Green is the Color || Ominis x OC || Hogwarts Legacy

Of Softness

The silence between them was thick enough to touch.

Rain pounded on the cottage's roof. Lightning flashed. The wrought iron gates gave a little shake, disturbed by a powerful boom of thunder.

"What are you doing with that?" Allegra said quietly. "That's private."

"What have you been doing, Allegra?" Sebastian murmured, rising to his feet. He held out the journal, tracing every inch of shock and betrayal on Allegra's face. "This was what you were up to? All this time, behind my back?"

"Behind your back?" She snatched the book from him, clenching her fingers so tightly the cover creased. "I wasn't aware I had to ask for your permission to do anything."

Sebastian marched down the stairs until he and Allegra were face to face, leveling heated glares at each other. She didn't back down. She raised her chin and gave him a furious glare.

"When what you're doing involves the health and well-being of my best friend and your partner," Sebastian said lowly, "maybe you should've consulted."

"I haven't been doing anything wrong, Sebastian," she spat. "And how dare you look through my things!"

"Taking pain from desperate patients at Saint Mungo's?" Sebastian asked, tone rising, "Picking fights with Ashwinders and poachers on purpose? How could that not be wrong?"

"Because I was helping, just like the magic intended!" Allegra cried. With her drenched hair sticking to her cheeks and her wide, anguished eyes, she was starting to look as desperate as her writings. "I've made everyone—everyone—in that sanitorium feel better. And you can't pretend that Ashwinders and poachers don't deserve it."

"Helping? The magic?" Sebastian stepped closer, making Allegra take a step back through the door. "Merlin! Do you even hear yourself?" Cold rain whipped at the cottage. He and Allegra were now standing in the yard. Wet grass and stormy wind whipped at their faces.

He felt betrayed.

He felt a little foolish to have trusted her so much.

And most of all, Sebastian felt like he was looking straight into a mirror.

He gestured to her journal. "You kept going on and on about how you needed more. How you needed to be stronger—"

"Because I do!" Allegra shouted.

"For what, Allegra?" Sebastian demanded, marching over and grabbing her wrists. She struggled against him, face closed and furious. "Trying to follow in your ancestor's footsteps, are you?"

Allegra gave him a shove, one that made him stumble. "My ancestor? Isidora doesn't have anything to do with this! I did it for him!" she cried. "I needed the power so I could cure him!"

She let out a heavy breath, a hardly-concealed sob. "It's my power," she said softly, more to herself than to Sebastian. "Why should I always, always, have to be good?"

"For him?" Sebastian shouted, trying to come closer. Allegra took several furious steps back, hugging herself around the waist. "For Ominis? Are you sure this is what he would want? To know his girl was out there taking the souls out of people's bodies—"

"Ominis isn't here to tell me what he wants, is he!" Allegra cried, her voice quivering with anguish. Sebastian froze. Allegra jammed her hand toward the door. "He's welcome to come marching out of that door and tell me to stop. But he's not here. He hasn't been here, and it's not fair, and I won't let him suffer any longer!"