Up and Down

Delusion and Decision

Spoilers for "In the Shadow of the Mine".

Things seem almost normal when Anna is discharged the next day. Rumours of her being injured in the skirmish at Feldcroft have already travelled the school, and she is reminded of how it was after the Hogsmeade troll incident.

Almost.

Whispers, stares, respectful glances and fearful distance.

There is a reason she doesn't share even a quarter of the trouble she gets into with anyone else. People only know bits and pieces, like sweet Hufflepuff Adelaide Oaks that heard tales from her uncle about her breaking into and breaking apart a whole encampment of Loyalists, or Amit, being unable to stop talking about the time he had to follow her into a goblin mine.

Anyone else but Sebastian. Dear, reckless Sebastian who seems to relish the fact that he is very much suspected by the student body of courting her, the most notorious troublemaker in school... after him, of course.

She likes to think of herself as a bit more heroic, rather than troublesome. But that isn't for her to decide.

Ominis is a bit more in the dark about her extracurricular activities, but mainly because she doesn't want him to worry himself sick. She'd rather he chide the two of them for being reckless after the fact rather than leave him a nervous wreck for an entire evening until they drag themselves back into the castle, often late and often covered in blood, dirt and soot.

So, not even a day after being discharged from the Hospital Wing, she finds herself standing in front of a different goblin mine.

They trade jokes and quips as they approach the encampment, brazen and fearless. Sebastian clearly relishes the upcoming scrap.

"You know what way I like this to go," he says with a smirk.

She knows all too well.

Fire and ice and Dark magic split the winter air as they battle their way inside, heedless of anyone who might be able to see them... because they do not intend for anyone to be left alive by the time they are done. Nevertheless, they have eschewed and hid their school robes as they entered, but in any event who will even believe two fifth-years capable of finding in themselves enough malice to cast Crucio and Imperio on command?

Certainly not the kindly professor Fig, who has no idea what his protégé has gotten herself into. She prays he never finds out. His disappointment would be impossible to bear.

The underground air stinks of blood and acrid smoke, and Anna's wand is thrumming with the feeling of power.

But at what cost, a soft voice in the back of her mind - the voice that sounds suspiciously like Ominis - asks her and she ignores it.

The secret space created by Isidora Morganach, more pages strewn about the floor, notes, implements and discarded experiments, opens before them, a thick layer of dust on everything around indicating that not a soul has been here in hundreds of years.

Sebastian's breath ghosts the back of her neck as they lean over the table, scanning the notes, but she pushes him back with one hand. She doesn't particularly feel attractive or attracted at the moment, the coppery tang of blood still lingering on her tongue, on her clothes, and her hair stinks of fire and burnt flesh.

She barely even wants to speak, so she shakes her head and he does not press further.

Anna finds the rolled-up piece of canvas and beckons for Sebastian to take her hand. The Undercroft is just on the other side of the enchanted glass-like surface, and she steps through, pulling him in.