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The Hog’s Head was a tomb of a pub, lit by candles that burned more on spite than wax.
Larissa didn't bother sheathing the dagger. She let the blood dry on the silver, the weight of the metal a grounding comfort against her palm. Across from her, Reika was blinking, unbothered by the corpses but deeply distressed by a smudge of dirt on her own sleeve.
"Larissa," Reika whispered, voice airy and disconnected, as if reciting a nursery rhyme. "The bad men are sleeping now. But if the Ministry comes, they’ll send us to… to the bad island. Ask-a-ban? With the floating blanket ghosts?"
"Azkaban, Reika," Larissa corrected, voice a low, jagged rasp. She watched the door, not her friend. "And they aren't blanket ghosts. They're Dementors."
"They eat happy thoughts," Reika hummed, tilting her head. "I don't like them. These men were rude, anyway. They shouldn't have tried to curse us. It’s not polite."
"They were Death Eaters, Rei," Larissa snapped, though her tone lacked heat. "They were going to kill us. There’s no polite in war."
"Survival is messy," Reika parroted, finally looking up as the heavy oak door groaned open. Her eyes went wide with sudden, childlike wonder. "Oh. Look. His hair is bright. Like a pumpkin."
Larissa’s hand went instinctively to her thigh, fingers brushing the leather straps where three more blades were tucked. She expected more masks. She expected a fight.
What she got was worse.
Sebastian Sallow stepped into the gloom, looking like he’d crawled through a war zone. Robes singed, face streaked with soot, knuckles split. Behind him, Garreth Weasley hovered like a nervous shadow - the pumpkin in question - clutching a shimmering vial like a holy relic.
Sebastian’s eyes swept the room, landing on the bodies, then on Larissa. His lip curled in visceral disgust.
"Well, well," he drawled, voice cutting through the smell of stale ale and iron. "The gutter-rat and her pet. I should have known I'd find you in a hole like this, Larissa. Covered in blood and looking like the piece of filth you are."
"One more word, Sallow," Larissa hissed, standing slowly. The hatred was a physical knot in her chest. "One more word from that pathetic, over-privileged mouth and I’ll see if your blood is as rotten as your soul."
"Always so violent," he sneered, stepping into her space. He rested his hand on the hilt of the dagger at his holster. "It's a shame. You have the raw power of something ancient, yet use it to play with kitchen utensils. You're a waste of potential. I find the very scent of you offensive."
"Then look away, you fuckin’ snake," she spat, eyes flickering to his green tie. "Go back to your manor and pretend you're not just as stained as I am."
"At least my stains have a purpose," he countered, inches from her face. "You're just a stray looking for a throat to rip out."
Garreth, sensing the impending explosion, tried to interject. "Guys, please, I just - I need to settle this reaction. It’s a very delicate balance of - "
He tripped. Garreth’s boot caught a knot in the wood. "Whoops," he breathed, watching in horror as the vial went flying.
It shattered against the table, spraying a fine, iridescent mist directly into their faces.
The air turned sickly sweet - rotting roses and burnt sugar. Larissa barely had time to cough before the vapour sank into her lungs.
Her pulse kicked violently. The hatred didn’t fade; it fermented. It shifted from cold precision into a boiling, hungry pressure. She looked at Sebastian. He wasn’t sneering anymore. His breath drew in ragged pulls, pupils blown wide until his eyes were twin abysses. His gaze dragged over her throat, the sweat at her collarbone, and his hand tightened on the hilt of his blade.
This was a love elixir gone wrong - warped, brutal, turning affection feral. Her hatred fed it. It didn’t replace the loathing; it sharpened it, transforming the desire to ruin him into a savage need to possess him, to split him open and see if Sallow blood burned as hot as her own.
"What the hell did you do?" Sebastian growled, pulse racing in the hollow of his soot-stained throat.
"Me!? You let that idiot bring his sludge in here," Larissa hissed. She backed away, but it wasn't a retreat; it was the coiling of a spring. She felt dampness between her thighs, a heavy, pulse-driven ache making her teeth hurt. She turned on her heel, shoving past the stunned Garreth and a waving Reika, and stormed out into the biting Highland air.
She didn't make it far. She ducked into the shadow of an abandoned apothecary two doors down, the door groaning as she kicked it open.
She wasn't alone for more than a second.
The door slammed shut behind her, and a hand clamped around her arm with bruising force. The touch was like a brand. Larissa spun, her silver dagger clearing its sheath in a blur. She pressed the tip right into the soft skin beneath his jaw, forcing his head back.
"Touch me again, Sallow, and I'll carve my name into your fucking ribs," she threatened, voice trembling with need.
Sebastian didn't flinch. He let out a low, breathy laugh against the point of her knife. He stepped into the blade, letting the tip draw a single, tiny bead of crimson.
"Go on then, little bird," he murmured, voice a dark caress. "I've always wanted to see how you sign your name."
The potion surged. Sebastian’s eyes darkened with rage and raw need. He pinned Larissa against the cold stone wall, the streetlamp outside casting flickering shadows across her defiant face.
"You think you can glare at me and walk away untouched, Shelby?" he growled, the vibration humming against her skin. He brought his dagger to the collar of her long black coat.
With deliberate slowness, he sliced downward. The wool parted like a wound, revealing the black lace of her bra and the pale hollow of her throat. Larissa trembled, hatred warring with the wet heat in her belly, forcing her thighs to press together as the cool steel grazed the air between them.
"Look at you shaking." He dragged the flat of the blade down her throat, the steel gliding cool and unyielding over the swell of her breast. He paused, the tip hovering just above her nipple, watching it harden instantly under the thin black lace. "Begging for attention," he taunted, voice thick with hunger, "even if you won't admit you crave me."
"Don't flatter yourself," Larissa choked out, head falling back against the dusty shelves. "My body is reacting to a chemical, Sallow. My mind still wants to see you dead in a ditch."
"Is that right?" Sebastian challenged, watching the way her chest rose and fell against his blade. "Then why are you arching into the steel, Larissa? Why aren't you stabbing me?"
"Because right now," she whispered, eyes losing focus as the potion rewrote her survival instincts, "the thought of you stopping hurts more than the blade. Because I want to see if you can break me before I break you."
"Let's find out."
He hooked the dagger under her bra strap, severing it with a flick. The lace fell away. The blade circled the underside of her breast before trailing down to the flare of her hip. He sliced through the waistband of her skirt in one clean stroke. It pooled at her feet, leaving her exposed, shivering, and wet.
"Fuck, you're dripping already," he groaned, the scent hitting him like a physical blow. "Hate me all you want, but this body's mine to uncover. Mine to claim."
Larissa snapped. "Yours? You arrogant prick."
She moved faster than the potion should have allowed. Her hand whipped up, silver dagger shredding the lapel of his coat. With a feral growl, she slashed downward, parting his waistcoat and shirt, exposing the pale, scarred skin of his chest.
"You want to play with knives, Sallow?" she hissed, pressing the flat of her cold blade against his heated abdomen. "Then let’s see who bleeds first."
She grabbed his belt buckle, yanking him forward, crashing her hips against his. Sebastian dropped his forehead to hers, breaths mingling.
"Do it," he dared, hand wrapping around her throat. "Cut the belt. Free me. Unless you're too scared of what I'm going to do to you."
"I'm not scared of a boy who plays with dark magic because he misses his sister," she spat, knowing exactly where to hurt him.
Sebastian’s eyes went pitch black. The insult didn't push him away; it snapped the last tether.
He didn't speak. He reached down, tearing his trousers open, buttons popping and skittering across the floor. He shoved the material down, and the sight of him stole the air from Larissa's lungs. His cock was painfully, violently hard - a thick, angry length of flesh twitching with need, the head glistening with pre-cum, weeping with the same desperate, chemical lust that matched her own. He looked like he was in physical pain, his veins protruding, hips jerking as if the air itself was too much friction.
He grabbed her waist, slamming her back against the stone wall. But before he entered her, he paused.
"You think I need magic to break you?" he snarled, his voice a broken rasp.
He brought his dagger down between her legs. He didn't cut; he teased. He used the flat edge of the athame to rub against her aching, swollen slit, the contrast of the freezing metal and her scorching flesh sending a jolt of electricity through her spine. Then, with a cruelty that blurred her vision, he pressed the steel directly against her clit.
"Fuck!" Larissa screamed, head thrown back, hands scrabbling on his shoulders.
"Look at me," he commanded, grinding the blade against her most sensitive point.
She looked. And that was the mistake.
She saw the ruin in his eyes, the violence barely held back, and the potion twisted it - warping fear into sickening arousal. It wasn't just the chemical. She liked the blade there. Liked that he could hurt her but chose pleasure instead. The danger was the aphrodisiac; the potion just kicked the door down.
"That's it," Sebastian hissed, seeing the surrender. "You like the knife, don't you? You like knowing I could end you."
He moved the blade in a rhythmic, unyielding friction.
Larissa shattered.
She didn't surrender, she came apart. The potion magnified the twisted truth of her own desires a thousand times over, and she convulsed around the knife, her cries echoing off the stone walls in humiliated, devastating ecstasy.
Sebastian didn't let her come down. The second her spasms began to fade, he gripped her hip and spun her around, slamming her chest hard against the cold stone wall.
"My turn," he growled against her ear.
He pressed his body flush against her back, searing heat through the damp air. He brought his dagger up, pressing the flat of the blade horizontally against her throat, pulling her head back so she was forced to look up at the rotting ceiling, neck bared.
Larissa didn't drop her weapon. Even as her knees buckled, instinct took over. She reached back blindly, jamming the point of her silver dagger hard against his lower ribs, finding the soft spot between the bone.
"Try it," she panted, the threat trembling but real.
"Do it," he dared her.
He didn't prepare her. He lined himself up and drove into her with a single, punishing thrust meant to conquer.
Larissa screamed, the sound torn from her throat as he filled her completely, stretching her beyond comfort. The angle was deeper, rougher, invading her in the most absolute way possible. But she didn't try to get away. She arched her back, grinding her hips back against his groin to take him deeper, free hand clawing the stone wall.
She tightened her grip on the knife at his ribs until a trickle of warm blood ran over her fingers, matching the rhythm of his thrusts.
"I hate you," she sobbed, the pleasure feeling like dying. "I hate you, I hate you."
"Good," Sebastian snarled, hips snapping against her buttocks. He pressed the knife tighter to her throat - control, not a cut. "Hate me. Loathe me. Just don't you dare stop gripping down on me like that."
He didn't give her a choice. He withdrew almost fully before slamming back in with a violence that knocked the breath from her lungs. Larissa’s forehead cracked against the stone, pain swallowed by blinding pleasure.
"You feel like a vice," Sebastian groaned, voice wrecked. "Fuck, Larissa. You're trying to snap me in half, aren't you?"
"Shut up," she panted, meeting his thrusts with a desperate, feral rhythm. She wanted to hurt him. She wanted to win. But the friction was blurring the line between winning and surrendering.
"Does it scare you?" he bit out, teeth scraping the pulse point of her neck. "Knowing I'm this deep inside you? Knowing you're letting a Sallow take everything he wants?"
"I'm taking... exactly what I'm owed," she gasped, dragging her point down his ribs, scoring the skin to claim him back. "I'm carving my name, remember? I'm making sure you never forget who owns this pain."
"Then ruin me," he roared, control snapping. "Do it!"
He abandoned all rhythm. He fucked her with a frantic, punishing speed, yanking her head back by her hair.
"Useful," he sneered against her skin, the word dripping with the poisonous resentment of fifth year. "That's all you've ever been to me, Larissa. A conduit. Just a way for me to get exactly what I need. So be useful now. Take it."
The insult was meant to degrade her, to reduce her to a tool, but Larissa twisted it. She didn't shrink away. She slammed her hips back against him with a violence that rattled his teeth, driving the point of her knife harder into his side until she felt the rib bone.
"If I'm a conduit, Sebastian," she hissed, venom matching his, "then I hope this power burns you alive. Use me. Go on. See if you survive it this time."
The challenge shattered him. The realisation that she was willing to be his destruction as long as she took him down with her sent him over the edge.
"I'll survive you," he growled, feeling her inner muscles tightening like a fist. "Now clamp down. Wring me dry until there's nothing left."
Larissa broke once more. Her legs gave out, body bowing forward as the orgasm ripped through her. She screamed into the stone, hand convulsing on the knife at his ribs as her body milked him with a crushing force.
It was too much. Sebastian groaned, a raw, animalistic sound, and drove into her one last time, burying himself so deeply inside her. He held her there, pinned between his body and the wall, pouring himself into her as his hips jerked with the release.
For a long moment, the only sound was their broken breathing and the dripping of sweat and blood on the floor.
They stayed locked together, trembling, the potion’s heat slowly ebbing to leave them in the cold reality. Larissa moved first. She didn't drop her knife. She slumped against the wall, legs shaking, but kept the blade pressed to his side.
"Get off me," she whispered. Her voice sounded wrecked.
Sebastian pulled out slowly, the friction drawing a shiver from her. He stepped back, zipping his trousers with shaking hands, but he didn't sheath his dagger either. He wiped a smear of blood from his ribs, looked at it, then at her - dishevelled, ruined, and magnificent.
"The potion," he said, voice hoarse. The excuse they both needed.
"The potion," Larissa agreed, clutching her torn coat together.
They stood in the dark, enemies once more, both holding knives, both bleeding, and both knowing that nothing between them would ever be the same again.