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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"What is it you've got there?" Ominis asks me as I make my way down the bridgeway of the repository. After breakfast we returned to the room of requirement, and Ominis came straight here but I doubled-back to snag Sebastian's folio and satchel. It clinks slightly as I walk, the way I noticed it doing when Sebastian first met me in the hallway outside the room of requirement.
God I was so nervous that day. Which ended up being the first time we...
I shake off the shiver that runs through my body as I tell Ominis, "this is what I need to show you. What I told you about last night."
"April, I'm filled with a terribly vague sense of foreboding. Won't you just tell me what this is about, please?" Ominis says with a raised eyebrow.
"Come, sit with me," I say, taking his arm gently and guiding him to the center of the bridgeway. I set the leather satchel in front of us and take out the folio, placing it in Ominis' lap.
"What is this?" he asks, his fingers already making quick work of exploring the edges, divots, and buckles. "Open it," I urge.
He slowly pulls it open, instinctively careful to not let the over-stuffed contents spill outwards. His fingers trace along the glass vials stacked neatly along the left side. He explores the pockets of papers, and loops that secure quills. "Is this some kind of notebook?" he asks as he continues to rifle through the papers.
"This belongs to Sebastian," I say, frankly, explaining, "he showed this to me a couple weeks ago and told me it was his most prized possession."
"Sooo...." Ominis say with a thick degree of skepticism. "...I hate to point out the fact that I still don't know what it is."
"It's my letters – all the ones that got to him, anyway – and all the letters he wrote in return."
"But you never received a response from him..." Ominis says.
"That's true. But only because he never sent them. The fact is he wrote more letters to me over the years than I did to him. Numbers of them are addressed to you, too. And he set aside memories. That's what's in the vials. Things he said he would have wanted to share with us. He asked me to show them to you, if you're willing."
"Do you know what they are?" Ominis asks me, with an uncomfortable clenching setting into his voice. "Have you viewed them?"
"No," I say calmly. "I've read some of the letters but haven't had time to go through them all. They give a lot of context, Ominis." I loop my arm through his as I try to explain as warmly as I can, "he didn't forget us. He never really 'moved on' so to speak. And he's kept his eyes out for anything that could help Anne..."
I remember what he told me about sending her parcels over the years. "By the way, did you know he sent parcels to her?"
