Duello D'Amor // Sebastian x Reader Hogwarts Legacy Fanfiction

Chapter 1 - Before and After

It's the smell first that alerted me to the fact that I was waking up somewhere other than home. Home was a small flat in London concealed between floors two and three of the housing complex. It was accessible only by a particular broom closet, and only if you knew the correct incantations to turn it from a humble broom closet into a doorway. 

Magic was a wonderful thing, and it was just as impressive to me then as it was back when I first started learning it as a new fifth-year at Hogwarts. 

Stretching out my arms, nothing felt broken or wrong if one only ignored the sluggish way my limbs seemed to move, so there was no immediate answer as to why I'd found myself in a hospital bed. Chatter filtered into the room from somewhere outside in the hallway, but the harder I tried to listen, the more my head seemed to ache. When I turned my head to the left, a piercing pain shot straight through my neck, rendering me immobile, as if some kind of spell had hit me. 

Cursing under my breath, I tried straightening my head but couldn't move. The pain thankfully seemed isolated to just the back of my head, but the effects it was having on my mobility overall was a worrisome thing. 

Closing my eyes, I thought it best to rest, finding that the most probable reason I was in the hospital to begin with. 

The voices outside were growing louder, and when two figures stepped into the room, I didn't even want to open my eyes to see who it was. 

"Hello, y/n," one of them spoke. Older male, no one I recognized by voice alone. 

I cracked an eye open but immediately shut it due to the blinding brightness of the lantern on the bedside table. 

"I'm Doctor Hathaway, and I've been tending to you the last four days," he told me. 

"Four days?" I asked--or tried to. My voice came out as a hardly audible croak. 

"Yes," he replied. There was some shuffling, and then he spoke again. "I want to ask you a series of questions. I just need you to answer them the best you can. Is that okay?" 

"Yes," I replied. I tried to move some spit around in my mouth to lubricate my throat and tongue, but it was drier than a desert in there. I started to sit myself up and open my eyes, and that's when I laid eyes on the second person in the room. They approached me swiftly, and the confusion must have shown in my eyes as none other than Sebastian Sallow rushed to my side and offered me a glass of water. I accepted the water, not even bothering to comment on the fact that he was in the room at all. I couldn't be bothered to think about anything other than the sharp, stabbing pain in the back of my head. It was easing up more and more the longer I was awake, but it would probably take a while to subside altogether. 

"Against the wishes of some of those closest to you, I want to start things off by giving you a full disclosure of why I'm going to ask these questions in the first place," Dr. Hathaway spoke. I finally got a complete look at the man, and as I expected, he was an older gentleman, though no older than fifty. He had a long, braided beard and bald head, and his brow was furrowed as he carefully examined my movements. 

I spared a sideways glance at Sebastian once again as he set the cup back down on the bedside table. Looking at him now, he looked different than when I last saw him. I couldn't pinpoint what it was, but he was different. 

"You were hit with an unfamiliar and quite amatuer memory charm four days ago while attempting to flush out an illegal magical beast breeding ring," the Doctor says. "We did our best to reverse the effects, but diagnostic scans show that not all of the damages could be reversed. I intend on finding the full extent of what was lost so that we can have a clearer picture of how to move forward with your treatment." 

Memory loss. 

Memory loss? I didn't feel any different. I knew who I was and was able to recognize that I was in a hospital--though it was weird that Sebastian was here. He had yet to say anything, so I really couldn't gauge anything about his presence yet. 

"Ask me your questions, then," I said with a tinge of annoyance. I was eager to find out what kind of mess I was in because of this. 

"What is your name?"

"F/n L/n," I state confidently. I'd be a total airhead to forget that one. 

"What do you do for work?"

"I'm an auror in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement for the Ministry of Magic." 

Again, easy. I knew this stuff. So far, not even a single thing felt off or forgotten. I could recall everything. No missing chunks or blurry spots in my memory to be had. 

"What year is it?"

"1894," I answer confidently. 

Doctor Hathaway visible stutters, and Sebastian, who has yet to say a single word, tenses beside me. The air in the room seems to shift in an odd fashion, as if some revelation was to be had, except I knew no part of it. 

"Where do you live?" 

The Doctor straightens his coat and clears his throat as he continues the questioning. I relay to him my address, and Sebastian takes in a sharp breath beside me. However quiet it was, I heard it. Something was wrong for sure, and my irritation only grew as the questions went on, because no one would tell me exactly what was the matter. 

"Would you just tell me what's going on?" I snapped. The outburst caused another spike of pain to run through the back of my neck and I winced. Sebastian reached out a hand as if to touch me, but quickly recoiled. 

"And tell me why he is here," I added, looking at him fully for the first time since he entered the room. 

He was different. That was a certain thing. Dare I say he looked older, if nothing else.

I am no small-minded idiot, and the revelation I received upon looking at the man's face wasn't a small one. I regarded my own hands with a panicked look. There were scars there that I didn't recognize. Small ones to be specific, but I'd know my own hands like, well, the back of my hand. 

The silence that surrounded me at my outburst told me that it was time for me to start asking the questions. 

"What year is it?" I asked firmly. 

The two men in the room looked at each other, as if to decide what they were to tell me. 

"What year is it?" I asked, even more firmly this time. 

"1899," the Doctor said, almost sounding... sorry. 

And they should be, they really should be sorry, that they are just now telling me that I've somehow lost five years of my life in the blink of an eye. 

I began to panic at that point, my chest rapidly expanding and contracting as I tried to catch my breath. The fact that hurt the most is that I had no idea what I've lost, only that I've lost something. 

I would have no way of knowing what I lost. 

"You better be able to fix this," I said, the words coming our with far more breathlessness than I'd intended. "You better tell me that there's a way to fix this."

"We've done everything we know how to do," Hathaway told me. "There's some alternative methods we can try to jostle your memory, but whatever curse you were hit with seems to have taken a piece of you along with it when we expelled it from your head." 

This couldn't be happening, I thought to myself as I brought my knees up to my chest. I hugged them tightly, and once again was reminded of a most unwelcome presence in the room as a foreign hand rested on my knee. 

"You've yet to explain why in Merlin's name, you, of all people, are at my bedside, Mr. Sallow," I remarked sharply, shaking his hand from my knee. 

"We were just getting to that," he said quietly- pensively. He folded his hands in his lap and regarded me with an odd look--one that if I didn't know any better, might have reminded me of the way someone looks at someone they care about.