Sebastian Sallow Fucking Sucks

Chapter One

[Author's Note]

Hellooooo. I've finally decided to cross post my work from ao3 (you can find me there at bookdust - NO underscore).

SSFS takes place after Sebastian calls MC ignorant, and 100% will have canon divergence in every beautifully unhinged way possible. Due to some mature content, characters are aged up.

I hope you enjoy❤️

***

Ignorant?

Was Sebastian kidding?

It'd been three weeks since the argument, and the fumes had not stopped whistling from my ears. We hadn't spoken since—which was difficult as Slytherin and Ravenclaw had more than half of our classes together this semester. We sat as far apart as possible, going out of the way not to pass each other in the halls...it was getting exhausting. But I wasn't going to cave this time. He was an idiot, and I would continue to treat him as such until he apologized.

Whenever that was. If ever.

I swallowed my pumpkin pasty with a little too much force, feeling it scrape all the way down my throat. I choked, slapping my chest. A group of Gryffindor girls peered over from their table in the Great Hall.

"Look at her. She's been a wreck." Cressida said—very loudly might I add.

Nellie gave me an unsure glance. I returned it in kind with an unimpressed scowl over the rim of my pumpkin juice. "She looks like she's eating lunch, Cress."

"Where are her Slytherin bookends then? Especially Sallow? Those two are inseparable, swear they're only friends even after that stunt at the Yule Ball, and then suddenly stop talking to each other? It's absolutely bonkers. I think there's a love triangle with Gaunt, and now they're all not speaking to each other."

Merlin's blue balls...I squeezed my hands under the table. What a waste it was returning her diary. I should have enchanted it to sing the entries all over the castle.

"Gaunt?" Another Gryffindor hissed, some sixth year I didn't bother learning the name of. "I just assumed he was promised to a sibling or something."

They snickered, and I stuffed my pocket with a second pasty. Hogwarts gossip was worse than old wrinkling witches in the hamlets huddled around their tables sorting potion ingredients.

I had too much to do to be dealing with this. Mastering my magic, classes, resisting the urge to Imperio Sebastian so he'd turn up confused and naked in a bog somewhere...I stood, and the group silenced, a sea of Gryffindor robes all swiveling in my direction.

Don't...just keep your mouth shut.

I pursed my lips and left the Ravenclaw table, beelining for my escape when the heavy doors swung open.

Dammit.

Sebastian fucking Sallow.

He was alone, sleeves pushed up to his elbows with a pair of reading glasses tucked in his front pocket and a book in his wand hand. If I hexed him, he wouldn't be able defend himself in time. The thought made me snort.

His eyes snapped instantly to mine, and it was awful. Truly, and most certainly awful. The glare he shot me heated me in pure fury from head to toe like a backfired Confringo.

Revulsion.

Disgust.

Betrayal.

I needed a thesaurus for the wave of dramatics crossing his face.

Those stupid hazel eyes of his glowered, and his fists did that clenching thing they always did when he was upset as if he was a toddler in timeout. How the boy was a Crossed Wands champion when he wore his every expression on his face I would never know. But right now, I wanted to throttle him.

"How's the goblin?" he muttered as he passed.

I knocked his shoulder hard. He grabbed my wrist, whirling me around. I collided with his chest, and that scent of the library hit me instantly. I used to love that about him, but he could mold like a dusty old tome for all I cared.

"Watch it, Sallow," I hissed, tipping my chin up to meet his glare. My heart pumped fast and hard in my ears.

"I'm watching." His thumb shifted, stroking my pulse point in my wrist.

My throat closed.

"Do you see now?" he asked, voice rough and bitter. "Do you regret trying to help me?"

I wrenched my wrist free. "Do you regret teaching me spells that could blast you into the next century? We'd promised Ominis you'd stop experimenting with certain magic. Not me."

His pupils dilated, a vicious smirk morphing his soft features. "Touché."

Someone at the Hufflepuff table swore, and the world seemed to bleed back to life. That no, we weren't arguing in the Undercroft or in the Forbidden Forest or somewhere else in private. We glared daggers at each other in the Great Hall. With hundreds of eyes like spiders poking and prodding their fangs into our backs. Lovely. Cressida was likely shitting her pants.

"Everything alright, Sallow?" Garreth Weasley called from the table over.

"No issues here, mate." The evolution on Sebastian's face was like a work of art. The frustration bleeding away as the shield of charm and manipulation took its place. That was his nature—to hurt before he was hurt first. No matter who it was. "Right?" He met my gaze.

I hated myself for glancing at his mouth, at how he wetted his lips. I hated how he gave me a knowing smile that he'd caught me, mocking me for what happened at the Yule Ball.

Except nothing had happened at the Yule Ball.

"Nope. Nothing here." Merlin, I was stupider than the damned ghosts.

I missed that feeling. I missed him. Sebastian Sallow was electric, adrenaline, cleverness and wordplay. Like sprinting so hard I couldn't catch my breath. Plummeting toward the Black Lake on my broom. Stumbling through dusty old caverns riddled with curses. It was addicting. He was addicting. The rumors had gotten one thing right—we had gone to the Yule Ball as friends—except it'd all gone downhill from there.

Nothing had happened between us.

Nothing.

"I'd rather this with you, then that whole room of people," he'd whispered.

We were friends.

Except technically now we weren't that either.

"Take it outside!" a voice roared through the silence, echoing into the enchanted ceiling. Lightning flashed angrily above, making the candles tremble. Sharp glowered at us from the professor's table. "Or else you can take it to detention."

Sebastian met my eyes once more, waggling a pumpkin pasty before taking a bite.

I raised an eyebrow, confused, before I gasped when my hand fell to my empty pocket. He'd pickpocketed me. "You—Accio!" I snatched it back, stuffing it in my mouth as I stormed out of the Great Hall.

That obnoxious laugh seemed to follow me through the courtyard. He could laugh all he wanted. The joke was on him if he thought I'd ever help him again. Sebastian Sallow fucking sucked.