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“You know,” Ominis says mock-conversationally, “I’ve never met anyone with such a sudden fascination with the sitting area outside the Ravenclaw common room.”
“Funny,” Sebastian quips without glancing away from the steady trickle of students descending the staircase across the comfortable sitting area before them. “I’ve never met anyone with such a sudden fascination with the barrels of mead outside the kitchens.”
Ominis turns a satisfying shade of red visible even in Sebastian’s periphery; Sebastian smirks, but bites the inside of his cheek against a snort of laughter as Ominis huffs and shifts indignantly in his seat. “Touché,” he mutters. “Though I don’t believe I’m quite as obvious as you are.”
“Obvious about what?” Sebastian asks innocently. “I rather like studying here, actually -”
“Oh, sure, you’re certainly well-known for how much you enjoy studying in a noisy hallway with all manner of students bustling by - certainly well-known for how much you adore the Ravenclaw house in particular, not at all guilty of having once called them all - what was it? Ah, yes, self-righteous moon-minds with sticks up all their arses -”
“Oh, piss off!” Sebastian snaps. “You know well enough why we’re here.”
“I do, but I’d like to hear you admit it -”
“Mabel!”
Heat pricking in his ears at Ominis’ insufferable snickering, Sebastian shoves up from the table they lay claim to ten minutes earlier at the sight of their friend finally appearing at the bottom of the Ravenclaw staircase. Her bright gaze flashes to his face at his half-shout of her name and she immediately brightens; with a broad grin, she bounds across the sitting area and tucks herself into his side in a brief, warm, one-armed hug.
“Good morning,” she says, leaning away from Sebastian to gently drum her fingertips against Ominis’ forearm laid flat along the table. Sebastian watches fondly as Ominis lifts his chin to smile in her direction, eyes drifting over her face before darting toward Sebastian once more. “Wow, studying before breakfast on a Saturday - are you two vying for a sixth-year resorting ceremony, by chance?”
“Gods, no,” Sebastian spits, grinning in spite of himself at her teasing laughter. He drops back into his seat as she dutifully drags an empty chair from a nearby table over to theirs. “Ominis was just having some trouble with his Wiggenweld, so we were going over the recipe and instructions again.”
“Ah,” she says, a sympathetic grimace crossing her expression, and Ominis flushes pink. “I’ve gotten rather adept at making them, perhaps I could also be of some assistance?”
“I - I wouldn’t want to trouble you,” Ominis stammers.
“Nonsense,” Mabel says brightly. “We can meet in Professor Sharp’s classroom after lunch. I have plenty of ingredients for it, so don’t -”
“Er - s’cuse me, Mabel?”
Sebastian turns his head in time to catch a mouthful of Dittany flowers shoved toward him - past him, actually, though he doesn’t know that until he leans away and finds the bouquet nearly shoved up Mabel’s nose. She leans back, her expression one of combined confusion and alarm, as a mousy Hufflepuff boy Sebastian thinks he remembers seeing outside of the fourth year Beasts class tries to…
“Oh,” Mabel says, glancing warily between the bouquet and the boy’s face. He looks queasy; his hand is shaking, the Dittany leaves trembling where they lay over his whitened knuckles. “Erm…”
“Dillon,” he says, the sound spilling from him with enough abrasive volume that Ominis startles across the table. “I - m-my name is Dillon.”
“Dillon,” Mabel repeats slowly - and if the whole scene weren’t so wholly disconcerting, Sebastian might laugh at the way her voice has taken on the same soothing quality with which he’s heard her speak to frightened, wild beasts before. “Are these from you?”
She hasn’t taken the bouquet from him, yet, and the longer he holds them out to her, the more visible his tremors become. “I - I read in the Daily Prophet that Dittany flowers are your favorite,” he says, choked, but no longer shouting. “I gathered them for you in the greenhouses.”
A look of mild alarm passes over her face - likely already thinking of how horrified Professor Garlick will be to find a crop of her Dittany plants missing their fragrant flowers. “Thank you,” she says cordially. “They’re lovely.”
She still hasn’t taken them from him. He shifts uncomfortably on his feet, casting fleeting glances at Ominis and Sebastian on either side of her before refocusing his gaze on her face. “I wondered if I might have the op-opportunity to, er, court - court you.”
Sebastian feels his jaw drop. He’s tangentially aware of Ominis slapping a disbelieving hand over his own mouth, but the vast majority of his focus zeroes in on Mabel; specifically, the way she stiffens in her seat, gaze flicking uncomfortably between the Dittany flowers still inches from the end of her nose and the glistening, waxy pallor slowly creeping across Dillon’s pale, round face.
“I’m - flattered,” she manages to rasp after a moment, and Sebastian’s jaw snaps shut as a wave of vicious pleasure surges through him at the realization that he knows just from the tenor of her voice that she is anything but flattered. “But I’m afraid I’m, erm, not interested. I’m - I’m sorry.”
Dillon blinks rapidly. He drops the bouquet on the table - the mangled stems splitting apart on impact, apparently held together by nothing more than Dillon’s sweaty, strangling grip - before turning on his heel and sprinting away.
Mabel deflates the instant he’s out of sight, sinking her head down into her arms upon the table with a loud, muffled groan; her sliding elbow nudges Sebastian’s book off the edge of the table, sending it and several of the Dittany flowers tumbling to the floor beneath them. “Oh, bloody hell, that was so awkward,” she laments into the darkness between her arms.
“You handled it quite well, all things considered,” Ominis says, patting her elbow closest to him once before cautiously prodding at the Dittany flowers still strewn across the table before him. “Merlin, how many of these did he try to give you?”
“So many,” Mabel says, peering up over the tops of her arms to cast a weary, sweeping glance over the mess left behind. “And I should hope I handled it well, considering that’s the eighth courting proposal I’ve declined this week alone.”
“Eighth?” Ominis repeats, aghast.
“Exactly.”
“Fuck off,” Sebastian says, and Mabel merely arches an unimpressed brow at him. “You didn’t even know that one’s name, people can’t honestly think they stand a chance with you -”
“Oh, please, it has nothing to do with standing a chance with me - they just think that they know me because of my reputation. The only things they know are what’s written in the Daily Prophet’s horrible new gossip column, or else whispered in the Great Hall or outside of classes. They know pieces - very public pieces - and half of them are lies, anyways. But it’s enough to make them all believe that they know everything.”
“That’s bullshit,” Sebastian mutters darkly as he bends at the waist to retrieve his textbook. If he crushes a few of the fallen flowers beneath his feet while he’s down there, that’s between him and the floor and no one else. “Why should anyone believe they’re worthy of you when all they know is bloody drivel published in some useless gossip rag? Just because some sweaty prick knows your middle name from some stupid article -”
“No one knows my middle name,” she interrupts.
Sebastian freezes, words dying on his tongue, and nearly bangs his head on the underside of the table in his haste to sit up straight again. She’s already gathering the Dittany flowers from the table, paying him no mind. “No one?” he repeats.
“No one,” she says with a shrug. Ominis hands her the flower that landed across his open textbook, a coy, curious smile on his face; Sebastian has no doubt that, if he could see, he would be shooting Sebastian a very pointed look.
“Surely you’ve told someone,” he says, previous irritation with Dillon’s insulting display all but forgotten in the wake of such intriguing information. “One of your Ravenclaw roommates, perhaps -”
“Nope,” she says, popping the P with a grin. “No one.”
She stands and crosses the walkway, clearly intent on the small wastebasket in the far corner, and Sebastian studies the cool and unaffected smile on her face as she returns empty-handed with a narrowed look. “It would be on file with the school,” he says after a moment.
“You’d think that, wouldn’t you?” she asks mildly.
“It would,” he insists. “Unless…unless you don’t have a middle name.”
She pretends to ponder it for a moment, before shrugging. “I suppose that’s also a possibility,” she says with another bright smile.
Sebastian quickly adjusts his seat so that he’s facing her head-on, secretly delighting when she mirrors his pose and plants both elbows on the table between them. “It’s probably something dreadfully boring and predictable like Jane or Marie.”
“Sounds an awful lot like you’re projecting, Sebastian Theodore.”
He blinks in surprise. “How - how did you -”
A delightful grin breaks across her face before the realization hits him; he screws his eyes shut and groans loudly, but not loudly enough to drown out her laughter. “I can’t believe I got it on the first try!”
“You cheated.”
His eyes split open again at her affronted gasp; she’s flattened a hand over her heart, expression scandalized and thrilled all at once, the lenses of her glasses flashing beneath the flickering sconce behind his head. “I take deep offense to that, you Slytherin scoundrel,” she sniffs. “I fight clean.”
“You fight like the bloody menace to society you are,” he tells her plainly, and the fake offense in her expression vanishes in an instant, flooded out by sheer delight. “Right, well, you just made this very personal. I’m going to figure this out, and when I do, I’m going to rub that smug nose of yours in it forever.”
“Best of luck with that,” she says cheerfully, pushing back from the table to stand. “I’ll even allow you to use Ominis as a resource.”
“Please don’t drag me into whatever this is,” Ominis mumbles wearily.
“Deal.” Sebastian ignores him, scrambling up to his feet and drawing himself up to his full height. He stands several proud inches over her, now - a fact he wasted no time crowing about upon their reunion at King’s Cross Station back at the start of term - but she holds his gaze steadily, merely lifting her chin a degree and offering her hand for him to shake. “Oh, you’re going to regret this,” he tells her as he takes her hand and shakes it firmly. “Especially if it’s embarrassing. I’ll never let you live it down.”
She merely shakes her head at him, a fond smile spreading over her pretty features. “I’ll say it again: best of luck with that. Now, if you don’t mind, I’m quite hungry and I was meant to meet Natty for breakfast ten minutes ago.”
Sebastian releases her hand, but stays on his feet long after she gently squeezes Ominis’ shoulder in farewell and flashes him one last smile over her shoulder before heading on her way to the Great Hall. “Must you spin this into some silly game? Why is it that you can’t just ask to court her normally?” Ominis asks once her footsteps have faded from the hall.
Sebastian blanches, sitting down heavily to gape at Ominis. “I -” he rasps, glancing down at his shoes.
One of the Dittany flowers he flattened earlier is stuck to the sole of his left shoe.
“You don’t have to prove you know her better than any of those other brainless idiots, you know,” Ominis says knowingly. “She already knows that. I suspect yours would be the only courting proposal she would even consider.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Sebastian says through gritted teeth, dragging his heel along the floor to scrape the flower off.
“Mhmm,” Ominis hums. Infuriating.
“And what about you, eh?” Sebastian demands. “If it’s so simple to just ask, why is it that Poppy Sweeting’s still gallivanting around the school unaccompanied?”
Two satisfying blotches of red bloom across Ominis’ cheeks. “I’m - working on it,” he says after a moment, effectively blotting out whatever momentary satisfaction the sight of his embarrassment burgeoned in Sebastian’s mind with his unexpected candidness. “It’s not quite as simple as your proposal should be, but…I believe I’m making progress.”
Sebastian blinks at him, and Ominis shifts uncomfortably. “You didn’t tell me you had a plan,” he says quietly.
“Well, you’ve been preoccupied with your own hairbrained idiocy for most of the term so far,” Ominis says mildly. “Besides, it’s none of your concern. Poppy is - lovely. Getting to know her the way I did over the summer was delightful, and I am forever indebted to Mabel for bringing us together the way she did at the end of last year after everything else was said and done. But I happen to know that I’m not the only one who knows just how lovely Poppy is, and…I need to do this correctly. It’s what she deserves.”
“Does Mabel not deserve the same thing?” Sebastian asks before he can stop himself.
Ominis frowns. “Of course she does,” he says softly.
“Then I need to do this,” he says firmly, “and I’ll need your help to pull it off.”
Ominis heaves a long-suffering sigh, but closes his textbook all the same.
It takes Sebastian the better part of three weeks to figure it out.
It is, without a doubt, the longest he’s ever spent in the non-restricted part of the library on his own free will. As voracious a reader he is, he’s never truly been keen on spending free time in Madame Scribner’s presence if he can help it, and it took nearly a week of ignoring her narrowed, suspicious gazes before she seemed to accept that he was truly there to study and not trying to pull off some ill-formed heist on the Restricted Section below his feet.
He isn’t there by choice, but unfortunately, the muggle census records on hand are considered too delicate a resource to check out of the library, so he remains glued to the desk beneath the shelf to which the records are chained.
Ominis managed to finesse Mabel’s student file out of Professor Black’s office after a particularly grueling afternoon tea, which quickly proved useless - the line upon which her middle name should have been written was maddeningly blank. Even those without middle names had a cursory dash across the space to indicate a lack of middle name, but hers was blank , which Ominis assured him to be most unusual. From there, Sebastian combed through records of previous students archived in the library, scanning feverishly for any sign of her surname - Finley - and coming up completely empty.
The thought of her being muggleborn didn’t occur to him until the fourth day; she’d always seemed so comfortable and adept behind her wand, it never crossed his mind that she might be newer to wielding magic in more ways than one. He confirms it in the 1881 muggle census - Finley, Mabel was listed as a 5-year-old resident of the St. Agatha’s Orphanage in Surrey. The revelation simultaneously delighted and gutted him, shedding new light to the looks of awe he remembers frequenting her face in her first few weeks in the castle. He almost wishes he could go back in time to that first Defense Against the Dark Arts class to watch their first duel from the sidelines with that information tucked carefully in his pocket.
Still no middle name listed, he can’t help but notice.
“She never talks about her family,” he murmurs to Ominis one evening. He’s pouring over immigration records from the 1870’s on the off chance he might find her name there, but from the corner of his eye he sees Ominis lift his head from his own textbook. He’s reading by candlelight, the daylight at Sebastian’s back having already faded enough to soften the edges of the darkness ensconcing them. “What do you suppose happened to them?”
“Perhaps she’ll tell you more when you’re courting,” Ominis says pointedly, bowing his head to focus on the slow drag of his fingertip across the lifted Braille before him. “Any luck with that one?”
Sebastian leans back heavily in his seat and heaves a sigh in response, ignoring Ominis’ sympathetic chuckle as he runs his hand blearily through his hair.
It takes nearly three weeks, but eventually - like always - he finds the thread and follows it all the way home.
“Mireille,” he half-shouts the moment the Undercroft gate lifts.
Mabel freezes, staring at him wide-eyed over her shoulder, clearly half-way through casting some unknown spell on the smoldering training dummy across the room. He strides toward her quickly, nearly tripping over his feet in his haste to approach her. “Pardon?” she manages after a moment.
He points to her manically and then gestures toward the sizeable stack of books and notes floating meekly along in his wake. “Your middle name is Mireille,” he says triumphantly.
She blinks at him.
“You threw me off with your last name not originally being Finley,” he says, reaching haphazardly toward the book on top of the stack. “I couldn’t find your birth certificate initially, but once I figured out you changed your surname to Finley, it was simple. Your parents immigrated to England from France in the early seventies and married here before relocating again to Spain. Your father worked in the Spanish royal court for a time while your mother became an acclaimed seamstress - a really good one, if the letter I found from one of her clients is to be trusted - and then they moved back here after your father retired. Your father passed several months before you were born, and your mother passed in childbirth - you were given to one of her sisters, who gave you the name on your birth certificate, Mabel Mireille Moreau. I’m still not entirely sure when or how your surname became Finley, but it seems you dropped your middle name around that time as well, because your name is listed as Mabel Finley on the eighteen-eighty-one census, but I’m absolutely positive that it’s you. The birthdates match, the timelines match, the locations match - your middle name is Mireille.”
His chest is heaving by the time he finishes. Mabel stares at him blankly, wide eyes drifting over the levitated books he’d split open and shoved in her face as he spoke, taking everything in at once. Dimly, he recalls Ominis complaining quite often about how crazed and unhinged Sebastian can get after losing himself so long on a research tear, but can’t quite shake the cotton-swathed feeling in his mind to follow that train of thought to the station. He’s hit belatedly with the scent of smoke and ash permeating the air around them; her wand shakes just slightly in her grip at her side before she tightens her fist around it, visibly swallowing as her gaze finally flicks back up to his face.
“I - I don’t know what to say,” she finally manages after a moment.
Her voice is choked with something wholly foreign and unnerving. The training dummy is still smoldering. “Have I missed something?” he asks haltingly.
She turns her head to the side, jaw set in an unfamiliar line. “Just a few more courting proposals,” she says airily. “Nothing you should be concerned about.”
He chokes down his initial wave of outrage and jealousy at the flat affect of her brow. “You aren’t exactly convincing me, here,” he says nervously. He flicks his wand at the levitating books and sweeps them away to the far side of the Undercroft. “What’s happened?”
She keeps her head turned to the side for a long moment, before sharply turning toward him. In her eyes, a familiar blazing determination roars to life, licking like flames against her irises, pinning him in place. “Why have you been so determined to figure out my middle name?” she asks - demands - and his blood runs cold at the accusatory stance she takes before him.
“I - I just - I dunno -”
“It seems you do,” she interrupts, gesturing toward the books safely scattered across the floor behind him. “That’s quite a bit of effort to make for some pointless bet, so what exactly are you expecting from me now that you’ve figured it out?”
“Nothing,” he chokes. She narrows her eyes in disbelief. “I mean it, I - I don’t expect anything. I know what I said before, but -”
“But what?” she presses, advancing a step toward him, and he fumbles over his feet in his haste to retreat. “But now you’re entitled to some part of me? Now you’re going to parade around the school lauding yet another piece of personal information about me like it’s the latest key to my affections? How long can I expect it to take for the Daily Prophet to run another article about me, analyzing my ancestry or spouting absolute bullshit about the bloody meaning of my stupid middle name -”
“I would never do that to you!” he shouts. The odd, cottony quality of his brain makes the whole scene feel like something out of a dream - a nightmare, more like - but he’s still got enough of his wits about him to feel properly outraged that she would jump to such conclusions about him. “Merlin’s bollocks, what the bloody hell’s gotten into you?”
Mabel lets out a piercing, strangled shout before turning on her heel and sending a fiery blast toward the training dummy, which promptly dissolves into a pile of ash with a brilliant red-gold flash. “I never asked for this!” she shrieks, and Sebastian’s mouth goes dry as she sends another wordless blast of Confringo toward the stack of empty barrels in the far corner of the room, reducing them all to dust. “I never asked for any of this, I don’t want any of the bloody attention, I don't want to be pursued like a bloody mongrel, I don’t want to be written about or whispered about or lied about, I just - I just want to be normal.”
Her voice breaks over the last word, and the fight seems to leave her all at once; Sebastian watches, mesmerized, as she shrinks down on herself, knees buckling beneath her weight. She crouches down and wraps her arms around her legs, wand falling from her slackened hand with a hollow sound against the stone and rolling away.
He approaches cautiously, and then less cautiously when she doesn’t flinch away from him. “I’m sorry,” he says softly, crouching down beside her and passing a gentle, soothing hand over her shoulders. “It was never my intention to make you feel that way, I swear. I thought - I thought it was just some silly challenge -”
“Oh, gods, Sebastian, shut up,” she mutters hoarsely, and with dawning horror he realizes she sounds as though she’s on the verge of tears. “I know you didn’t mean it like that, just - just please shut up.”
He acquiesces for only a moment.
“Did I miss something?” he asks gently. “I’ve been so preoccupied with - with my research, I…it occurs to me now that I’ve been largely absent for the last few weeks outside of attending classes. Did something happen?”
She doesn’t lift her chin from her knees, but he sees her roll her eyes all the same. “Nothing outside of the ordinary,” she mumbles. “Just a slew of courting proposals from boys I’ve never spoken to before and - and the like.”
He catches her hesitation instantly. “What happened?” he asks again with the slightest edge of force.
She turns her head toward him just far enough to eye him warily. “Do not make a big deal out of this,” she warns.
He raises his right hand solemnly - the one not still spread across her shoulders.
She appraises him another moment before sighing heavily and falling back to sit properly on the floor. He mirrors her, hand leaving her back only long enough to brace his weight before he resumes his ministrations. “Someone overheard me and Poppy talking on the stairwell after Beasts class yesterday,” she says slowly. “Poppy was talking about nifflers and how adorable she thinks they are, and I suppose whoever it was that was eavesdropping thought it was me talking about them, because all day today, I’ve been accosted every single time I turn around by some boy brandishing a niffler at me.”
Sebastian freezes. “But you’re allergic to niffler fur,” he says stiffly.
“I know.”
“Wait, hang on - someone eavesdropped on one private conversation, and you were then attacked by multiple people for the entire day with a beast you literally can’t breathe near?”
“It’s nothing new,” she says with a dismissive wave of her hand. “I mean, the niffler component is new, but…it’s like, the second a new piece of information is revealed about me, it’s passed around the school like fodder. It’s gotten to the point where I’m paranoid to even step outside of my dormitory in the mornings because I have no idea what new, personal information is going to be used against me. After finding niffler fur in my supper, I couldn’t take it anymore, so I came down here to blow off steam and you caught me at a particularly bad moment.” She glances over his shoulder, and then flashes an apologetic grimace up at him. “I’m sorry I reacted that way,” she murmurs.
He’s still so caught up in his own outrage over the absolute carelessness of his classmates that it takes a long moment to remember what brought him here in the first place. “Oh, gods, please don’t apologize to me,” he says quickly. “I absolutely deserved it. Honestly, you should have disintegrated me instead of the dummy.”
“Now, why on earth would I do that to the person who's finally managed to tell me what my middle name is?”
He snorts, and then completely freezes as the weight of her words fully sinks in. Her lips are quirked in a familiar crooked grin, but he can’t even feel the usual surge of affection the expression usually pulls from him. “What did you just say?” he nearly whispers.
She leans toward him to nudge him with her shoulder. “I told you, no one knows what my middle name is,” she says with a shrug.
He blinks at her rapidly. “I didn’t think you were also included in that!” he finally manages after a moment of merely gaping at her. “You honestly mean to tell me that you didn’t know your own middle name before I came barging in here screaming it at you?”
“I didn’t even know that Finley wasn’t my original surname,” she says thoughtfully.
Sebastian scrambles to his feet and paces away from her, limbs numb and ice-heavy as he fists his hands in his hair. “You’re lying,” he says. “You’re lying, there’s no way - there’s no way I’m the first one to tell you about any of that, and there’s absolutely no bloody way I just came sprinting in here brandishing it at you like the fucking idiots with the nifflers and the fucking Dittany flowers -”
“Sebastian,” her voice is equal parts soothing and amused, filtering through the haze of his panic a split-second before the sensation of her hands on his arms. Her face is the last thing to come swimming into focus; she’s looking up at him calmly, firmly, a beautiful smile only barely visible in the familiar apples of her dimpled, freckled cheeks. “It’s alright. Breathe.”
Dutifully, he sucks down a deep breath and lets it out slowly over the top of her head.
“Alright. I’ll grant you that you could have probably not shouted it all at me,” she says. He winces, but she only chuckles in response, so he doesn’t pull away from her touch still lingering on his arms. “But it was just poor timing,” she says, sweeping her thumbs over the swell of his biceps in soothing and hypnotic twin arcs. “Literally any other day this week, it wouldn’t have affected me so negatively.”
“You must know that I never intended to make you feel as though that information was fodder to me in any way, shape, or form,” he says quickly. He curls his arms up, grasping desperately at her elbows, imploring her to believe him despite the soft, openly trusting look already radiating in her eyes. “I feel like such a fool -”
“You are a fool, but not for this,” she interrupts - equal parts fond and exasperated. “Honestly, Sebastian, there isn’t another person in this school I’d rather learn my own history from than you. You actually know who I am beyond what I did last year.”
He swallows thickly around the nauseating wall of guilt rising up inside his gut. “I - I need to confess something,” he hears himself whisper.
Her brow furrows, but she doesn’t pull away. He allows himself one last moment to savor her closeness - the sweetness of her perfume, the warmth of her skin bleeding through the thin sleeves of his shirt - before he forces himself to speak once more.
“I came down here with every intention of proposing my intentions to court you,” he says, squeezing his eyes shut to shield himself from her expression. He feels her stiffen with shock (he prays it’s shock) against him, and fights hard against the urge to yank her closer, to keep her from pulling away. “I thought - I thought if I could prove to you that I know you better than anyone else, that it would - make me worthy of - of courting you. I realize now how utterly repugnant that line of thinking is, and I can assure you, I absolutely loathe myself for thinking it. I - truly, I am no better than the blundering idiots attacking you with nifflers, and I - gods, Mabel. You deserve so much better than any of us, most especially me. I’m - I’m so sorry. I hope, with time, you can forgive me.”
He can’t bring himself to open his eyes. Instead he waits, head bowed, braced for her to rip away from grip and slap him, or punch him, or knee him in the groin - he deserves all of that and far worse, and he knows it.
Instead - after a very long, tense moment of silence - he feels her grip on his biceps loosen a degree. “Why?” she asks quietly.
Her expression is entirely unreadable when he finally splits his eyes open. She’s staring up at him hard - something blazing to life there in her irises once more - and he swallows hard, dry throat working against itself as he struggles to find his voice beneath the intensity of her gaze. “What - what d’you mean?”
“Why do you want to court me?”
He nearly laughs at the incredulity of it all. “Why do I want to court you?” he repeats, and she nods determinedly. “Merlin, why do I need air to breathe? You’re so unbelievably strong and brave, so absurdly kind to everyone you meet even though none of them deserve it, least of all me. You’re smart and you’re hilarious and so bloody gorgeous from the inside out - I consider it the highest honor of my entire life just to consider you my friend, but I’d be lying if I said I haven’t been utterly infatuated with you since the moment you knocked me on my arse in the middle of Professor Hecat’s classroom last year. You’re my absolute favorite person in any given room at any given time - do not tell Ominis that I just said that. Every conversation I get to have with you is a thrill, every late night misadventure we share is a privilege, and I’m - I’m the best version of myself when I’m with you. I don’t deserve you - no one does - but I - I’d do quite literally anything for you. Whether we’re courting or not, I’d do anything for you if you asked.”
Her expression is no more readable when he finishes speaking than it was when she first asked, but he can see something changing in the recesses of her gaze; something softening, something breaking, something mending together again right before his eyes. He’s quite certain he could talk about her for the remainder of the evening if she let him, but something about the intensity of it all has stolen his voice; he stands quite still before her, watching, mesmerized.
“Poppy forgot that I’m allergic to nifflers,” Mabel says after a long, tense moment.
Sebastian feels his brow furrow so intensely it ignites a dull headache in his temples. “Sorry?”
“Poppy forgot that I’m allergic to nifflers,” she repeats, leaning just slightly toward him as if to emphasize an obvious point. “I consider her to be among my closest friends, but she forgot that I’m allergic to nifflers. And Natty - Natty found the entire affair to be funny. She said I should lighten up - I should be amused by it all. Even when I found fur in my food, she tried to make a joke of it.”
Slowly, he nods.
“You remembered.”
He stops nodding.
“You remembered immediately that I’m allergic to nifflers, and you were enraged that so many people brought them to me over the course of today,” she presses, and all at once he’s hyper aware of her hands still gripped around his arms, of the fact that her face is now so close to his that he could count the faded freckles dusted across her nose if he wanted to. “You always bring an extra handful of strawberries to Defense Against the Dark Arts when I miss breakfast because you know they’re my favorite, and you never give me flack about fact-checking my History of Magic essays because you know that I’m still struggling with that subject despite having been here a year already -”
“You didn’t have the benefit of extra assignments to help solidify a basis of knowledge in that class like you did with all your others last year,” Sebastian interrupts faintly, “and now I know you didn't grow up in the wizarding world - of course you’re going to struggle, that's not your fault.”
“Right, of course,” she says, like he’s helping her prove her point. “You know which classes I had extra assignments in and which classes I didn’t. You remember silly little inconsequential things about me like my favorite fruit and my allergies. You even managed to track down my middle name - information that has eluded even me for my entire life - and you’ve only ever used that information to be a better, more attentive friend.”
She’s still looking up at him so meaningfully, and he isn’t sure how much longer he can withstand the pure heat radiating off of her in waves.
“I’m not totally sure what you’re getting at,” he admits hoarsely.
“You idiot - I’ve been completely mad for you for ages now!” she shouts, shaking his arms roughly to drive her point home. He staggers with the force of it, suddenly numb from the crown of his head down to the heels of his feet.
“You’re - for me?” he gasps.
“Yes!”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“The same reason you didn’t tell me, you oaf!”
“I didn’t tell you because I didn’t think I deserved you, you can’t honestly tell me -”
“Sebastian,” she interrupts sternly, “I don’t ever want to hear any talk about deserving or not deserving me - I’m not some prize to be won.”
“You never were,” he says quickly. “Not ever, not to me. But I - I wanted to - to earn your affections. I wanted to show you that I - that I -”
He trails off, casting desperately through his frazzled, whip-lashed mind for the right phrase, but all his fuzzy desperation fades at the small, crooked smile on her face. He catches only a glimpse of it before she tucks her head against his chest and he winds his arms around her instantly, pulling her in as close as their bodies allow, one shaking hand passing over the back of her head to tangle gently in her hair.
“You’ve never had to earn them, you needed only to ask - my affections have been yours from the very beginning,” she tells him softly. He allows himself to revel in the conviction in her voice, in the truth of her words. Her hands - so powerful and sure - feel impossibly small where they wind slowly up his back.
“I - are you - are you accepting my proposal?” he asks after a drawn-out moment of comfortable quiet.
She snorts into his sleeve, but nuzzles closer - oblivious to the thrill that surges up his spine in response. “Mm,” she hums pseudo-thoughtfully, “may need a bit more time to consider it.”
He tugs pointedly at a lock of her hair, grinning against the crown of her head when she makes a scandalized, indignant noise and promptly pinches the small of his back in retaliation. He jumps, effectively dislodging her from her place against his chest, and the entire situation very quickly devolves into a wholly undignified tickle war that ends only when he gets her pinned to the floor flat on her back, rosy-faced and laughing as his fingers dance up her exposed sides.
It’s far from the first time he’s done this - shown her so little mercy in a tickle fight - but it is the first time he’s allowed himself to linger here, watching her blink tears of laughter out of her eyes to gaze up at him clearly. Her hair is fanned out across the dirty floor beneath her and her glasses are fogged; she makes no move to stop him when he gently pulls them from her face and sets them a safe distance away.
“Mabel Mireille,” he says seriously. “I would be honored if you would allow me the opportunity to properly court you.”
A faint smile twitches across her face. “I thought you’d never ask,” she says softly.
She takes his outstretched hand and allows him to pull her up into a seated position. He studies her face only a moment longer before slowly lifting his free hand to cup her jaw, gently guiding her head up just far enough to press his lips to hers for the first time.
She sighs through her nose before hesitantly pressing her own free hand to his chest - her touch one of curiosity, he realizes with a thrill as she melts more fully against him. Every atom in his body feels aflame, burning up what little shreds of sanity his library-addled brain has left as he drops her hand to frame her face between both of his hands, angling it to the side just slightly. Her touch has gone from curious to gripping, fingers curled into the fabric of his shirt, pulling him closer as he briefly touches his tongue to her lips.
She gasps, lips parting, and he takes the opportunity she’s afforded him with no further prompting. Slowly - carefully - he probes his tongue against her teeth and then further within, relishing in the unexpected faint sweetness that envelops his senses as she grasps more desperately at his chest and shoulders.
He yanks away at the first tentative brush of her tongue against his, flushed and heaving for breath. She gazes up at him, visibly dazed, and mindlessly tightens her grip on his shirt as though to reel him back in. He’s very seriously considering it when -
Her stomach growls between them, loud and pointed, and they both immediately dissolve into laughter against each other. She presses her forehead to his chest and he holds her there with a gentle hand against the back of her head, delirious and so incandescently happy he feels mere seconds away from floating up to the ceiling and never coming back down again.
“Come on,” he manages after a few moments of unrestrained laughter. “Let’s go get some food in that belly of yours, I promise to protect you from any rogue nifflers while you eat -”
“How chivalrous,” she croons as he hefts first himself and then her up to her feet.
“Bare minimum, darling,” he assures her as he stoops to grab her glasses and her wand from the floor before either of them accidentally trod across them. She indulges him by allowing him to slide her glasses gently up her nose, but pulls her wand from his grasp before he has a chance to do something embarrassing with it. “Just wait. I’m going to be absolutely incessant, I hope you know that. You’ll be sick of me in a fortnight.”
She snorts and tucks her hand into the crook of his elbow, allowing him to steer her toward the Undercroft’s gate. “Impossible,” she says firmly, head pressing briefly to his shoulder as the gate rattles upward.