The Keepers' Evil

Sixty-Five: He made it perfectly clear to keep quiet about it

Song- I can fix him: Taylor Swift

If you would like to keep this a Sebastian fic, I suggest you don't continue as this little extra chapter paves the way for the sequel!

⋅•⋅⊰∙∘☽༓☾∘∙⊱⋅•⋅

"He made it perfectly clear to keep quiet about it."

⋅•⋅⊰∙∘☽༓☾∘∙⊱⋅•⋅

I had walked slowly from the Map Chamber. It had been a walk that hadn't created the pestering thoughts and the rush of regret like I had anticipated. It had merely been a walk, perhaps a walk away from all that I had been and back towards what was home.

I continued through the long, winding, stone corridors of the school, feeling each brick underneath my fingers as if to leave my own personal trail of independence. Hogwarts had been kind to me, offered me somewhere that I could find myself within, that I could learn to stand against what wasn't fit for my life. It had been everything that I needed it to be, but it hadn't produced all of the answers.

In the time that Sebastian and I had found what home meant and stowed ourselves away there to watch the clouds and plant flowers that would wrap around one another as tightly as the tie between our hearts, Ominis hadn't said a word before we had left, he hadn't so much as been there to let us ask him what was next for him, perhaps for us too.

Ominis remained on my mind more than I liked to admit. He seemed to hold a part of it that I could never explain, that was soft for no apparent reason. When I looked at him, I felt lonely, like there was distance between us that was still present even when we were together. And when I saw him, when he stood before the entrance to the Undercroft, when his wand blinked for him to understand my presence and that I too had been headed there, that loneliness seemed to fade into a final sadness.

"What are you doing here? I thought you left?" His voice sounded like clouds but felt like smoke. It was harsh and coarse against my skin, it left little freckles of ash in its path to reach me.

I continued my slow walk closer to where he stood, and there was not a sense that we were happy to see one another. The fire of the anger that I had felt for the Keepers still sat within my burnt hands of magic, still roared in my veins for the closure that I had thought that I wouldn't get from Ominis.

"We did leave," I raised my eyebrows as I spoke, sighing loudly as if to add to the fire pit of almost silent emotions between us. "I thought you had too. Why didn't you wait for me to say goodbye?" The bluntness to my words caught Ominis in a vulnerable place. He shut his eyes as though it hurt, scrunching them so tight that I frowned at the seemingly unusual response to something that he had done.

He stopped for a moment, keeping himself tucked away until he pulled his wand to open the hidden door of the Undercroft.

"Come in here."

He tugged on my sleeve, yanking me too hard down the steep stairs and past the rough metal grate that creaked open for us, just one more time. I had come to say goodbye to the Undercroft, and it felt as though it was the one that was ready to say goodbye. It didn't quite feel the same without Sebastian and Anne. It's like its soul had moved on with us all.

"How is Sebastian?" Ominis began to pace, taking each step to crush the nagging thoughts beneath his shoes one at a time. I could see it in the way that his fists tensed as he asked the question that there was more to it than just a care for his friend, there was more than just that he hadn't said goodbye to him.