Touched

Shadow of the Book - Fifth Year

Ominis POV

Ominis awoke to a small yelp and hard, heavy breathing. It must've been very early morning, no one was moving or talking. A nightmare. He knew it was Sebastian. He could hear him sniffle quietly and then lie back into bed. Ominis didn't say anything, he knew that Sebastian was embarrassed about this kind of things and so he left it alone. He wondered quietly if it was about Anne, and he longed to put his hand over into the other bed to comfort him.
 
——

"How did you sleep?" Y/N said brightly at the breakfast table. Ominis could tell she was sitting across from sebastian and himself.

Sebastian was being oddly quiet and she was trying to diffuse the tension most likely.

"Yeah fine," Sebastian mustered. "You?"

"Oh, good," she replied. "But I think someone left a fizzing whiz bee under my pillow. I felt something scratching all night."

Sebastian laughed gently.

"Are you ok, Sebastian?" The girl asked. Her voice was soft and she'd lowered the volume as though not to alert anyone else that she was asking this boy about his feelings. Ominis felt him shrug against him. He wasn't usually like this. His nightmare must've been that bad?

"I got an owl this morning, from my uncle."

Ominis' hand instinctively went to Sebastian's leg and tested there on the middle of this thigh. Sebastian coughed, hiding a choke. Ominis realise his heart had leapt many beats higher as he waited for Sebastian to speak. He loved Anne, he'd wager almost as much as Sebastian did. They'd grown up together. Played together, laughed together. This curse was affecting everyone.

"My sister - Anne - she's getting worse. My uncle thinks.. he thinks I should go over there and say goodbye. Just in case. I'm trying so hard to find her a cure but it's so hard and in the materials I'm looking at-" Ominis heard him stutter for a moment and he said, "I just don't know what else I can look at."

"We'll go together," Ominis told Sebastian, his hand still on the boys thigh.

Sebastian POV

Sebastian didn't know how much longer he could handle the anxiety and sadness of the sickness of his twin sister.  It had already been eating him from the inside out for a few months. He missed her, dreadfully.

"I'll send an owl to tell you we're going to Feldcroft," Sebastian said to Y/N, who nodded eagerly. He stood up as though to leave and the girl called out.

"Hold on Sebastian," she said, following him from the table. They kept walking together. "Is there any way I can help you get through this?"

Her e/c eyes looked up at him so kindly, so innocently, so raring to help that he smiled a crooked smile.

"Just stay by my side," he told her. "Come with me. Anne would love to meet you."

"Of course I will, Sebastian." She was so close that he could almost count her freckles, analyse her face. She had an angular jaw and cheekbones and freckles sprinkled them generously. Her lips were right there -

"I'll send you an owl," he said to her, and she nodded, smiling, and departed. She walked back towards where Ominis was sitting alone at the table, vaguely looking at his breakfast plate with wide eyes. Sebastian should've checked in on his friend, he knew. But sometimes he felt as though Ominis shouldn't feel so strongly. That was stupid, he knew, because they had been a trio of best friends since Ominis came crying that he couldn't stay at his parents manor any longer. They'd gone through so much together.

Sebastian shook it off and swore to himself that he'd go back later and ask his friend how he took the news.

Ominis POV

Ominis was in the Slytherin dormitory. He was determined to find the material in which Sebastian spoke about at the breakfast table. He'd said he had been consulting some material about how to cure Anne. He was going to find it, so that he could help.

It had to be around the dormitory somewhere. First he had to figure out which was Sebastian's bed, which wasn't difficult, because it was next to his, but also it was a horrific mess. Ominis kept his neat and orderly, bed made - books stacked. Trunk at the end of his bed. Wardrobe had the robes and clothes hung up in catergories of what they were.

When he walked over to Sebastian's bed, he felt around, but his area was just an array of clothes and books and papers and his bedsheets were all over the place.

"Merlin," Ominis breathed, frustrated. "Should remind him he needs to bring his maid to school with him. What's wrong with this boy?"

His hand ran over the bedsheets, soft - then some hard cover books. He grabbed one that was tucked under the pillow. Transfigured a page. Ran his finger of the braille. "..revolution was reknowned by wizards for centuries and something blah blah history," he said out loud, transfigured it back and put it under the pillow. That wasn't right. He ran his hand down the side of the bed to under the mattress. If anyone was going to hide something it would be here.

And he was right. A rather large, leather bound book was under Sebastian's mattress.

Ominis was almost scared to transfigure a page. But he did. He ran his fingers again over the braille.

"Dark magic cannot be wielded with caution. A wizard must mean what he casts - and without intent you ought not get what you want."

Ominis shook his head slowly. "The cruciatis curse is hard to master but easy to cast-"

A small note had been left on this page. He couldn't transfigure this.

"Fuck," he cursed under his breath. "I can't read this shit."

He heard a door close downstairs in the common room and briefly panicked. He took the note and shoved it in his robe pocket, slammed the book shut and shoved it under the mattress again.

It was just Mika, another Slytherin boy from their dorm.

"What are you doing up here at this time?" He asked Ominis. "Thought you had potions."

"Oh, I do," said ominis confidently. "I just came back up to find my textbook. I can't find it."

"It's just here," Mika said cautiously, grabbing something off Ominis' bed.

"Right," ominis nodded, grabbing his wand out. "I didn't have my wand out. That doesn't make it easy for me," he tried to chuckle but it came out an annoyed sigh. He wished he could read this note. He couldn't very well ask Mika to read it for him.

But he could ask Y/N.