Becoming a Sallow

[Eight]

Sebastian Sallow

He'd royally fucked up.

He knew it the minute they travelled back and she wasn't in the great hall. She must have went straight for her common room.

They'd been doing good. He was finally making her more comfortable again, hell, she'd been brimming with happiness when he'd picked her up and had listened to him about his weekend.

But now, and every day for the rest of the week, she avoided him like the plague. She came to tutoring, which surprised him. But when he offered an apology, she'd nodded stiffly. She didn't offer communication, she didn't ask any questions. She followed the instructions he provided and then left once the lesson was concluded. And he was losing his bloody mind because of it. He found it infuriating, considering he'd gone so long without talking to her but now it was worse than that. Because she was mad at him.

It had been as if the cold fury since Solomon's death had somehow thawed into something that burned. And he felt choked when Tessa was ignoring and avoiding him.

"You're mumbling in Gaelic again," Ominis sighed, annoyed. Sebastian's eyes flickered to his best friend, the one that had randomly started talking to him out of nowhere. The one who he fell back in with like nothing had changed. If he didn't know any better, he would have thought Ominis had missed him as much as he missed Ominis. But he did know better. Ominis was a fantastic actor, and Sebastain could only assume this was Anne or Tessa's doing.

"Sorry," he muttered his apology as his eyes flicked back towards the front of the class, where Tessa and Larson had their hands tilted towards each other, almost touching. Why didn't anyone else believe they were dating? Andrew was glued to her. He was the only person she seemed to truly rely on, whereas everyone else relied on her.

Constantly asking for favors, to take care of poachers, or find their bloody gobstones, to needing their diaries returned, to go look for the hidden herbology hallway. And she always rose up to the challenge and made sure everyone was happy and taken care of. But what about her?

"Sebastian, I can feel you brooding," Ominis sighed. "If you'd just tell me what happened, perhaps I could help?"

Tell Ominis Gaunt, Mr. righteous, that he'd snapped at Tessa for no reason other than he was in the middle of too many lies? Right. He'd rather tell him that he continued to look for Anne's cure, if he were honest..

No, that wasn't true. He'd just keep it all to himself for now.

"Nothing."

"I'm not stupid," Ominis muttered. "My ears still work, despite how often I think about changing that every time you talk."

"Nothing I wish to discuss."

"Fair enough, then." Ominis murmured, his wand waving over the book in front of him. Sebastian could hear the whispers from the wand, though he hadn't trained himself on to listen to what the wand was saying.

Ominis had told him first year that the wand spoke with him. It was at a decibel of sound that very few could hear, but Sebastian had somehow trained onto it after years and hours of straining his ears. He finally heard the whispers, but never the words they spoke. The wand was a part of Ominis so Ominis would only need to think of what he wanted to be aware of, the amount of people in the room, their names – if he'd already met them and spoken to them – their distance, the distance of furniture so he doesn't run into anything and so on.

"You're looking at Tessa."

"I'm looking at Larson." Sebastian said, stiffly.

"Yes, so am I," Ominis muttered sarcastically, and Sebastian ground his teeth.