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The news of Sebastian and Mabel’s courtship does not have the immediate and total cease-fire effect Sebastian hoped for.
Many of her would-be suitors do, thankfully, seem to get the memo quite quickly; he’d only been forced to glare and snarl insults under his breath at three of them the morning after their impromptu supper debut, which Mabel assures him is about a quarter of the number she usually contends with on her own before breakfast most days. Word spread quite quickly from there, eviscerating whatever shreds of doubt survived the explosive sight of them meandering into the Great Hall arm-in-arm; everywhere Sebastian went, he felt the eyes of his classmates gathered in small gaggles along the edges of the halls following him, heard hissing whispers ignite behind his turned back.
It isn’t the first time he’s been the subject of the Merlin-forsaken Hogwarts rumor mill. It is the first time he’s felt his chest swell with pride at all the recognition.
That’s right, he wants to tell them, she chose me. Write a bloody article about that, why don’t you?
There are a select few, though - an infuriating, hard-headed few - who take the news of their courtship as little more than a challenge.
“Think they’ll expel me if I transfigure Andrew Larson into the bloody weasel he is?” Sebastian mutters darkly over a plate full of treacle tart on the eighth evening of his courtship with Mabel.
Anne snorts across the table, eyes flashing to something - Larson being a prat, probably - over Sebastian’s shoulder. “Don’t laugh,” Ominis admonishes her from behind his potions textbook. “It’ll only encourage him.”
“It depends on if you get caught,” Anne says, ignoring Ominis’ loud, long-suffering sigh. “You’d have to build him a habitat -”
“I’ve heard the third floor toilets are just lovely this time of year -”
“- and you’d have to find a suitable decoy to attend all his classes so no one suspects -”
“Pretty sure I overheard Sharp say he’s got a jar full of troll bogeys in his office, I could probably charm an extra cloak to fit around it -”
“I will leave,” Ominis hisses, scandalized, as Anne dissolves into laughter behind her hand.
“What would you have me do, then?” Sebastian demands over her muffled giggles. “You can’t honestly expect me to just stand by -”
“Of course not,” Ominis interrupts, snapping his textbook shut with enough force it blows the strands of hair escaped from his careful coif back from his forehead. “Just declare your courtship publicly, you buffoon.”
“I escorted her to supper in front of the entire school last week -”
“I think he meant to suggest that you should offer her your tie,” Anne interrupts mildly.
Sebastian chokes on his suddenly parched throat. It’s not as though he hasn’t thought about it - both before and since starting their courtship - but in his daydreams, they’ve been together for at least a few months. He would be lying if the objective concept of Mabel wearing his tie around her left wrist - his clothing, his colors - didn’t ignite a very base, primal kind of hunger in the pit of his belly, but…
Anne arches a brow at him, curious and challenging. “It’s only been a week,” he rasps.
“Eight days, actually. But everyone knows it’s been far longer than that,” Ominis counters with a pointed look.
Sebastian gapes at him for a moment, before Anne shaking her head in amusement draws his attention back to her face. “Offering her my tie this soon would be mad,” he tells her numbly. “That’s as good as a bloody marriage proposal. Not to mention she’s still sort of new here, what if she doesn’t understand the implications - I can’t - I don’t want to scare her off. It would scare her off, wouldn’t it?”
She tilts her head slightly, considering him. “I actually agree with Ominis,” she says, flashing him a small, pacifying smile when he further deflates in his seat. “I obviously wasn’t here for most of last year, but based on what I’ve seen of the two of you…it really has been far longer than a week.”
“She also doesn’t scare so easily,” Ominis murmurs as he cracks his textbook open once more. “Do as you wish, obviously. But for what it’s worth, I have a hard time imagining her reacting poorly to it.”
Sebastian frowns at his treacle tart, leg bouncing anxiously beneath the table. He can feel Anne watching him, but the weight of her gaze is distant; resolution snaps into place quickly in his chest - spurred on by Andrew Larson’s obnoxious laughter ringing out across the Hall - propelling Sebastian up and around to quickly scan the Ravenclaw table behind him.
“She’s not here,” Anne says before he can work himself up any further. “She told me earlier she was planning to skip supper tonight to answer an owl she received from someone out in Maurunweem. Actually,” she winces, “she asked me to let you know she wouldn’t be here - sorry, just remembered.”
Sebastian deflates. “Shit -”
“I don’t think she’s gone yet - I overheard her inviting Poppy to meet her out near the Quidditch pitch before she heads out, and I haven’t seen Poppy yet, either. You could probably still catch her if you run.”
Sebastian’s already out of his seat and racing toward the Great Hall doors before Anne has finished speaking. “Thank you!” he shouts over his shoulder.
Whatever stroke of good fortune blessed Sebastian eight days previously seems to still consider him in its favor - he comes tumbling out of the doors and into the courtyard, breathless from sprinting, and despite the fact that the lawn is littered with students meandering about in the glorious warmth of the hour and golden sheen of the setting sun, he spots Mabel and Poppy wandering toward the Quidditch pitch within seconds. His heart is still hammering against his breast, but the sight of Mabel - even turned away from him as she is - immediately sets the anxiety thrumming in his belly at ease.
She’s out of her Hogwarts uniform. She usually is whenever the opportunity presents itself to her - she finds the concept of a uniform stifling, or so she said when ranting about it to him and Ominis and Anne while they all changed into theirs on the Hogwarts Express at the beginning of term. She’s in one of her favorite outfits to travel in, one she’s worn out on occasion with him, in fact - a very pretty powder blue set, made of thick, warm, protective material, emphasized by a reinforced leather corset wrapped protectively around her otherwise exposed middle visible beneath the hem of the cropped jacket. Usually, he rather likes the way it looks on her.
He can’t help but feel a small twinge of disappointment at the realization that it most definitely means she is not wearing her Ravenclaw tie.
The disappointment fades quickly as he sets off after them at a leisurely pace - this should be entirely about her, anyways - only moving a bit more quickly than the two of them ahead of him. Mabel’s broom is slung over her right shoulder and Poppy has her arm threaded through Mabel’s crooked left, not unlike the way Mabel’s threaded through his as they left the Undercroft together eight days earlier. With a great rush of affection, he watches Poppy tilt her head down to rest on Mabel’s shoulder, and Mabel tilt her own head down to press her cheek to the crown of Poppy’s head as they walk. Fondness steals his breath away, and for a moment, he almost hates himself for intending to interrupt them.
Almost.
They stop several meters short of the Quidditch pitch, disentangling so that they can face each other. Sebastian slows his pace, watching as Poppy’s head tilts back and a quiet, distant sound of strangled frustration reaches him in time with her screwing her eyes shut in despair. Mabel’s laughter is lost to the wind, but the way her shoulders shake with it draws a smile across his face so broad his cheeks ache with it already. She shifts her broom to her left shoulder and reaches out to grip Poppy’s upper arm with her right hand, seemingly bracing her for whatever she’s saying through that broad, barely-tampered grin Sebastian so loves to receive. Poppy groans again, and this time, Mabel’s silverbell peels of laughter are clearly audible. It sets Sebastian’s blood at a pleasant simmer.
Poppy spots him first - having thrown her head from side to side with a petulant pout while Mabel continued giggling - and the instant their eyes meet, all of her put-upon misery vanishes. She glances at Mabel with a sly grin and mutters something out of the corner of her mouth Sebastian can’t quite make out; he lifts his hand in greeting when Mabel’s eyes dart to his face and immediately light up.
“Sebastian!” she calls, delighted, dropping her hand from Poppy’s arm. “I thought you’d be at supper!”
“Couldn’t let you leave for the night without seeing you off,” he says, shoving his hands in his pockets and stopping short several respectful paces away. “I didn’t mean to interrupt, my apologies -”
“No, please,” Poppy waves her hand dismissively. “I was just finishing up my dramatics. Don’t let me keep you.”
She moves to walk away, but stops short when Mabel’s hand darts out and grasps her sleeve. “Just hang in there,” Mabel says kindly. “I’ll try to think of something tonight. We’ll get it figured out when I get back in the morning.”
“We’d better,” Poppy says seriously. “I’m on the verge of utter madness, here.”
Mabel chortles and releases her sleeve. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Be safe!”
Sebastian smiles down at Poppy as they pass each other, moving closer to Mabel but turning his torso away from her and squinting through tangerine sunlight to watch Poppy retreat back toward the school for a moment. “Everything alright with that one?” he asks as he faces her again, close enough to count her lashes.
“She’s fine,” Mabel says with a good-natured roll of her eyes. “Just being dramatic about a certain clueless Slytherin.”
Sebastian feels himself perk up with interest. “And would I happen to know this certain clueless Slytherin?”
She makes a show of pretending to consider it, reaching up to tap her chin pseudo-thoughtfully with her free hand. “Now that I think of it, you might actually know him,” she says, only just able to restrain the grin threatening to split across her face. “He’s about yea tall,” she flattens her hand and holds it an inch below the top of his head, “blond, very posh. Blind - in more ways than one, I sometimes worry.”
Sebastian snorts. “Ah, yes, that Slytherin. I may or may not have it on good authority that he sees a bit more than he lets on,” he says cryptically.
Her brows shoot up her forehead. “Now that is interesting news. Perhaps you should join us in our strategy session in the morning.”
“Perhaps I should,” he grins with a conspiratorial wink.
She giggles and reaches to adjust her broom with both hands. “Thank you for seeing me off,” she murmurs, her smile wide and lazy. “I’m sorry for not telling you myself. This is all very last-minute - I got the owl in the middle of last class and intended to leave directly after class, otherwise I would have asked you to meet me out here. Poppy’s so-called crisis was a bit last-second, and despite all the joking, I really do feel quite bad for her.”
“I understand. Busy girl, that Hero of Hogwarts. I’m just thankful to be remembered.”
She lets out a small groan when he dramatically presses the back of his hand to his forehead, feigning a swoon, but her grin never falters; he takes it as a win as she winds her fingers into his shirt and gently pulls him toward her, the warm curve of her forehead bumping lightly against his collarbone. “Just so we’re clear,” she mumbles, “I’d much rather spend my evening in the Undercroft with you.”
A delightful, buzzing kind of happiness settles over his mind at her words and rolls smoothly down his spine to tingle in the furthest tips of his extremities; with a broad grin, he winds both arms around her shoulders and pulls her into a proper embrace, ignoring the way her broom handle smashes awkwardly into the upper curve of his shoulder as she readjusts too late. “There’s always tomorrow evening,” he offers quietly, letting the barest hint of playful, salacious innuendo color his tone.
She snorts, but doesn’t jerk back to affix him with a scandalized expression. They stay like that for some time, moving only enough for her to adjust her broom into a more comfortable position for them both.
“Want me to come with you?” he asks quietly. “I can be back here in ten minutes with my broom if you fancy some company.”
“That’s a kind offer, but I should be alright on my own,” she says with a sigh. “It sounds simple enough - just a small band of suspected poachers terrorizing a traveling vendor out in Maurunweem. Based on the tone of the letter, I’d venture to guess it’s more of a turf war than anything else, but the letter claimed there have been injuries to other villagers, so…better safe than sorry, I suppose, but nothing to be overly concerned about. Besides, you need your rest. Ominis told me you’ve been staying up late to help him study for that Potions exam next week.”
She nuzzles in closer as she talks, and he hums, allowing one hand to wander down the short expanse of her back. He can’t even bring himself to be disappointed by her gentle rejection; she’s so warm leaned up against him, so soft beneath his wandering fingers. It's enough, he decides. It’s as she begins to sway against him - only slightly, just enough to coax him into shifting his weight from one foot to the other - that he has the following blissful thought: I could do this forever.
And in the split-second after that thought, the reality of that implication crashes down on him, right along with the full weight of why he came sprinting out here chasing after her to begin with.
He feels himself freeze up against her, suddenly shot through with nerves. She tries to keep swaying only a moment longer; his heart is pounding once more as she pulls back just far enough to peer up at him, confusion shining plainly in her bright, pretty eyes. “Sebastian?” she asks softly.
“I,” he croaks, and then snaps his jaw shut and forces himself to swallow against his dry mouth. It’s thick and loud, and his throat clicks horribly, and the last traces of her contentment and amusement vanish in the wake of her sudden concern. “I’m fine,” he manages a moment later.
“You don’t seem fine,” she says cautiously. “Did I - did I make you uncomfortable?”
“No!” he practically shouts, and she startles, head jerking back even further and eyes doubling in circumference. “Sorry, erm - no, no, you didn’t make me uncomfortable. I don’t know that you could ever make me uncomfortable, honestly.”
“Okay,” she says slowly, and he winces - her tone isn’t quite at Taming Wild Beasts levels of soothing, but she’s veering dangerously close to it. He thinks, with sudden, burning savagery, of Dillon and his stupid Dittany flowers. “Something clearly just happened, so I just -”
“I’m fine,” he says firmly. He lowers both arms from around her shoulders to grip briefly at her upper arms, and then lets them fall limply to his sides. “I - there’s another reason I wanted to see you before you left this evening,” he says unevenly.
She blinks at him, and then tilts her head just slightly, her curiosity plain.
“There’s a - tradition. Around the school. I dunno if you’ve ever heard of it, erm - it’s - so, when a - when a couple is courting, and things are - going well, I suppose, they - they do this, er, thing -”
“Trading ties?” Mabel interrupts.
Sebastian’s blood runs hot, and then cold, and then hot again. “Yeah,” he breathes. “How did you -”
“Poppy and Natty told me about it at the start of term,” she shrugs, and her broom rises and falls comically with the movement. “They go around your wrist, do they not?”
“They - yes. Yeah, usually - usually couples exchange ties, and - you’re right. They shrink them down and it goes around your wrist.”
“Your left wrist.” Mabel says.
“Your left wrist,” Sebastian confirms.
“Sort of like a posy ring, right? Like a declaration of the intent to propose. That’s what Poppy said.”
He nods. His ears are burning, suddenly.
“Right, like a - yes. And there’s a merging charm, too, to seal the ends together, so - yes. A - a posy ring.”
Her brow furrows thoughtfully. “What do you suppose was the original purpose of the sealing charm? And who figured out it could be used for something like this?”
“I - huh. I dunno. I’ve never thought about it.”
They’re both quiet for a moment, before she shrugs again. “Might be interesting to look into,” she says with a grin.
Sebastian huffs out a laugh bolstered by the knowing twinkle in her eyes. They stand quite still for a moment - just grinning at each other - before he reaches with a shaking hand to loosen the knot of his tie at the base of his throat.
Mabel’s eyes zero in on the movement of his hand. Her face falls flat with shock for one brief, endless moment.
But when they dart back up to his face, he’s met with a look of unabashed wonder.
“I know this is probably insanely fast by most standards,” he mutters, pulling at his tie until he can pull the whole thing up over his head, “but…it feels right. This - you feel right. You’re the best thing in my life, Mabel, and I - I want everyone to know. And this…” he trails off and lifts the tie. It hangs between them innocently, flapping in the slight breeze and with latent momentum as Sebastian pulls the knot free and smooths the kinked material between his fingers. “I want a life with you. A future.”
“I want that with you, too,” she says - hushed and reverent.
He grins sharply, an impossible warmth expanding within his chest so quickly he feels in danger of floating away. “This wasn’t how I imagined doing this originally, just so you know,” he says. “I wanted to do it over dinner somewhere just the two of us - down in the Undercroft, maybe. I wanted to get you flowers and light candles, maybe steal the string trio from out in the hall for a few hours -”
“What made you want to do it now?” she asks softly.
He hesitates. “I just - I can’t wait any longer. Not that this was a last second thing - again, I swear I had a plan for later, I - I was even going to Gladrags to get a new tie for the occasion -”
“I don’t want a new tie,” Mabel interrupts quickly. “I want yours.”
Sebastian feels his jaw fall loose, but can’t bring himself to do anything but drag in a stuttered, shaking inhale. She’s looking up at him so earnestly, bouncing on the balls of her feet, like she’s eager to snatch the tie from his hands, but in forcing herself not to, she can’t stop the movement from escaping her body.
Wordlessly, he holds the tie out to her; she practically hurls her broom aside in her haste to extend her left wrist to him. He focuses on the soft drag of the silky material over her exposed wrist, swallowing thickly at the wave of base pleasure the sight of his forest green colors set against the smooth stretch of her skin sends through his mind. His mouth goes dry the longer he stares; he has to focus very hard on grounding himself by his grip around his wand as he pulls it from the pocket of his robes before he loses the ability to think straight.
“Reducio,” he murmurs as he gently touches the tip of his wand to the tie.
It shrinks slowly, smoothly, until the width of the tie shrinks down to just thinner than the circumference of his wand and the excess length barely extends past the gentle curve of the heel of her palm. He makes quick work of sealing the ends together, and then pockets his wand and smooths both of the pads of his thumbs across the back of her wrist where the material lays.
She’s watching him breathlessly when he glances up at her through his lashes. He smiles, and her breath catches.
Wordlessly, she claws at her throat with her right hand - whatever precious, lovely emotion his gentle movements inspired in her shatters as a look of dawning horror spreads across her face, her fingers scrabbling uselessly against the empty collar of her traveling garb.
“Oh my gods,” she whispers pitifully.
He laughs - he can’t help it. She looks completely devastated, still running her hand over her empty collar like one of her well-loved blue-and-bronze ties might materialize there by sheer force of will. “It’s alright,” he says through a broad grin.
“It’s not alright!” she wails. “We’re supposed to exchange them, that’s the whole point -”
“So you’ll just give me yours when you get back tomorrow,” he soothes. He pulls her hand away from her throat and chuckles when she groans, maintaining a grip around both of her hands and pulling her into another hug even as she sighs dramatically against his chest. “It’s alright, love, truly. I noticed you weren’t wearing one of yours right away, I figured there was a chance this would happen.”
She groans again - softer now, muffled into his chest - but winds her arms around his waist and squeezes hard. “I will give you one of mine,” she mutters. “First thing in the morning.”
“Before or after our strategy session with Poppy?”
She jerks her head back and considers him through narrowed eyes. “Before,” she says definitively. “In fact - meet me on the seventh floor of the Astronomy Tower before breakfast. Right in front of the tapestry of Barnabas the Barmy. I’ll meet you there with my favorite tie, and…and I want to show you something else, too.”
He arches a brow at her sudden evasiveness. “Well, now you have me curious.”
She winks and steps backwards, allowing him to catch her hands and briefly squeeze her fingers before pulling her hands from his grasp and nearly tripping over her discarded broom. “Don’t be late,” she says as she straddles her broom.
He lunges closer to her before she can kick off, stopping her with a hand on her arm. She watches him lean into her space with a small smile on her face that only broadens when he carefully presses a kiss to her lips; he parts from her with a sigh, elation welling up in his gut at the look of punch-drunk adoration on her face and the wink of green that greets him when she reaches up and tucks her hair behind her ear with her left hand. “You’re certain you don’t want me to go with you?” he tries as he backs away again.
“Positive. This’ll be quick and easy, I promise.”
He chews the inside of his cheek a moment longer before nodding in defeat. “Alright. Please be careful anyways.”
She kicks off the ground but hovers in place, toes centimeters from dragging against the grass. “I always am,” she says.
“Be extra careful, then,” he insists.
“Yes, dear,” she sing-songs as her broom rises up high above his head. She waves down at him, her grin barely visible even as he shields his eyes from the sun, and then whizzes away in a flash.
He remains rooted to the spot until her figure is little more than an incomprehensible speck on the horizon, and trudges back toward the castle with a broad, untempered grin spread across his face.
He is decidedly not smiling anymore as he paces alone in the hallway to the left of the seventh floor tapestry the following morning.
He’s been pacing for the better part of twenty minutes, now, and waiting for the better part of thirty minutes, watching the rising sun bleed the watery, blueish light illuminating the hallway into a rosy glow outside the windows. His worry is beginning to border on panic the way it usually does without Anne or Ominis or Mabel around to calm his racing thoughts, but he chokes down the urge to sit in the corner and rock himself back and forth in favor of crossing in front of the tapestry and peering down the curve of the spiral staircase that led him here, breath held as he listens for her footsteps on the stairs.
He listens to the silence for several seconds before letting out a muted growl and stalking off again toward his now well-beaten path.
A calmer, more rational part of his brain recognizes that there are a litany of reasons for Mabel to not be there yet, not the least of which being that she never actually specified an exact time to meet - before breakfast could mean three hours before or ten minutes before, after all, and he’s still at least two good full hours away from when breakfast will be served in the Great Hall below his feet. Still, something about the air here feels sharper than he’s used to, and he can’t quite stop himself from pacing, from letting all the nervous energy threatening to boil over escape his body somehow. He’s had a heavy knot in his gut since the moment he woke up and her loud, glaring absence only magnifies it, bringing it into screaming focus the longer he waits here alone. He has half a mind to set the tapestry ablaze just to allow his mind to focus on something other than the utterly inhumane images of Mabel’s mangled body that his overactive imagination won’t stop conjuring behind his eyelids every time he blinks.
“She’s fine,” he tells himself quietly as he paces. “She’s completely fine. Likely just over-sleeping. She’ll come running up here any moment now, begging forgiveness - she’s fine.”
But what if she isn’t, whispers his traitorous brain.
He turns on his heel at the far end of the hall and stalks back toward the tapestry, jaw set. He’s had enough of this - he’s determined to find her, to raze the whole of Ravenclaw house just to lay eyes on her if he has to, to confirm with his own senses that she is here and whole and perfectly safe. He’s so focused on it - on finding her - that he almost misses the sudden movement along the bare wall opposite the Barnabas tapestry as he storms toward the staircase.
He stops in his tracks the moment his brain processes what he’s just seen, whipping back to stare open-mouthed as a set of ornate doors melt into existence from the previously smooth stretch of stone. They fade into view with very little fanfare; one clicks and eases open several centimeters, practically begging him to investigate, before falling still and silent.
He glances over his shoulder uneasily, but the spiral staircase behind him is as abandoned as it’s been since he trudged up here earlier.
He’s still considering his options - hand wrapped loosely around the door handle, glancing back over his shoulder - when he’s hit hard with a thick, heady wave of Mabel’s perfume from somewhere beyond the door. It inundates his senses, instantly wiping away his previous panic, soothing his frayed nerves and bolstering him as he pushes the door open with more purpose.
The room is quite large - far larger than a room in that part of the castle could reasonably be. A large, domed glass ceiling arches up high above his head, but the sunlight that passes through it casts the room in a watery greenish glow thanks in large part to the thick vines wrapped around the support beams, many of which dangle lazily over the ornate stone floor beneath his feet. A large glass terrarium dominates the majority of the wall opposite the short entryway through which Sebastian is ducking, its frosted panes glowing with sunlight from within. A glass accordion door stands cracked open just enough to allow a cool, refreshing breeze to pass through; through the hazy sweetness of Mabel’s perfume, Sebastian catches notes of wet, springy earth and crisp pine needles. His gaze drifts upward as he slowly moves further inside, toward two more glass terrariums in the corners of the upper terrace, and the curved staircases leading up toward them on either side of the room. It’s quiet, but not silent; he’s drawn to the right at the quiet clink of porcelain against porcelain and spots a kettle pouring tea into an empty mug of its own volition on the corner of a grand oak writing desk, and then to the left at the snick snick snick of a charmed Wizard’s Chess game in motion on a small games table tucked in beside a plush velvet green chaise lounge. The wall is lined with built-in bookshelves weighted down with an equal number of thick tomes and small trinkets, and the stretches of wall in between are cluttered with more hanging trinkets and portraits and several long Ravenclaw house banners.
He can see her touch everywhere - in the careful arrangement of each shelf, of the meticulous clusters of portraits and crests on the walls, even in the large, fluffy rug spread across the center of the floor. He inhales deeply, dizzy with overstimulation and the headiness of her perfume. It’s clear she’s spent a significant amount of time within these walls.
This is what she wanted to show him.
“Mabel?” he calls hesitantly. He’s adjusting to the impossibility of it all - slowly, but surely - noting with some genuine concern a dark, smudged handprint on the wooden bannister on the staircase to his left. He can hear something odd coming from somewhere beyond the staircase - where he’s just noticing more muted sunlight emanating - something like metal knocking rhythmically against stone. He moves toward it slowly, eyes still roving over every available surface.
The handprint on the bannister is most assuredly dried blood. He can’t tell if it’s old or new - the knot of anxiety is back in full force in his gut, impossibly heavy, impossible to ignore.
The staircase leads up onto a small landing and then down a significantly longer staircase, which in turn leads to an adjoining room split into two main wings. It’s a smaller room than the one before it, though it is no less spectacular; she’s seemingly dedicated a wing to Potions and Herbology, respectively, and his eyes immediately land on the source of the strange metallic noise he couldn’t identify earlier. A brass hopping pot bounces happily, its sloshing contents looking ready to be bottled, tucked in beneath another glorious floor-to-ceiling window covered in thick vines. Beside it stands a large, T-shaped potions station with three more pots bubbling with completed Thunderbrew. The walls along the narrow wing are lined with more portraits and trinkets and one large Hogwarts Crest, bracketed on either side by more Ravenclaw banners.
He turns back toward the other wing and immediately spots two enormous Venomous Tentaculas potted side-by-side beneath a window identical to the one at his back, shivering as a charmed watering can hovers over each. Several long potting stations line the walls on either side of this wing - he recognizes Chinese Chomping Cabbages and quivering Mandrake leaves and Shrivelfigs growing beside two small Mallowsweet bushes, and the sweet, combined scent of Fluxweed, Dittany, and Knotgrass takes the edge off the anxiety still burgeoning in his belly. A Herbology award - one he’s fairly certain he heard went missing from the Trophy Room last year - stands proudly in one corner, and a telescope stands opposite it, pointed northeast.
An enchanted loom stands silent against the wall just beside the doorway to the staircase he’d come down. He wanders toward it, following the wooden structure up to study the paraphernalia littered across the walls there, too. A modesty screen stands against the far wall, barely concealing the right armrest of another plush green couch set beneath another large shield bearing a centaur crest. He moves toward it, fingers itching to see if the fabric feels as soft as it looks.
His fingertips barely graze the surface when he registers two things: the modesty screen concealed a closed door - the only one he’s seen since walking through the main doors minutes earlier.
And that door bears another dark, smudged handprint.
He nearly knocks the screen over in his haste to get to the door. It’s more smudged than the one on the bannister - set several centimeters above the doorknob, like she’d braced herself for a moment before opening the door. There’s something dark on the doorknob itself, too, something dried and discolored against the otherwise gleaming brass. He touches it hesitantly, and his eyes drift naturally from his hand down to the spots of darkness on the stone beneath his feet.
The metallic scent of fresh blood reaches him, and his stomach flips.
He rips the door open with no further prompting and stumbles into a small, darkened side chamber. His eyes adjust after an agonizing moment, drawn immediately to the large bed set against the wall opposite the door and the mass of sheets and blankets at its center. He’s only tangentially aware of the modest dresser on the wall to his right - he spots the travel garb he’d admired her in the evening before strewn haphazardly along the floor.
The left pant leg is tattered up to where he’d guess her knee was, stained with blood.
Blood is smeared against the footboard of the bed, too, and dripped along the floor, gathered in larger puddles here from where she’d likely had to pause in place. He can see cleaning supplies and healing potions strewn messily across the top of her dresser, and a roll of gauze fallen halfway under the bed.
He absorbs all of this in a split second, before his attention focuses in on the mass of blankets at the center of the bed. He moves toward it quickly, breath held, praying with all his might that the bundle he thinks he sees beneath the duvet isn’t more blankets, but is, in fact -
“Mabel,” he chokes.
He spots the frizzy, tangled mess of her hair first, only just visible near the head of the bed. He yanks the duvet and the blankets away from her body quickly, desperation mounting with each pale, still inch of her they reveal.
His blood runs cold as he rips the final blanket away.
She’s lying face-down on her stomach, cheek smushed into the corner of a pillow. Her back rises and falls with each breath that puffs out through her parted lips - alive, he tells himself firmly, and sound asleep. Her hair has fallen in a tangled veil over her face - thick enough to flutter slightly with each exhale, but not thick enough to conceal the frightening pale, waxy pallor of her skin, or the spots of dried blood smeared across her face. It’s stained along her back, too, and soaked into the sheets, so much of it he can’t identify how many injuries she actually has.
He can see her leg, though.
It’s clear whatever got her had impossibly sharp teeth; her skin is ripped to shreds from the back of her ankle up to the back of her knee, bloodied and irritated and raw where not split open and bleeding freely. Blood has soaked into the hem of her pant leg, pushed up to her knee as it is. There’s a loose stretch of blood-soaked gauze hanging limply over the swell of her calf - having clearly come loose while she slept, if it was ever even wrapped properly to begin with. Her blood has soaked through the sheets here, too, leaving a frightening pool of it beneath her that visibly glistens with wetness in the dim morning light. His stomach churns at the thought of her bleeding through the night; he grits his teeth against a sharp knot of emotion in his throat.
There are empty potion vials on the mattress beside her, and he recognizes the dregs of Wiggenweld in one of them. Clearly, it hadn’t done much to help.
He whips back toward the bedroom door and darts out toward the Herbology wing, fixated on the Shrivelfigs and Dittany. He snatches as much of it as he can carry and races back to the room.
She’s shivering in her sleep when he returns - heartbreaking at its core, but promising nonetheless - and he passes a gentle, soothing hand over her back after depositing his load on the clean stretch of mattress beside her legs. He gets to work at once, forcing himself to focus on the task at hand and not on the hoarse, barely-audible whimpers he hears escape her throat each time he has to touch one of the wounds. He’s certain she’s still sleeping; he has to stop her from rolling to her side with a hand on her hip at one point. He prays whatever pain he’s unintentionally inflicting on her will vanish with her dreams when she returns to consciousness.
It takes an agonizing amount of time, but eventually, Sebastian manages to staunch the bloodflow and seal most of the open wounds on her leg. He kneels on the corner of the bed and carefully drapes her foot over his thigh, elevating the length of her leg above the puddle of blood still soaked into the mattress while he gently winds the gauze around her wounds. She snuffles in her sleep, and in spite of everything, Sebastian’s heart leaps with affection at the sound.
He’ll need to wake her in order to look her over for any other injuries. He knows this - he hates this. Part of him wants nothing more than to shake sense into her, to demand she never do anything so reckless alone ever again. But another part - a larger, kinder part - despises himself already for having to disturb whatever fitful sleep she’s managed to get since returning Merlin only knows how long ago.
So he keeps her leg elevated a moment longer, angling his body awkwardly so that he can reach the puddle of blood beneath them both and vanish it away with a whispered Evanesco.
He curls his hand around her ankle to hold her leg in place as he eases off the end of the bed, lowering it slowly and smoothing the edges of the gauze down above her heel. He steps around to the side of the bed quietly - sweeping her discarded clothes to the side with his foot - and crouches down beside her, one hand spread across her shoulders.
“Mabel,” he calls softly.
He feels the way her breath sharpens at the sound of her voice - the quick rise, the hesitation before the fall of her back beneath his hand. She’s still for another moment before she stirs in earnest, and he moves his hand up to gently push her hair back from her pale face before he settles it back between her shoulders once more. “Sweetheart,” he tries again, a shade louder than before, and a languid movement ripples down the length of her body. Her head turns further into the pillow and then cranes up - stretching, he realizes belatedly - and her hips shift against the mattress as her back flexes and arches beneath his touch.
In spite of everything, it’s terribly interesting to watch.
Slowly, wakefulness filters into every inch of her body. She lets out a gusty, heavy sigh, and then rolls first to her side with her back facing him, and then flops to her back. Her eyes split open and she stares up at the ceiling blearily.
It takes her a long time to register his presence. He’s content to watch her in the meantime - cataloging each tiny scab that splits the delicate rim of her jaw, hoping the splatters of dry blood caked in her eyebrows are from decimating whatever it was that tore her leg apart like that. When she does finally notice him, she startles in place, but the movement is slow and sluggish.
“Seb?” she croaks, and they both wince.
It sounds like she’s been screaming for hours. He shudders at the thought.
He rocks forward before his anxiety has a chance to spiral, reaching instead for the hand she has draped across her belly - her left hand, he realizes belatedly when his fingers engulf the width of her palm and an unfamiliar band of silky fabric catches at his grip. She hadn’t lost his tie in the midst of whatever happened.
He drags her hand up to his lips. “Are you alright?” he whispers against her knuckles.
She lets out a low groan, and presses her free hand to her forehead, grinding the heel of her palm against her temple. “I don’t - yes? I think?”
“Are you in any pain right now?”
She frowns, eyes closed. “No,” she says after a moment, “aside from the headache from hell.”
He huffs a humorless, hysterical laugh through his nose and briefly presses his mouth back to her knuckles. “You scared the bloody shit out of me,” he confesses after a moment. She drops her hand and lolls her head toward him, eyes fluttering open in time to frown at him. “There was so much blood, I - I was afraid you had -”
He stops, unable to stop the shiver that rushes through him at the thought he can’t bring himself to voice. She makes a small, distressed sound and wiggles her fingers in his iron-clad grasp - likely trying to squeeze back, which would be nice if he could stand to loosen his grip around her for one moment. “I’m alright,” she assures him in a whisper.
“You could’ve written me when you got back to the castle last night,” he says, lowering her hand just enough for her to see his lips move. “You could’ve sent an owl, I - I would’ve come running.”
“I know,” she says. “I didn’t - I didn’t want to - I just…”
She trails off uncertainly.
Sebastian waits for only a moment. “What happened out there?”
She sighs and lets her head fall back against the pillow and rolls her eyes at the ceiling. “I got careless,” she rasps with a shrug. “I assumed it’d be easy - you’ve seen the way poachers scatter like cockroaches when they see me now. I happened to get these particular poachers cornered, and I got a bit carried away with toying with them. I didn’t see the bloody animagus until she was dragging me away by the leg.”
He draws in a sharp, hissing breath between his teeth. “Bloody hell,” he breathes. “One animagus did all of that?” She nods, eyes still fixated on the ceiling. “You’re lucky she didn’t go for your throat.”
“Oh, believe me, she tried,” she says - rueful and savage. “I blew her to pieces before she had the chance, though. Most of this -” she points to the blood splatters on her face - “is hers.”
Despite the low level of panic still simmering in his belly, he still feels a base level of satisfaction at the thought of her thoroughly decimating someone intent on killing her.
“I tended to your leg as best I could - you’ll still want to go visit Madam Blainy sooner rather than later - but do you have any other injuries?”
She lets her head fall to the side to gaze up at him - eyes soft and wide and devastatingly beautiful. “I’m alright,” she assures him. “Just sore.”
He studies her expression, but finds only earnestness shining in her steady gaze. “Promise me you’ll send me an owl if anything like this ever happens again.”
“I promise.”
“I mean it, Mabel,” he says seriously. “No matter what the hour is, no matter where you are - send me an owl. Swear it.”
She adjusts her head on the pillow and gazes up at him so seriously his heart skips a beat. “I swear,” she murmurs. “I’m - I’m sorry that I didn’t last night. I just…thought I could deal with it on my own.”
Slowly, he nods. “You could’ve,” he says after a moment of consideration. “You have in the past. And technically, you did, but…but you have me, now. I mean, you have me. You don’t have to handle stuff like this on your own anymore. I want to be here for you, I want to take care of you when you’re injured or sick or just want to be taken care of. That’s what this -” he taps his finger against the tie around her wrist - “means. I’m here for you, I’m on your side, I’m in your corner. It means that I - that I…”
His breath catches. She’s staring up at him, eyes wide, breath held.
“It means that I love you with everything I’ve got,” he finishes softly.
Her grip goes steely around his hand - it’s the only warning he receives before she leverages herself up into a sitting position by her grip around his hands, nearly yanking him off-balance in the process. “I love you too,” she’s choking in a rush, thick with emotion as tears well up in her eyes and spill down her face. They cut through the splatters of blood, leaving clean, pale streaks down the length of her face. “I do, I - I love you, I love you so much, Sebastian, you have no idea. I should have said yes when you offered to join me last night, I should have left straight from class to find you and beg you to come with me. When that stupid animagus had me on the ground, all I could think about was how bloody pissed I was going to be if something happened and I didn’t make it back before I could tell you, before I could give you my -”
She stops short, eyes bulging, and then pitches sideways. He yelps and catches her before she falls off the bed, baffled and whip-lashed at the up-and-down pitch of his emotions; impossibly, she wriggles in his arms, like she’s desperate to escape his grasp and fall to the stone floor. “What the hell are you doing?” he half-shouts.
“I saw it on the floor last night!” she grunts, lunging forward and grabbing desperately at a scrap of blue fabric barely visible in the shadows beneath her bedside table. He lets out a loud, incredulous laugh - unable to help himself - and adjusts his grip around her to better steady her.
“Mabel,” he laughs, “sweetheart, please, I can - I can get it for you.”
She goes still for a moment, and he leaps at the chance to haul her upright and back into bed. That look of wonder is back in her eyes as he leans to his left and makes a grab at her discarded tie; she takes it from him, visibly swallowing, watching him heft himself up to perch on the edge of her mattress.
He forces himself to hold eye contact with her, despite the temptation to glance down at the hypnotic dark blue of her tie set against the cream color of her undergarments. Merlin’s beard, she’s still in her undergarments.
She loves him, too, and she’s fiddling nervously with her tie, and she’s in her undergarments.
It’s possible he’s overstimulated again.
She makes a sudden, unpleasant face. "There's blood all over my face," she mutters, eyes darting toward a basin in the far corner of the room he hadn't noticed in his blind panic before. "Can - I mean, I can -"
He stands before she can finish and hurries toward the basin, snatching a clean, folded cloth from the small shelf beneath it and dipping it in the tepid water inside. He wrings it out as best he can before hurrying back to her. "Here," he says, pulling it out of her grasp when she reaches to take it from him. "Let me."
She lowers her hand to her lap slowly, watching carefully as he leans into her space and gently runs the cloth over her skin. The blood washes away easily; after a moment, her face is clean, and it takes every ounce of self-control he has not to kiss her senseless even as he tosses the blood-stained rag toward the corner of the room.
She loses her patience first. “Well, go on, then,” she says, gesturing toward his hands clasped respectfully in his lap. He snorts and extends his left wrist toward her and bites down hard on his lower lip to hold back the giddier, far less respectable noises that threaten to bubble up his throat at the first smooth glide of her tie over his wrist. She adjusts it carefully, looking wholly concentrated on ensuring the lengths on either side are even, before digging through the folds of the sheets beside her for her wand. With a brief, sheepish grin, she gently presses the tip of her wand to the tie and murmurs the charms.
He holds very still until she discards her wand and carefully examines the loop she created with both hands. She tests it by looping her finger through the excess material and gently tugging, smiling in relief when the sealing charm holds true.
Satisfied with her satisfaction, he pulls away to admire the royal blue against his freckled wrist. It looks good, he decides. Really good.
Almost as good as green looks on her.
“Let me see,” he murmurs, gesturing for her to extend her left wrist beside his. He turns toward her to meet her in the middle, studying the two of them side-by-side. Some giant, prowling beast in his chest purrs, deeply satisfied as it settles into place at the sight of their colors together.
She’s smiling at him when he glances up at her through his lashes. Smiling, he thinks, like the cat that got the canary.
The purring in his chest amplifies.
“I love you,” he tells her again.
She leans toward him immediately, eyes already fluttering closed in expectation. Her lips are dry against his, but overwhelmingly warm - he files this information away carefully, keen to discover if it always feels this way to kiss her so soon after she wakes up in the mornings - and she sighs against him, deep and full-bodied.
“I love you, too,” she murmurs against his lips as he starts to pull away.
He cranes his head up to kiss her forehead, and then the end of her nose, which makes her laugh. He can honestly say he’s never been so incandescently happy before - bloodstains and terrifying injuries aside. It makes him wonder what their actual engagement will be like.
“I had a plan, too, you know,” she tells him, snapping him out of his daydream before he has a chance to lose himself in it.
He arches a brow. “Oh? Do tell.”
“I was planning to recreate what you said you wanted to do yesterday evening - I was even going to convince Ernie Lark to let me borrow a few instruments. I was gonna find some candles and flowers, have Deek change the ambience -”
She stops short and shoots him a sudden, sharp look of confusion. “Who’s Deek?” he asks.
“Hang on, how - how the hell did you get in here?”
“I honestly have no idea,” he says with a shrug. “I was waiting for you out there, but you obviously didn’t show up - I was actually headed toward Ravenclaw Tower to try to get in and find you when the doors just…appeared.”
Faint understanding creeps across her features. “Were you pacing in front of the tapestry?” she asks.
“No, I was pacing in the hallway beside it - the one that leads up to the top of the tower.”
She frowns. “Did you pass in front of the tapestry at all after first arriving there?”
“No. Wait, yes - just once. I was looking to see if maybe I could hear you coming up the staircase. I went right back to that side hall, though.”
“And then you passed it again as you were leaving.”
“Right.”
“And…what were you thinking about when you passed it both times?”
He furrows his brow. “Finding you. Making sure you’re alright.”
She lets out a quiet laugh, eyes drifting closed as she shakes her head. “Of course,” she says to herself. “Sebastian - you found the Room of Requirement.”
He startles and looks around quickly. He’d read about it, of course - the theory of it, at least - but never imagined it was actually real, let alone -
“This is the Room of Requirement?”
“Professor Weasley showed it to me at the start of last year. She wanted me to have a place to study and practice in order to catch up with everyone else in our year. And to answer your earlier question, Deek is a very kind Hogwarts house elf who helps me with things around the room.”
“I definitely didn’t see a house elf when I walked through earlier.”
She frowns, but doesn’t seem overly concerned. “He’s likely in one of the vivariums tending to the beasts, then,” she says.
“The - bloody hell, Mabel, what the hell is this place?”
She laughs lightly. “I’ll tell you all about it,” she promises, “but…would it be alright if I went back to sleep for a little while? I - I got back here quite late, and I’m still exhausted.”
“Of course, love,” he says quickly. He pushes up off the bed with every intention of gathering the blankets and tucking her in again before leaving her to her rest, but she stops him with a hand wrapped around his wrist and a gentle tug back toward her. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” she assures him. “Just - I want you to stay. If - if you want.”
He blinks down at her, and then at the empty stretch of mattress beside her. “You - you’re sure?” he asks.
She snorts and rolls to her back and pats the mattress clumsily. “Stay,” she tells him.
Slowly, a smile spreads across his face. Her eyes are already closed, like she can’t bear the weight of them any longer, but she’s still patting the mattress - absent and gentle and maddeningly tempting. He leans over her briefly to press a chaste kiss to her forehead before he straightens up once more.
He toes his shoes off and stoops to gather the blankets he’d tossed aside earlier. He leaves the bloodier ones on the floor, stomach flipping unpleasantly but determined to deal with it later.
She lets out a contented sigh when he drapes the first blanket over her, and snuggles down beneath it with each additional layer he adds on top. He stops with the duvet and crawls in beside her, staying propped on his hands and knees just long enough to tuck the far edge in around her body before sliding into the warmth himself.
It only takes a moment before she’s shoving into his space, snuggling into the warmth of his chest and sighing when he gently runs his hand over the back of her head. The blue of her tie around his wrist stands out stark against his skin, and despite the warmth lulling him closer to sleep, his heart thumps wildly in his chest. He presses his lips to her forehead.
“I love you,” he whispers against her hairline. “I love you, I love you, I love you.”
She doesn’t respond, save for a quiet, contented sigh.