Ten years after I began at Hogwarts, Sebastian Sallow is back. And he's Professor Sallow now. He disappeared after the fall of Ranrok and Rookwood, after I lost Professor Fig, and after Ominis and I couldn't keep him from losing himself. But I never...
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The solitude of my walk through the forest is a reprieve I didn't know I needed. If anyone were to have asked me, I'd have said I was keeping a strong handle on everything happening. And maybe I was at first. But it's almost as though each issue that's cropped up has taken to the sky like a massive kite, soaring high into the air. The first was colorful, exciting and fun. And then there was another, even more wild and large. And then every one thereafter has been a greater behemoth than the previous, and though I'm holding steadfast to all the strings on the ground, it's suddenly feeling very likely that I could be swept off a cliffside and out to sea.
I'm worried for Kai and his colony. The helplessness the other beasts and species must be feeling overwhelms me and almost brings me to tears. How scared they must be. And for those that aren't sentient to not understand why it's all happening, I feel a boil overcome me and I cast off the energy of my sudden heartache as a burst of bright blue magic from my chest, through my hands, and out into my surroundings. The area briefly flashes and then my magic dissipates, floating like dust to cling to the moss and loam like a magical glitter.
I'm nervous about the repository and the process of parsing my own magic from Isadora's. Then there's the question of what to do with her magic. What Headmaster Helvig could want it for. It makes me feel nauseous to consider reliving the nightmare of Ranrok.
And if you'd have asked me a month ago, I never would have guessed in a million years that Sebastian would be home, and he would be mine. I think about him constantly and my body continually aches with an undertow of craving him.
It's a feeling at odds with how I think about Ominis, and how valid he is to feel angry and distant. To not want to run to welcome Sebastian back, after so many years of pain. And I can't help but wonder about Anne – how she took the news, and if she wants to see her brother.
Oh, and meanwhile, I have dozens of students to think of.
God, this is a lot.
What rings loudest in my mind are Kai's words about jealousy being a kind of dark magic and I feel the truth of his words. Thinking back to when I was a student, I can vividly recall how defensive Sebastian would become if I spoke to Ominis alone. It dawns on me that the day Sebastian (quite easily) cast the Cruciatus curse on me to enter Slazar Slytherin's scriptorium, I had been studying with Ominis in the library earlier that afternoon and Sebastian was not thrilled. And god help us all to endure his often days-long despondency if I had spent any time with Garreth Weasley (which was awfully difficult to avoid, seeing as we were both Gryffindors). It was so maddening. So frustrating.
And yet, part of it felt...good. The same kind of good I would feel lifting a poacher into the air with the power of my mind, alone, and thrashing them into the ground like a rag doll for all their atrocities against helpless creatures. The same kind of good I felt when I had Sebastian under the stunning spell in the Undercroft, and omigod how it felt even better being under his spell and in his control. I can recognize that, even as a student, a part of me liked the feeling of Sebastian wanting me so intensely and the idea of being held on reserve for him, alone. It felt...feels...powerful. Dark. Sexy.
