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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"Do we have to?" Sebastian whines, pulling me on top of him and kissing my lips, wrapping an arm around my torso and holding my cheek in the other. He tastes like the plum tarts we polished off for dessert after eating most of the rest of the dinner I brought along, each of us ravenous from the intensity of our...energy expenditure. "Let's stay here, love," he growls. "Let's stay here forever. Do it all again."
His fingers run along my waistband, threatening to pull at my clothes again before he rolls us to the side, swapping our positions so I'm squarely beneath him. He plasters rapid kisses around my face and it makes me burst with laughter. I push him from me, my fingers catching in the edges of his open shirt, and I attempt to reason with him, "we're going to get an earful from Ominis if we show up any later. I think we're well past the duration for 'out for a walk'. They'll be expecting us."
"What's it been...an hour?" Sebastian asks sweetly as he brushes my hair from my face, fighting with the gentle breeze to keep it from my eyes. His insistence and mild frustration brings a boyishness into the look of his face that momentarily eclipses the worry lines that have begun to settle between his brows over the years.
"Closer to two and a half," I clarify and I hear a chortle catch somewhere in Sebastian's sinuses. "In that case, we're going to get an earful from Ominis no matter what," he retorts.
It's a good point.
"So let's stay," he says through a grin in a way that makes me feel how seriously he wishes we could. But, with a sigh, he kneels back, saying, "I knowwww, we can't." He extends a hand to me as he says, "let me fix your hair first." And I take his hand willingly, sure my expression conveys how I am most intrigued.
He helps me settle, kneeling in front of him with my back to him, and I revel in the feeling of Sebastian's fingers brushing along my scalp my mind replays the events of the evening:
The proud look he gave me when I told him I'd spent the day in the library and that the stack of books I'd gotten are to help me better understand the links between love and magic (made all the more interesting by tonight's events), and to read about the mechanics and limits of the unforgivable curses. 'I'll be curious to see which titles intrigued you,' he had said, 'I'll bet you a galleon I've read them.' My stomach fills with the same feeling of butterflies to think of his haughty smile.
The way my heart broke when Sebastian explained how draining his mornings at the Ministry of Magic are, and to see how frustrated he is by the Unspeakable charms that prevent him from talking about it more freely. I'm excited by the prospect of getting clearance, myself, to work alongside him however I can, but I know I need to temper my expectations until things are more set in stone.
The sweet way he thanked me for tonight. How he said he can't remember a time he wasn't trying to contain himself or hold back in some way. How relieved he is that his feelings don't scare me and not only don't hurt me, but can be transmuted through my magic.
