The Shadows Between Us | Sebastian Sallow

After fifth year, Sebastian Sallow disappears.

No letters. No sightings. Only rumors-whispers of a brilliant young wizard drifting through shadowed corners of the Wizarding world, hunting forbidden magic and leaving scorched spells in his wake. Briella Lovegood never stops looking. Years later, as the Ministry quietly begins tracking dangerous magical anomalies, Briella-now working as an Auror-in-training-is sent to investigate a series of unstable Dark Magic surges across Europe.

The magic signature is unmistakable. It's Sebastian.

When Bri finally finds him, he's nothing like the boy she knew. Hardened. Tired. Brilliant in a way that hurts to witness. He's been walking the edge of Dark Magic for years, convinced that distancing himself was the only way to keep Bri safe-and that he doesn't deserve her anymore. Sebastian believes he's already crossed a line he can't come back from- a line Bri refuses to accept.

As they're forced to work together to stop a growing Dark artifact-one Sebastian helped awaken long ago-the story becomes less about defeating evil and more about reckoning: with guilt, with love, with the cost of choices made at sixteen.