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

Chapter 6 - The View from The Inside

If I wanted to make any sort of progress--or discover what Sebastian was hiding from me--then I needed to stop running away from things I'd been avoiding since coming home. Cooped up inside the house, I'd avoided the greenhouse since day one, and it was time that I took a look to see exactly what I was working with. 

According to Sebastian, I tended to the plants daily, which implied that I knew how to care for every plant in the space. If I wanted to start caring for the plants again, I needed to learn a lot. 

If anything, it was a good use of my time if I wanted to avoid how tense things were inside the house, all while taking some kind of step to move forward and do what I used to do before the memory loss. 

Picking up a basic herbology encyclopedia from one of the bookcases in the study, I headed out toward the back door of the home. Sebastian eyed me as I crossed the living room with a curious look. 

I stopped at the door and turned my head over my shoulder. 

"I'm going to check out the greenhouse," I told him. "Going to have to sooner or later if I don't want the plants to die."

He started to rise from the armchair. 

"Do you want me to come with you?" he asked, his tone something hopeful--which I hated. 

I knew he was vying to get closer to me again- to somehow start being friends instead of strangers who lived together- but I wasn't ready to take those steps yet. I would deal with the greenhouse today and maybe consider bridging the gap between us when I had more time and energy. 

He seemed eager to be with me as I made steps toward normalcy, and I couldn't blame him, knowing that he and I had been close friends before I'd lost my memory. But I didn't want to deal with how tense it would be to have him trailing after me all day as I attempted to examine the pieces of who I was. 

"No, thank you," I replied politely. I left the house before seeing his reaction- if he even had one. 

Stopping outside the doors to the metal and glass structure, I took it all in, taking a moment to settle my nerves before going inside. 

The structure itself was beautiful, with many different cuts of glass fused together with what looked like oxidized copper. It was rather mosaic in the way it looked--not like any greenhouse I'd laid eyes on before. I liked it, to say the least, which I suppose was bound to happen, because it was mine. 

I entered the space and was immediately met with a wall of moist and warm air from the cultivated atmosphere. The air carried a floral smell, heavily clouded with the scent of fresh soil. In the middle was a long potting table covered in pots in various stages of work. Some were empty, while some had baby plants or sprouts coming out of the centers. Along the walls were shelves of plants, and in the back corner of the room was a rolling ladder to reach the different levels of plants. The ceiling was covered in flowering vines, while the natural dirt floor was coated in decomposing leaves. From being unattended for almost two weeks, it appeared there was a lot of work to catch up on, and that was only in basic housekeeping. I couldn't imagine what it would have looked like if Sebastian hadn't taken it upon himself to water them while I was away. 

Being in the space felt comfortable—almost familiar, in a way that I couldn't place. It felt as though a melody was in the air—one that sounded familiar, but I couldn't remember where I'd heard it before. Being in the greenhouse was probably the closest I'd ever felt to regaining some of my memories, even if it didn't happen. 

I made my way through the room, using the book I'd brought to identify the plants. I wrote the names down on a piece of parchment and marked where they were in the greenhouse so I could start researching how to care for them. It took about an hour, but I had a neat list of all the plants in the greenhouse for me to read up on. 

The greenhouse was so full of plants that it would take me a while to learn about them all. Whenever I started gardening, I probably only started with one or two plants before moving on to care for so many. Still, there was nothing I could do now about the overabundance of greenery that surrounded me except to learn how to care for them the best I could. 

Instead of tending to any plants that day, I decided cleaning up the space would be enough work for now. I looked around the greenhouse for a rake but came up empty-handed. Only then did I remember there was a shed a few yards away from the greenhouse, which might be an excellent place to look. 

Heading out of the greenhouse, I started toward the shed. Once there, I noticed a padlock on the door; it was easy work removing that with my wand, and then I was in. It didn't cross my mind about why there might have been a padlock on the shed, mainly because we didn't have neighbors for miles. No one would be breaking in to steal hardening supplies from a house so far out in the countryside, but that didn't cross my mind until I saw what was hidden inside. 

I immediately spotted the rake on the back wall, but on my way there, I noticed a box that looked very out of place, seated on the floor near the right wall. Everything else was covered in a thick layer of dust, as if no one had been here in a while, except for that single box. Curiosity piqued, I crouched down and lifted the flap on the box. 

The first thing that caught my eye was the stack of picture frames—all placed face-down on the left side of the box. The right side was entirely filled with journals. My blood immediately began to boil at the sight, now knowing for sure that I had been keeping journals, and they had been taken away from me. 

All the answers I looked for could be right here in this box, but they'd been kept from me and locked away as if I didn't deserve to see their contents. 

Choosing to ignore the journals for now, I turned my attention toward the stack of picture frames. I lifted the first one from the box and flipped it over. 

It was a picture of Sebastian and I standing closely together for the picture. It wasn't a magic photo, so there was little context to be given to the picture. Nothing was incriminating or odd about it--not with the foreknowledge that he and I had been friends. Why it was hidden away was a question void of answers. Moving the first photo aside, I reached into the box and took out the second one in the stack, flipping it over slowly as if I already knew the contents would shock me. Of course, nothing prepared me for what I actually saw. 

Upon seeing the photo's contents, my stomach immediately plummeted through the ground beneath me. 

This was the secret they'd all been keeping from me. This was what they weren't telling me, and by the gods, it was a huge secret. 

Everything suddenly snapped into place, making sense of all the odd pieces and clues I'd picked up on since I'd returned from the hospital. My hands shook as I examined the photo. 

It was a wedding photo--my wedding, to be exact. 

It made sense that I was living with Sebastian now- and why he seemed so keen on keeping watch over me. 

Sometime in the last five years, I had gotten married to Sebastian Sallow.