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Sebastian felt a sense of purpose like he had never known. Descending into the catacombs, knowing exactly what had to be done, knowing it would work. Feeling in his bones that the months spent agonizing over losing his last bit of family had paid off, that he wouldn’t have to spend one more sleepless night poring through old books as the hope within him withered and turned to bitterness. No, now he had a plan. One that was sure to succeed.
This conviction sustained him, propelling him forward without hesitation. Even when the Inferi began to rise from the dirt, he felt none of the fear that would normally accompany their appearance. Instead, the relic gripped tightly in his hand seemed to form words, whispering assurances in his ear, sending his blood pumping hot through his veins. They will obey you. You are their master.
Everything had gone according to his meticulous research and planning. For once in his life, he was completely in control. And it felt like freedom, euphoria.
Ominis and Anne’s horror, on the other hand, felt like being abruptly doused in ice water.
“Sebastian, what have you done?” Anne’s voice was quiet, raspy, as though she were afraid to speak too loudly. Her eyes were wide, afraid. He reached out to touch her shoulder only for her to flinch suddenly back.
It felt like a punch to his gut when he realized that she was more afraid of him than the Inferi surrounding them.
“I’ve done this for you,” he said earnestly, his hands stretching wide. “Anne, the relic allows me to control dark magic. The Inferi are evidence of its power. With this relic, I’ll be able to control the dark magic that cursed you. This is what will heal you, I know it.”
“You have gone too far.” Ominis’s voice shook. “Sebastian, you’re frightening her.”
Anne had indeed continued to back up slowly, now practically hiding behind Ominis’s taller form. Sebastian felt his frustration grow. Why couldn’t she understand?
“Anne, it was powerful dark magic that cursed you! After the best healers at St. Mungo’s couldn’t find a cure, we should have known that it would take drastic measures if you were ever going to get better.” He stepped forward, growing desperate. “Please, give me a chance. I’ve almost got it, I just have to spend a little more time with the spellbook–”
Just a little more time.
But Ominis and Anne had stepped back as he stepped forward. Tears began to slip down his twin’s face. “Sebastian, I don’t recognize you anymore,” she gasped out. “Surely, you haven’t done this for me. If dark magic is what it takes to heal me, I would rather die.”
Her words snapped something in his heart. Rage began to rise in him. “You don’t mean that! You can’t!”
She whispered something inaudible in Ominis’s ear, and the two of them began to back out of the chamber. Anne had begun to cry in earnest now. “Goodbye, Sebastian.”
And then they were gone, and Sebastian was left alone with his despair. He began to pace wildly, trying to think, struggling to recapture that glorious, single-minded sense of purpose that had brought him to this place. It was hard to do when he felt like he couldn’t breathe.
She’ll see. I just have to work out the details first. I should have worked it out before calling her down here.
The thought grounded him. Of course, his mistake had been telling her to come too soon. She wasn’t comfortable with his methods– that was fine, she didn’t need to be. She only needed to accept his solution. Sebastian could take care of the rest. He would forge ahead through the darkness so Anne could stay in the light.
Inferi continued to burst through the earth, rising to their feet and swaying in place. The Great Room was becoming rather crowded, and Sebastian needed room to think. Picking up the old spellbook, he began to retreat into the chamber beyond. He barely noticed as Inferi began to follow him.
Sacrifice. What is the sacrifice? Salazar Slytherin, what did you see that I’m missing?
He wasn’t sure how much time had passed. It could have been minutes or days. The relic was warm, pulsing, almost as if it had its own heartbeat. He scrutinized every detail, reading carefully through the spellbook. Holding tightly to his driving need to know for sure.
See how they obey you? The seductive whisper entered his mind again. He took a deep breath in, clinging to the words. They know you are powerful. This ability is your birthright. You fought to be here. You deserve to be here.
He exhaled. He had come this far. He would persevere. All of it would be worth it in the end.
All the same, when Amara came through the door, he felt her presence like a balm, like it always was. She would understand. She always understood. And she would help him decipher the spellbook’s instructions.
“Isn’t this incredible?” He folded his arms. Surely, she would be impressed.
“Sebastian?” Her voice was unnaturally calm. She didn’t shrink back in fear, as Ominis and Anne had. She knew him, knew he was doing all of this to help.
“I told you, the relic is the answer!” he began to explain. “I’ve been trying to reverse the dark magic that injured Anne, but this will allow me to control it– just as I can control the Inferi.”
Her expression changed. It was foreign to him. Not her usual playful smile, or comforting sympathy, or quiet understanding. Something in her eyes cut him deeply. Was it . . . grief?
“Control? I had to fight Inferi all the way here.” She walked closer, reaching out to grab his hand. Her grip was ice cold. “Sebastian?”
She stared at him intently, her gaze pleading. He wasn’t sure what she was pleading for, but he was struck by a sense of impending doom. As though he had walked too close to the edge of a cliff, or was leaning too far backwards over the rail of a balcony. As though he was about to lose his balance, go careening into empty space, and she was offering him her hand. As though she knew something he didn’t.
Her face before him began to flicker in the dim light of the catacomb. His head was suddenly splitting, making it hard to concentrate. She was there one moment, gone the next. “Amara? Are you there?”
“ What have the two of you done? ” Uncle Solomon’s voice thundered through the eerie silence, and Sebastian felt as though the entrance to his tomb had been sealed shut. Again, he couldn’t breathe. It felt like being buried alive.
Spells flying through the air. Uncontrolled rage rising in his chest. Desperation ripping his heart in two.
Seductive whispering in his ear. Solomon would ruin everything. Anne would never agree to come back. She would die, he would be cast out, left alone.
He had to do it. There was no other choice.
“Amara? Amara, are you there?”
He could still feel her cold fingers intertwined with his, in that last moment before he tumbled over the edge and shattered into pieces on the ground. But he had lost sight of her. The relic was ripped from his grasp and incinerated, the comforting whispers of power and control leaving his mind empty, reeling. “No!” the cry tore from his lips, the same as when he had discovered his parents motionless on the floor all those years ago. As he was now sure to find Anne, after this last hope had been cruelly destroyed.
“ Avada Kedavra! ”
The incantation left his lips as though spoken by someone else. The green flash, Solomon’s corpse hitting the stone floor, Anne’s horrified scream and accusatory glare. It was a nightmare. It had to be.
This couldn’t be real.
His back hit the stone pillar and he sank to the floor, both unable and unwilling to rise. Anne disappeared with their uncle’s body. He was all alone.
“Amara! Amara, I need you!”
She would know what to do. She could fix it. She always had. Where had she gone?
Finally, he turned, and she knelt beside him. Her eyes were full of that same grief. Why hadn’t he seen her warning before?
“Sebastian?” Every time she spoke his name, he felt his slipping grasp on reality tighten.
“Amara! Thank Merlin, Amara.” He felt something hot and wet on his face and was startled to realize it was his own tears. He couldn’t remember the last time he had cried. “Okay, Amara, you’re here. You can fix this. You can save me. Right?”
The despair in her eyes threatened to swallow him whole. She lifted a hand to his face. “Sebastian, why did you call for me?”
The rough stone was cold and unforgiving on his bruised, exhausted body. He shivered, his whole body beginning to shake uncontrollably. It was freezing. “I need your help.”
“You called too late,” she said. “I can’t save you.”
He couldn’t breathe. Her form began to flicker again, becoming nearly translucent. Like a ghost.
“Amara?” Images began to assault him.
Running out of the tomb, avoiding her too-knowing gaze.
The Aurors coming, pulling him from his bed in the middle of the night. Anne, called as an eyewitness, crying as she identified him.
Sitting silent as a grave in an interrogation room. Alone in his holding cell, waiting for friends that would never come.
Why hadn’t she come? She always came.
Receiving the news. Breaking apart. Confessing, sentencing.
The death march into the cell he would occupy for the rest of his days.
“Right. I called you too late.” His voice was toneless, flat. Not real, not real, not real. “They took me away.”
“You weren’t there for me.” Tears began to fall from her fading face. “I needed you, and you weren’t there.”
“You died.” There was the guilt again, the knowledge that nothing would ever be set right. The truth he could never escape, just as surely as he would never escape this prison. “You faced Ranrok alone, and you died.”
“Yes.” She reached out to touch his face. He imagined he could feel her ice-cold fingers on his skin. Imagining her touch was all he had left.
“And then, I got sent to Azkaban.”
The scene before him flickered again. Instead of the torchlight illuminating the catacombs, moonlight streamed through the bars on the windows to his cell. Instead of Amara, kneeling next to him, he was alone, shivering on a similar stone floor. Where hopelessness permeated the very air and nothing would ever be right again.
“No, no, no,” he moaned, putting his head in his hands and closing his eyes. “Not real. It can’t be.”
When he opened his eyes again, she was there, with him. Her form was more corporeal this time. “It’s too late. What’s done is done. There’s nothing I can do, Sebastian. I’m not real.”
He stared at her, drinking in every bit of her, remembering exactly how her hair fell into her eyes and how she bit her lip when she was nervous. The sound of her laugh, the way she took her tea, how her brow furrowed when she was angry.
“So what do I do now?” he asked brokenly. What is my life worth? All I wanted to do was protect the people I love. Instead, I failed them all and damned myself.
Truly, it would have been more merciful to have sentenced him to death. Then again, nothing about Azkaban was meant to be merciful. It had been made clear to him that nothing he had done was deserving of mercy. That was why he was here.
“Sebastian . . .” This time, he swore he could feel her hand gently stroking his hair and her arms around him. “It doesn’t matter what you do.”
“Well, if it doesn’t matter . . . could you stay here, with me?” He felt like a child, pleading with his own fantasy. But he was past the point of embarrassment.
He blinked again. The cell was gone, but Amara had remained. They were back in their school uniforms, sitting on a blanket in the grass. Amara’s vivarium , he recognized. Boughs from tall trees gently waved above their heads. Late afternoon sunlight bathed everything in a golden glow. Nearby, Highwing basked in the sun, and a Puffskein approached him tentatively. He tossed it a treat with a smile.
She laid her head on his shoulder. “Okay. I’ll stay here as long as you need, Sebastian.”
This wasn’t real. He knew that. He was trapped, for life, in a place with no hope and no escape. The girl beside him was gone. He had ruined it all. He had nothing left.
Even so, impossibly, she was right. It didn’t matter. After all, he had nothing left. What harm would it do to stay here, in the fantasy where everything was still all right?
There was a kind of freedom in that thought. He clung to it for dear life.
“How was your day?” He lifted a hand to tuck a stray piece of hair behind her ear. She closed her eyes, humming with pleasure as he did so.
“My day was good.” She smiled. “Really good.”
Here in the golden afternoon light, he chose to stay. Right where she left him, and would forever be waiting for him to return.