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

[twenty-one]

A/N: Aurélie's grief catches up to her. Sebastian faces his abandonment issues. Guard your heart, friends. This one hurts.

Sebastian was no stranger to the detention chamber. After close to seven years of breaking almost every school rule (and several wizarding laws), the dingy, windowless room had become something of a second home to him; similar enough to the Slytherin common room to be comfortable, and quiet enough that he could reflect on his misdeeds in peace — or congratulate himself, depending on what he'd done.

Once the preferred location for serving out detentions, the chamber was now mostly used as a convenient place to stick naughty students when the Professor's couldn't be bothered thinking up a better punishment. Or in Sebastian's case, when the head of Slytherin house didn't want to go too hard on his team's Quidditch captain a fortnight out from their first match but had to make an example of his misbehaviour.

After all, human transfiguration was an expellable offence, even if the victim was Duncan Hobhouse.

Sebastian supposed himself lucky that his punishment for trying to turn a human head into a pumpkin was merely to sit alone in a cold room for an hour, especially since the Hogwarts faculty had decided to keep the torture devices of detentions long past on proud display: a macabre reminder of a time when the school saw fit to implement Muggle torture on misbehaving students. Usually, he spent his time here wondering what sort of transgressions warranted the use of thumb screws and flaying, and whether he'd have been better behaved over the years if the punishment for breaking curfew was being locked in a cage instead of writing lines. But by his sixth year — the year in which all the light had gone out of his life — he'd concluded that no, not even the threat of physical pain would've curbed his thirst for anarchy. Because what was physical pain compared to the soul-crushing, never-ending, unbearable grief of losing his sister?

If anything, bodily torture would have been a relief.

But it wasn't just his sixth-year misadventures that'd sealed his fate as a troublemaker — he'd made a name for himself before he'd even crossed the lake in his first. Professor Weasley hadn't punished him for "jumping out of the boat" (he'd fallen, thanks very much), but she certainly hadn't praised him for it when he arrived at the Sorting ceremony sopping wet and shivering with a very embarrassed twin sister in tow.

A mere five days later, he'd broken the record for quickest detention ever earned in a new school year after he'd punched on with some kid who'd laughed at Anne for being an orphan. A fortnight after that, he'd done the same thing in defence of Ominis' honour, only Sebastian had picked up a fancy new unsanctioned spell in his short time at school and had sent the offender to the infirmary with blue hair. That particular stunt had earned him a week's worth of scrubbing the toilets Muggle-style, but if the Headmaster had hoped that manual labour might squash the rebellious streak out of him, he'd been sorely mistaken.

Seven years later, very little had changed; Sebastian was still impulsive and reckless when it came to defending his loved ones, only now it wasn't his sister's honour he rallied to defend, but that of the obstinate redhead who'd reverted to avoiding him.

Again.

Sebastian pinched the bridge of his nose, his ever-present frustration flaring at the thought of the girl who kept slipping through his fingers like water. N.E.W.T studies and ancient texts and deciphering dead languages were easy tasks compared to trying to understand her; every time he got close to drawing her out of the dark place she retreated to, she'd only pivot away, do the opposite of what he expected, say something that left him utterly flabbergasted and then change her mind about it all the next day