Sinner // Sebastian Sallow

FOUR

Your reoccurring nightmares plague your nights more frequently than you'd like. A peaceful sleep becomes rare after you face challenges no wizard should, especially when those challenges were designed to drag you with them.

Your nightmare is just the same as always tonight. As soon as your consciousness fades in the real world, your awareness of the dreamworld wakes up.

You're woken in a hurricane. A hurricane of memories, dark forces and the one hellbent on your kidnapping - Ranrok still sends shudders down your spine.

Some of these memories come blurry, others clear as day, but the power of the winds around you pushes you straight off your feet. Fallen to your knees, you're helpless and vulnerable in a whirlwind of despair.

Your composure was so good at the time, no one would've guessed how nervous you really were, but dreams know all your weaknesses and darkest secrets. Whatever you hide, it'll come straight back to you in the dead of night.

There's a scream somewhere in your throat, lodged in and stuck like glue, but you can't bring yourself to search for it. The wind is too powerful to think about anything else but the swirling images. There's no way you'll stay planted on your feet for long. You can't bear the sights, and you certainly can't stand the force.

You never stay on the ground in your whirlwind-style dreams. It's never long before you're whisked away into the darkest and deepest parts of your mind, which usually triggers your real world consciousness. You're so used to the terrors that you gave up fighting long ago. The sooner they pull you up into the air, the sooner the dream will release you.

But, you never had a pair of piercing green eyes holding you down before.

Green eyes?

And, just like that, your feet refuse to move. As soft as they are, they lock you to the floor sooner than you can register what's happening. You keep yourself propped up on your palms, legs rendered immobile, and stare. That's all you can do, because those eyes have your own locked in too.

Whether it's the shock or the distasteful feeling settling in your gut, you're pulled out of your dream faster than you can think. Instead of a shadowed figure and a torrent of bad omens, you're sat bolt upright in your Hufflepuff dorm, in the cold and black of night.

Your chest heaves and your blood runs a mile a minute. The adrenaline is enough to keep you from sleeping, especially when you've not had a dream like that before.

There's been no one to help you for the longest time and, yet, in your dreams your cries have started to garner attention - the wrong kind of attention.

In your conscious mind you can place those eyes almost immediately, stomach curling at the mere thought of that somebody slithering into your head.

You won't have it. One small conversation and you've let that stupid boy in. After your conversation in the Undercroft, you're paranoid. Every lesson and every break, you're eyeing him like a hawk. If he's watching you, you can't tell, but just the mere thought of it being admitted so openly drives you crazy. No one can know about your fall into the dark arts; you don't even want Sebastian knowing.

Why he's supposedly watching you, you have no idea. Nothing about your interest in the dark arts brings him any benefit. All your use to him was left behind long ago enough to put the miles between you both. To most, it's like you never knew each other at all.

So why did he waltze into the Undercroft like you were best of friends?

You shake your head, rubbing your temples with your fingers. There's no use trying to debate it. Knowing you could be studied by him every waking moment kills you enough as it is, you won't allow him into your sleep. The less you think about him, the less likely he is to appear.

Seems like an easy enough task, no?

But even as you spell it all out, you're already doubting it.

[A/N - lil note from moi, if it feels a little rushed, there's good reason for it. I won't say much else other than that...and bear in mind, you've already gone through the entire Hogwarts Legacy storyline together, so it's not like you're strangers. Usually I like writing a build up to meeting, but it feels unnatural for this story]