Hogwarts Legacy Oneshots

Warm Blood on Cool Marble

dark!Sebastian Sallow x f!MC - Angst - 2.2k words

Summary: Casting an Unforgivable on his friend one fateful night in Slytherin's Scriptorium awakens something ravenous inside of Sebastian.

Tags: !!Violence!!, Sadism, Cruelty, Sebastian is not Nice, Dark Magic, Blood Rituals, Rough Kissing, Deliberate Use of Crucio, Minor NSFW

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Pain spreads in tendrils under her skin. White-hot. Burning scorch marks into her bones, then underneath—into the very marrow, until it seems as much a part of her as the fibers of her soul. It swallows her whole with the intention to devour.

Time easily escapes her under the influence of the curse, seemingly eternal. Only when it abruptly lets up is she distantly aware that it must have only been a few seconds.

Despite this, her nerves ache with the memory—muscles twitching, breath coming in heavy pants against the flagstone floor she's bracing herself against.

Ominis has just enough time to kneel beside her before she's retching onto the stone, agony still a broiling mess in her stomach. He holds her hair back and she can feel the anxiety in his clammy hands, in his hushed words she can barely make out over the ringing in her ears.

Sebastian is deadly silent.

She composes herself enough to blink back the stars dancing behind her vision and glances up to find he's deadly still, as well. Frozen in place. Staring.

His wand is held loosely in his hand, his lips parted just enough to suggest surprise, as if a revelation of some sort has been made. A revelation of what she isn't sure, as she's certain it isn't his first time experimenting with this specific Unforgivable.

Ominis is still fretting over her condition right beside her, his hands squeezing hers as if he can wring the trembling out of them, siphon the pain out. Her focus is drawn elsewhere. Magnetized to the expression Sebastian's features are pulled into.

There's a glint in his eyes, dark and pooling like warm blood on cool marble. A look that's somehow familiar, that she tries to press down on with her thumb. Keep still long enough to decipher.

He takes a sharp breath, his irises catching the dim light of the wall torches, and it's like they flash scarlet for a brief moment. Amber morphs into garnet right before her very eyes, gone as quick as she catches it.

She does catch it though.

Right there, is a vicious kind of yearning. Violent, greedy desire. Something grasping, clawing, gnawing. Avarice, in all its sheer, ugly inhumanity.

It burns bright in his eyes and knocks all of the wind out of her lungs. She staggers back and dry heaves and Ominis is on her again, blanched with worry.

"I'm taking her back," he says as helps her to her feet, and his tone is clipped, angry. Infuriated with Sebastian's apparent indifference. "Explore your dearly coveted scriptorium alone. I hope it was worth it."

She wishes she could tell him that Sebastian is anything but indifferent at the moment, but her throat can't get any words out. The clarification wouldn't do him any good, anyway. She knows that apathy would be worlds more comforting than the rapacity that burns in his eyes now.

She lets Ominis sling her arm around his neck and help her out of the chamber. When she glances over her shoulder, Sebastian has moved already, disappearing into the opened vault. He doesn't turn to look back at her.

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She isn't sure who is avoiding who. If it's the simmering fear inside her that instinctively keeps her away from him or if it's he who intentionally hides himself. His absence shouldn't eat away at her as much as it does, and yet it tears her apart from the inside out, swallows her whole.