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

[thirteen]

Aurélie woke bright and early the following morning with a steely resolve to never utter the name Sebastian Sallow again unless it was to curse it to the wind. She also, quite alarmingly, woke to find silvery ribbons of magic twisting around her fingers.

She bolted upright, bumped her head on Samantha's bunk and cursed so emphatically in French that she half-expected to hear her mother scolding her from down the hall.

'Oh, stop that, would you?' she said to her hands, giving them a frantic but ultimately useless shake that did nothing to dispel the energy stuck to her fingers.

Talking to one's hands as if they were sentient was never a good sign, but even worse was when those same hands, pulsing with forbidden magic, only glowed brighter and more defiant when told to stop.

She groaned aloud, wearily rubbing the bump on her head with fingers that made her brain tingle as she considered her options.

From her limited experience with her sporadic gift, she knew that once the magic was out, it could not go back in; much like trying to force-feed water back into a pipe, once conjured, it had to flow on.

At home in France, she'd had quick access to a backyard garden, where, on very rare occasions, she'd been forced to covertly feed magic to a plant or a tree and hope that her father wouldn't notice its inexplicable growth spurt the following day (he always did, of course, but he never said a word about it). At Beauxbatons, where she'd had a private bedroom and an ocean at her doorstep, she'd been able to slip out, unseen, to hand it over to the waves to sort out. But there was no ocean at Hogwarts, no secret garden, nowhere to go where she wouldn't be caught in the act of siphoning off magic like a thief in the night.

Well, that wasn't entirely true, but she'd sooner blow the school to smithereens than ever step foot in Sebastian's stupid Undercroft.

Peeking through her velvet bed curtains and hoping fiercely that her roommates were still asleep, Aurélie scanned the room for an acceptable vessel that might benefit from a little magical encouragement.

The solution came to her in the form Samantha Dale's potted Dittany that she kept on the nightstand by their bunk bed: a sad, wilted plant that sorely needed more sunlight but on whose behalf Aurélie had been too shy to speak to save it. Reaching through the curtains, she tentatively lifted the pot from its stand and set it on her lap. It was only a wee little thing, half-dead and neglected, but perhaps if she just gently - very gently - gave it a magical boost, Samantha might attribute it's miraculous recovery to an improvement in her herbology skills.

Alright, then, she said silently, her fingers hovering over the dry soil, if you insist on doing something, please help this plant.

For a startling moment, the Dittany glowed bright, its wilted leaves bristling with sudden vitality. It pulsed once, twice and then -

Exploded.

She squeaked in surprise as plant, pot and soil vanished with a wet-sounding pop and a swirl of fading magic. For a long, long time, she stared down at her now-empty hands, quietly dismayed.

Help the plant, she lamented inwardly. I said help the plant, not blow it up.

She dressed quickly after that, braiding her hair with shaky fingers and trying not to think about her innate ability for destruction. Finally, exhausted and stressed, she traipsed down to the Great Hall for breakfast, making a mental note to seek out a new half-dead Dittany before days end.

Being rather early, the hall was mostly deserted. Above her, the enchanted ceiling reflected another dreary sky, and as she poked unenthusiastically at her eggs and toast, she marveled at how many different shades of grey the Scottish sky was capable of producing. So absorbing was this little exercise of hers that it left very little attention to spare for the figure sitting alone at the Slytherin table, whose wild brown curls were falling across his eyes as he poured over a book.