Sanguinis et Omnium Fractorum//Sebastian Sallow

Of Clock Doors and Paper Cranes

Monday, 12 September, 1892

There was a quiet sort of social seclusion the library offered.  A warmth found tucked between the pages of books and curled amid the peaceful sounds of shuffled robes and rustled pages.   In the smell of quill ink and aged parchment.  In the hummed murmur of whispered voices.  The unspoken understanding of the need for companionship without the necessity of conversation.

Clara could have returned to the common room for her break after Potions. Usually, she would have. It was closer.   Instead, she'd climbed from the dungeons and found herself trading shades of emerald and rippling light for dusty browns and beiges and tucked herself into one of the reading nooks on the lower levels, her books and parchment spread out in a wide arc on the aged wooden desk.

Her second-hand copy of A Guide to Advanced Transfiguration was so battered the cover was held on only with glue and bits of spellotape. Even her muttered reparo had done little to fix the damage.  There were only so many times a thing could be broken before the spell was rendered useless.  Until it needed to be patched with stitches and tape, and its scars would forever remain on display.

The assigned reading was dull at best.  Her mind slogging through a chapter on  Gamp's Law of Elemental Transfiguration.  An increasingly tedious subject made worse with each of its theories, arguments, and exceptions. Still,  she was trying to read it.  If one could call it that when she'd hardly focused enough to comprehend a single paragraph, and the image of freckles and messy cinnamon curls kept forcing their way to the surface.

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She only offered a muttered acknowledgment when the tell-tale pulse of Ominis's wand sent crimson light scattering over the aged browns and beiges.  He pulled back the chair beside her and, as always, sat with the effortless poise of an aristocrat.  He dug in his satchel momentarily, pulling not a book but a small stack of brightly colored,  perfectly squared parchments.  Each one was so thin she could see the shadow of his hand on the other side. 

She watched for several minutes--all attempts to read temporarily abandoned-- as Ominis began to feel and fold along the edges with a meticulous, almost mathematical precision.  Each edge perfectly straight. Every corner aligned with careful accuracy.  Folded and flipped, tucked and folded again. Over and over until he took the two narrow folded points at the top, pulled them outward and down, and the unassuming square emerged as an elegant paper crane.

He could have done it with magic. She knew, but he'd insisted on folding them by hand as long as she'd known him. Cranes, flowers, foxes. Any number of flora and fauna.  Each folded with the same fastidious care as the last.

He slid another sheet of parchment from the pile and tipped his head toward her.  "Give it up, Clara dear.  We both know you're not doing homework."

" I am."  She snapped her eyes back to the book.  To the same page, she'd already read five times over and couldn't remember a single word of,  as though that might absolve her.  "I'm reading."

"Please.  I've been here twenty minutes, and I've not heard you turn a single page.  I know you do not read that slowly." He made another fold and flipped the paper over to feel for the crease.

His blindness did nothing to deter her from glaring at the side of his head. "Fine,  I'm avoiding Sebastian." 

It wasn't entirely a lie.

She had managed to avoid him through Charms and Potions, both of which she shared with the twins. However, she suspected it may have as much to do with his sudden irritation over his new classes as her attempts to position herself away from him.