How to Make a Villain - [Sebastian Sallow x F!OC]

[five]

TW: implied murder, parental loss.

-x-

The curtains were drawn.

Why were the curtains drawn?

Her mother hated having the house closed up in summer. She'd always made a point of leaving the windows open, welcoming in the summer breeze and the sound of cicadas singing in the fields beyond the house. Aurélie had always liked it that way, too; when the summer nights were hot and her bedsheets stuck to her skin, the sound of the nearby ocean through the open windows would lull her to sleep.

Tonight was one of those nights. So why was everything shut tight?

The sitting room was thick with shadows: no light, no warmth — cold despite the season. Aurélie called out, but her trembling voice was swallowed up by the darkness.

'Maman?'

No answer.

Why?

Slowly, indistinct shapes began to take form in the darkness, revealing themselves through the gloom as nothing more than flat, featureless silhouettes.

A bookcase —

Her father's reading chair —

And two piles of blankets on the floor —

No, not blankets.

Bodies.

Bodies?

The rustle of fabric drew her attention to the empty fireplace. Two shadows peeled away from the others — not a bookshelf, not a chair.

Something else.

One was tall and lithe, the other staunch and hulking. She stumbled backwards as the tall one extended a long, graceful arm and turned to face her, his wand pointed squarely at her chest, the sound of his swishing cloak magnified in the silence —

Rushing wings of death.

'Ah, dear Aurélie,' said the figure, pronouncing her name the French way. 'Please do forgive us the intrusion, but my brother here was rather impatient to make your acquaintance. You see, you have something we need.'

His voice was soft, pleasant: an old friend stopping by for tea, a music lover describing a favourite song.

The second shadow grunted, hatred and impatience clear in the wordless exclamation.

And then there was red —

Only red and only pain —

Aurélie started awake, gasping. She did not fall asleep again for the rest of the night.

-x-

Aurélie's next few days at Hogwarts passed in much the same manner as her first. Thanks in large to her duel with Sebastian, which had already become something of a Hogwarts legend, she was still garnering far more attention than she was comfortable with. Stares and whispers followed her through the castle so persistently it was like having her own personal poltergeist whispering in her ear wherever she went. Of course, the actual poltergeist did the same thing, only he preferred to sing nasty limericks so that everyone within several floors could hear him teasing her about being French and red-headed.

But worse than the gossip and the open-mouthed stares and the rude rhymes about her heritage were the questions from the more curious students among them: did she miss France? What was Beauxbatons like? Had she ever eaten frogs legs? And — worst of all — why in Merlin's name did her parents make her transfer in her seventh year?