way her mind worked, the way that the shapes and meanings of the greenery in front of her mixed together until they found some sort of significance. There were flashes of emotion that flickered across her face, much too fast for him to catch, and he kicked himself for not paying more attention, trying desperately to figure out what was going on behind her eyes.
“Besides, those memories aren’t really gone.” Her eyes flicked across to his, and heat rushed up to his cheeks as he looked away, aware that he had been caught staring. “You just have to keep them alive, keep them with you.”
There was a moment's pause and he found himself looking in her direction again, meeting her shy smile with one of his own to match. The flickering light of the fire cast long shadows across her face, dancing across the freckles that dotted her cheeks and her nose. The warmth of the light suited her, Sebastian decided. She looked at home here, in her thick jumper and with her hair piled up on top of her head.
“If you want to talk about it - if you want to tell me, I would love to hear your stories.”
She held his gaze for a moment that felt like it could stretch into hours, neither of them daring to move for fear of breaking something that felt so precious, so full of possibility that they were frozen. Eventually Sebastian got a hold of himself and he nodded, earning himself a smile that cut right through the melancholy that had settled in his stomach. It was strange, he thought, that even on a late October evening, she found a way to bring the sun out.
She feigned an interest in the few flowers that were left in the box, but as he spoke he could feel the full weight of her attention on him. Her eyes would follow his hands as he motioned to things that were so clear in his memory, but that she would never see, the smile on her face an echo of his as the words flowed from him like water bursting from a dam.
He couldn’t recall if he had ever actually spoken with anybody but his sister about the games they would play as children, not even Ominis, and definitely not in as much detail. The more he told her, the more the memories rose to the surface, and he found himself running through all of them, each story blurring into the one that followed.
People moved in and out of the common room around them, all of them going unnoticed as they got lost in stories of daring sword battles, of protecting the village from an onslaught of werewolves and vampires, of fairy dances within the borders of the woods, just far enough away for it to feel exciting, but close enough that the village was never truly out of sight. He laid out his childhood before her, and she relived it alongside him.
The flowers had been long forgotten by the time he arrived at the story of Anne insisting that they must travel to the fey plain. She had convinced him to let her plait daisies into his hair so he would be safe from the pixies. Quite where she had gotten that idea he wasn’t sure, maybe from the fairy tales their father read to them when they went to bed, but she had been adamant, and even then he had never really been able to say no to his sister.
When he turned his face to look at her, her body now fully turned in his direction and her head resting on the arm she had leaned up onto the sofa next to them, her eyes were glistening and the smile wasn’t quite reaching them anymore. He trailed off mid-story, a shock of panic cutting through him, unable to figure out what had gone wrong.
“Did I upset you? I’m sorry, I didn’t realise, I should have noticed sooner-”
She laughed at him then, turning away and looking up at the ceiling. It wasn’t the same laugh from earlier, this one somehow sounding weaker, more forced.
“No, Sebastian, I’m fine.” Whatever was up on the ceiling must have been interesting, because her gaze remained fixed up there as she talked. “It’s just nice to hear you talking about Anne - about your family - without it looking like it’s hurting you.”
There was another pause then, and she began to absently pick at the skin on her thumbs. “My mother did something similar once. There was a ring of daisies in the garden, and she called me out to sit inside it so she could pick them and put them in my hair.” Her eyes finally made their way back to his, achingly tender. “She told me that they would keep me safe too.”
Something about her was too quiet, too guarded as she continued. “I refused to take them out for days, eventually she had to chase me around the house with a hairbrush because I had tied my hair in knots to stop them from falling away.”
Sebastian realised as she spoke that he had never heard her talk about her family before, letting his eyes drift closed as he listened.
“After that she made sure that the gardener always kept the lawn free from daisies, so I wouldn’t be tempted to pick them and plait them in myself.”
He really did mean to ask her about her parents, about where it was she had grown up, whether or not she had siblings that she had played with the same way he had played with Anne. He had so many questions, balanced on the tip of his tongue, but between the warmth of the fire and the soothing tone of her voice as she carried on talking, he found himself floating somewhere on the border between sleep and consciousness. The harder he fought the tighter the grip the drowsiness held on him became, and with words unsaid, her voice reassuringly close, sleep overcame him and he drifted off to pleasant dreams of fields of wild daisies.
Sebastian wasn’t quite sure where he was when he woke up, but for some reason, it didn’t bother him.
He was so warm and comfortable, something lying heavy over him, and above his head there was murmured conversation, oh so quiet and gentle. As he stirred, someone ran long, deft fingers through his hair, and he decided that maybe he just wasn’t going to open his eyes, and he could stay cosy here forever. His body protested though, muscles stiff and his mouth dry from laying still for so long.
Disappointed, he let his eyes open slowly, taking in the dark room around him. He was on the floor of the common room, he realised, settled against one of the sofas in front of a fire that was in the final stages of burning itself out. He was beyond confused, his sleep-addled brain trying to put together what had happened, how he had ended up here.
The slow rhythm of the fingers in his hair was so soothing, and despite his screaming muscles and the ache in his back that suggested he definitely shouldn’t stay here, he was ready to give up and drift back off when somebody said his name. He smiled against the pillow his head rested on. He knew that voice, recognised it from the fields in his dream. It belonged to a girl he knew barely nothing and yet everything about, but whose presence eased his soul, and she was calling him back to her.
There was a light laugh, his body shifting slightly with the movement, and then the voice came again.
“Sebastian, I think you should go to bed.”
Oh.
His eyes flew open, and she was smiling down at him, amusement in her eyes as she watched him put the pieces together. He searched fruitlessly for words, shifting uncomfortably against the smooth stone against his back, mouth flapping open and closed in panic as it dawned on him that he had fallen asleep in her lap.
“Merlin, I am so sorry, I didn’t mean - how long have I been asleep for? I’m sorry, truly, I-” He could feel the heat rushing up to his cheeks again, could picture his face turning beet red as she laughed down at him. The fire had been raging in the hearth last thing he had remembered, and now it had burned down to embers, barely glowing in the fireplace.
“You’re fine Sebastian, honestly. It’s only been a few hours.” His eyes flew back to hers, wide with shock.
“Hours?”
He sat up then, and as her fingers left his hair he found that the sudden lack of contact made him feel colder than the loss of the blanket that slipped from his shoulders. For a single, crazy moment he was tempted to lie back down, just so that she would put them back and he could settle into the contentment once again.
“Why didn’t you wake me up?” His voice was still thick with sleep, the world around him slowly starting to come into focus. The way she was looking at him though, with a smile so full of affection it made the breath catch in his throat, made everything else irrelevant.
“You looked peaceful.” She shrugged, and it felt like somebody was pulling the rug out from under Sebastian’s feet. She had sat there, unmoving, for hours, all because he looked peaceful. Something inside him shifted, and whatever it was that Ominis had set into motion on their walk earlier finally clicked into place. It was like he was seeing her for the first time all over again, so perfectly whole and here that it was dizzying.
He watched her as she stretched, and wondered how he had never noticed it before, how it had taken him so long to see through himself and to get to the reality of her. His thoughts groped for the words to describe what he felt, but the only thing that came to him were echoes of what he had said earlier, so out of context and yet so fitting.
Rich like velvet, warm as a fireside mid-August.
Slowly she got to her feet, and he was longing to reach out to her, to ask her to stay for just a few more minutes so he could soak up a little more of her light. A few minutes would never be enough though, a voice called to him from the back of his mind, he wanted to bask in her for hours, for days at a time.
“Your books, I can help you carry them.” He scrambled, the words clumsy as they tumbled out, desperate for an excuse to stay by her side for just a little longer.
She waved them away with a dismissive hand. “Just push them under the coffee table for now, I’ll collect them in the morning before classes.”
He was on his knees at her feet, swathed in a puddle of blanket. He must have looked so pathetic, hair tousled from sleep and bleariness still in his eyes, but the way that she was looking down at him with a wholesome, unguarded fondness wiped away all of his insecurities.
“Goodnight Sebastian.” He didn’t know if the hint of sadness in her voice as she said goodbye was real, or if a selfish part of his brain that was begging for her to want to stay with him had slipped it in, but the softness with which she had spoken had made his heart jump into his throat.
She looked away, and he was certain that he didn’t imagine the ghost of a smirk just before they had broken their eye contact.
“Goodnight Ominis.”
Sebastian whipped his head around, and sure enough, there sat his best friend, lounging on the sofa opposite the one they had leant against.
He was never going to hear the end of this.
Sebastian felt like someone had poured a bucket of ice water over his head, and suddenly he was wide awake, jaw slack as he stared at the casual way Ominis waved goodnight as she left, footsteps fading into the darkness. With a groan, Sebastian found his feet and dropped himself onto the sofa behind him, burying his head in his hands in embarrassment.
“Don’t say anything, Ominis, I’m begging you. I don’t want to hear it.”
There was a chuckle across from him, but there was none of the ‘told-you-so’ tone that Sebastian had expected colouring the voice of his friend when he finally spoke. If anything, there was only a welcome compassion that eased the sting of Sebastian’s humiliation.
“I don’t think there’s anything to say.”