Sebastian Sallow Fucking Sucks

Chapter Eleven

[Author's Note]

hellooooo

I hope this is legible*chucks*

***

(PRESENT)

The hippogriff statue loomed in my peripheral as I waited for that damned red light. I rubbed my hands together, trying to chase away the chill, but the night was unnervingly quiet. Like all the magic was leeched from the air.

The nights were getting sickeningly colder, the snow threatening to rip from the clouds with each day. Nothing seemed to chase away the trembling in my bones. The new ache in my side.

But I knew it had nothing to do with the weather.

I could only hold so much inside of me. I was beginning to rip at the seams, each thread snapping one by one until everything was bound to pour out. Guilt clung close to my throat, and I couldn't chase away the thoughts of Sebastian showing up to my aid when Everett had found me bleeding out in some ditch off the beaten path to Hogwarts. He hadn't hesitated to heal me, to curse Everett (though there were a number of reasons to do that), and then to even stay by my side on the long trek back to the castle. He could have left me.

Of course he helped you. He's had his hands up your dress.

By our typical push and pull, I owed him for saving my skin, drastically, but I couldn't force myself to act on that fact. If he didn't bring it up, then why should I? But my scathing conversation with Anne and Ominis also burned through my skull, and I was itching to learn what Sebastian was up to with that relic. Whatever "progress" he had mentioned.

In Ravenclaw terms, I was flying in circles.

A flash of red broke me from my thoughts, and like clockwork, three red lights pulsed from the window, steady and sure. I turned down toward the bridge to catch its larger flaring companion answering back.

"What are you?" I sighed.

It couldn't be Ranrok. Only poachers were daft enough to linger near school grounds. But it didn't put my mind at ease.

I slipped back into the castle, its warming charm drifting over me.

The next logical step was to track where that second light source came from, but it'd be a miserable hunt. There were stretches and stretches of unplotted woods out there, and who was to say the light wasn't reflecting off something else? Sebastian might have already investigated, narrowed down certain zones...

No. You're done with him. You warned him about Anne and Ominis, and you'll have nothing more to do with it.

Except...I could kill two birds with one stone—see what Sebastian was up to and pry him for any viable information and cut my research time in half.

You'd kill a lot more than two birds if you do that.

I chewed the inside of my cheek, clinging to the shadows as I made my way back to the Ravenclaw tower. A long library session was calling my name. Tomorrow, maybe. I'd finish that Divination assignment and dig into some Hogwarts architectural history. Then I could decide what to do about that damn Slytherin.

I rounded the corner when a creak made me halt.

"Lumos," I whirled around, squinting into the dark.