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People used to think that between the two of them, Anne was the calm, thoughtful one. Sebastian was the reckless, mischievous twin, the one with the glint in his eye. Whenever they were caught in the middle of some prank or scheme, everyone assumed it had been Sebastian’s idea, and that Anne had simply been dragged along. Anne would always nod sweetly and smile, and it made Sebastian absolutely furious every single time.
“It was your idea!” he’d rage, when Solomon grounded him or when the teachers handed him detention while Anne got away with a gentle ‘don’t let your brother influence you.’ “Why does everyone always think it’s me?”
Anne, in true sibling fashion, would just laugh delightedly. For some reason, no one believed she was capable of trouble or malice. Probably because she was a girl, and because she was smoother with her words. Sebastian was an open book: every feeling he had was right there on display. He couldn’t defend himself without getting worked up, couldn’t lie without blushing. Anne, on the other hand… she was clever. She knew how to craft her lies to sound just believable enough. How to twist the truth and toss in an innocent little, “I didn’t know it would turn out like that.” She knew how to shrug and pout just right, as if she were merely a helpless accomplice in her twin’s escapades.
Sebastian had always been so verbal, so expressive, so terribly easy to read.
Which is why Anne knew, even at the age of eleven, the moment Sebastian dragged a pale, blushing, scrawny boy named Ominis Gaunt to her secret hideout in the library — damn him for figuring it out — that Sebastian wanted Ominis.
Not in that way, of course. They were far too young to grasp that sort of feeling, beyond fleeting crushes born of someone being cute or having pretty clothes. But Sebastian, as always, was painfully transparent — at least to Anne — and he practically radiated admiration every time he looked at Ominis.
“Anne,” he had said, all but shoving the poor boy forward, “this is Ominis. I found him in our common room. He’s a new Slytherin too. But he’s blind, so there’s no point in trying to shake his hand. Ominis, this is my sister, Anne. Show her that spell you learned!”
Ominis had looked a little overwhelmed. Understandably so, since Sebastian’s energy resembled that of a puppy on a sugar rush, but he greeted Anne politely and then demonstrated: the tip of his wand began to glow red, and he explained that it was his way of navigating.
“And can you believe it?” Sebastian had added eagerly. “Ominis can’t see, but he’s already read every chapter of our upcoming coursework and knows basic magic well enough to skip the first Transfiguration lessons!”
“That’s all to do with brain cells, not eyesight,” Ominis had shot back immediately. “So unfortunately, you can’t compete.”
Anne decided right then that she liked this quiet, sharp-tongued boy.
In their second year, their friendship solidified even further. After spending nearly all of first year inseparable, Ominis introduced Anne and Sebastian to the Undercroft at the start of term: a hidden room his family had owned for generations.
“I thought… it might be a nice place to come to if we ever want to get away from the others,” Ominis had said, his cheeks faintly pink, while Sebastian and Anne explored the space with wide-eyed curiosity.
“This is brilliant!” Sebastian had exclaimed, delighted. He ran his fingers along the stone pillars, the old crates, the shrouded mirrors and portraits. “Think of all the spells we can practice down here! And I won’t have to listen to Leander’s disgusting sniffling every time I try to study in the library.”
Anne was just as thrilled as her brother, but more thoughtful about it. She glanced toward Ominis, who stood with both hands clasped around his wand, a gesture she had learned meant he was feeling uneasy, or vulnerable.
She remembered how reserved and timid he had been all through first year — something Anne, far more perceptive than Sebastian, understood had partly to do with his dreadful family, and partly with his disability. Ominis had grown up without peers, without the steady love and security parents were meant to give. He had arrived at Hogwarts with fragile confidence and no real belief that he’d ever make friends. Anne and Sebastian had also grown up without their parents, but from what little she could remember of them, she was certain they had hugged and kissed her and her brother a lot, and expressed their affection. And when they were gone, she and Sebastian had still had each other.
“Thank you for showing us this place,” Anne said softly, wrapping an arm around the slim boy’s shoulders. Ominis stiffened for a second before relaxing into her side.
“Yes, thank you!” Sebastian called from across the room, currently wrestling what appeared to be a training dummy. “Lucan Brattleby’s been talking about starting a secret dueling club. Just wait till he sees my face when I show up already acing Confringo thanks to all the practice I’ll get down here!”
“If you set fire to my family’s ancient hideout, I’ll set fire to you,” Ominis warned, though a faint smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.
Anne, still with her arm around his shoulders, gave him a gentle squeeze.
“Don’t worry, Ominis. I’ll make sure Sebastian doesn’t ruin this secret.”
Sebastian finally came up to them, and also slung and arm around Ominis, more or less pushing Anne away.
“I’d never,” Sebastian promised, eyes practically shining as he looked at Ominis, who seemed pleased with their overjoyed reaction. “Thanks, mate. You’re brilliant, have I told you that?”
Ominis’ cheeks reddened.
The rest of second year — and third, too — passed much the same way. The three of them spent hours in the Undercroft playing Exploding Snap, practicing new spells, and studying for exams together. Sebastian and Anne comforted Ominis whenever his parents sent yet another Howler telling him how worthless he was, or when a teacher forgot to make lessons accessible and told him to simply “figure it out.”
Ominis and Sebastian, in turn, flanked Anne protectively whenever Nerida Roberts mocked her gap-toothed smile, or when Isaac Cooper loudly ranked the girls in their class by “cutest,” placing Anne dead last. And Anne and Ominis listened when Sebastian nearly broke down in frustration after Solomon shouted at him, not for any prank or mischief anymore, but just for existing. When Leander and the other boys teased him for being the shortest boy in third year, or for having freckles that made his face look flushed.
“Don’t be upset,” Ominis had said quietly. “If it’s any consolation, I think you look very handsome.”
Sebastian and Anne had stared at him for a moment — and then all three of them burst into uncontrollable laughter. And in the middle of it, as Ominis smiled with quiet satisfaction at having made Sebastian laugh, Anne noticed the flush spreading across her brother’s cheeks, how his gaze lingered just a heartbeat too long on Ominis’ face.
Oh, she thought, with a smug little smile to herself. Oh.
By fourth year, Sebastian’s feelings had become even more obvious. Anne was fairly certain it would take something as dramatic as a Chinese chomping cabbage latching onto her twin’s backside to make him actually admit it out loud. But really, it didn’t need to. She’d always been able to read her brother like an open book.
They had spent the summer together in Feldcroft, after Anne and Sebastian learned exactly what went on at Gaunt Manor during the holidays. Solomon’s face had been a sight to behold when not two, but three laughing children, came stumbling up the path to the cottage after the end of term. Anne swore she could see his entire life flash before his eyes. But after that moment of shock, their uncle behaved as he always did: gruff, uninterested, faintly awkward.
Since there weren’t enough beds, Ominis and Sebastian had shared one. They were at that age where Anne had decided boys had cooties, so she refused to share. The three of them would stay up whispering late into the night, their laughter eventually prompting Solomon to yell at them to be quiet. They’d go silent for all of three minutes, until Sebastian said something ridiculous, and the giggling started all over again.
It helped that Anne herself got her first real crush, whatever that meant at fourteen, when they returned to Hogwarts. It made it easier for her to recognize the classic signs of infatuation that Sebastian was radiating, though they went right over Ominis’s head (and, likely, Sebastian’s own). The two boys had started spending more time together without her, which didn’t bother Anne in the slightest. She’d made friends with Imelda Reyes and Poppy Sweeting, and it was nice to have a break from her otherwise testosterone-heavy circle.
But every now and then, when she approached her two best friends, she could tell from a distance. The way Sebastian sat just a little too close to Ominis. The way his eyes followed Ominis’s lips as he spoke. The way he never noticed Anne until she was standing right beside them, too enraptured with watching Ominis’ grey, sharp eyes as they stared at nothing while he spoke.
When Nerida Roberts — nothing good ever came from that girl, honestly — suddenly asked if Ominis was single, prompting him to blush and stammer that he wasn’t interested, Sebastian had stood up and marched off without a word. Ominis had been genuinely confused, while Anne had to bite back a smirk. Sebastian was so painfully obvious, so transparent, that she truly couldn’t understand how Ominis (or anyone else) could possibly miss it.
But in fourth year, Anne had other things to worry about than playing matchmaker for her idiot of a brother. Schoolwork was getting serious now, and Anne — who dreamed of becoming a Healer — threw herself wholeheartedly into her studies. On top of that, she’d gotten herself a boyfriend: none other than Isaac Cooper, who sheepishly confessed that his “prettiest girls list” had only been cruel because he liked her. Anne wasn’t entirely sure how much she liked Cooper back — he was a bit too cocky and Quidditch-obsessed — but he was cute, and admittedly very good at kissing.
So instead, Anne contented herself with watching from afar as her reckless but sweet twin openly pined for their mutual best friend, quietly rooting for something to finally happen between them.
Then came fifth year, and it was the most chaotic one yet. Anne, who had been so sure that Sebastian’s fierce feelings from the previous year were finally going somewhere, especially after yet another laughter-filled, cozy summer in Feldcroft, was utterly blindsided when the new student arrived and stole Sebastian right out from under their noses.
The worst part, though, was Ominis. Anne hated seeing him sitting alone in the common room at night, or going over homework by himself in the Undercroft during lunch breaks, while Sebastian was off exploring secret passages or mysterious relics with the new student. The problem wasn’t that Sebastian had made a new friend — that was natural enough — but that he’d begun neglecting Ominis in the process. Ominis, who looked increasingly heartbroken and defeated each time Sebastian chose his new friend over him.
Anne took it upon herself to keep him company that year. She stayed up studying with him in her dormitory (since Ominis refused to return to the room he shared with Sebastian, whose bed now stood empty most nights) until curfew forced him to leave the girls’ dorms. She played Exploding Snap with him in the Undercroft, even though the game felt hollow without Sebastian’s triumphant shouts or childish whining when he lost. Anne suspected that Ominis only kept playing for old times’ sake, not because he found any joy in it anymore.
It helped that Anne’s relationship with Cooper had ended abruptly too, something she mourned more out of habit than heartbreak, if she was honest. She hadn’t been that into him to begin with. On the upside, Ominis had decided he wanted to become a Healer as well, which gave the two of them endless opportunities to debate the profession’s pros and cons, or to spend long hours comparing apprenticeship options and internship prospects. But no matter how intense their discussions grew, no matter how much they laughed about Cooper’s Quidditch obsession — or Ominis’s dry comment that he’d probably dumped Anne just to marry his broom — they couldn’t ignore the empty seat between them.
“He’ll come back,” Anne promised one evening as they sat together at the top of the Astronomy Tower. Silent tears were rolling down Ominis’s cheeks. “You know what Sebastian’s like. He loves anything new and shiny. But he’ll get bored of his new friend soon enough, and he’ll come back to us. This is just a phase.”
Ominis turned his wand over and over in his fingers, not even bothering to wipe his cheeks.
“I was new and shiny once,” he said quietly. “I suppose I just lost my polish.”
Anne wrapped an arm around him and pulled him close, silently cursing her infuriating brother. She had tried talking to him, but Sebastian was impossible to reason with, stuck in that classic teenage stage where he saw nothing wrong with his behavior.
“But what about Ominis?” she’d eventually burst out, exasperated by his stubbornness.
Sebastian had just snorted and laughed.
“What about him?”
Anne had never wanted to hex him more in her life.
Ominis didn’t come to Feldcroft that summer.
If Sebastian missed him, he didn’t say anything. At the start of the holidays, he met up with his new friend a few times, but the visits grew less frequent as the weeks went on. Anne, having grown tired of trying to make her idiot brother see sense, left him to mope and lounge about the cottage until Solomon gruffed at him to get some cleaning done if you’re going to loiter anyway. Instead, she made a point of spending as much time as she could with Ominis, to get him out of the manor. She wasn’t sure if things were any better there now than they had been when Ominis was younger, but at least he no longer turned up with fresh bruises on his shins or dried tears on his cheeks.
She supposed that Ominis’ recent growth spurt — which had made him even taller than Sebastian, much to the latter’s dismay that his own considerable spurt hadn’t been enough to tower over Ominis — might have helped a little. That, and the fact that Ominis generally carried himself with more confidence these days, despite his and Sebastian’s falling out during fifth year. He’d grown more adept at getting around without his wand, and more assured in the way he spoke. When people made comments about his disability or heritage, he simply shrugged them off, far more nonchalant and dismissive than he’d once been. It was a manner that made it perfectly clear such remarks didn’t bother him, which in turn quickly made people lose interest.
Sebastian knew she was meeting up with Ominis, but he never asked her about him. As the summer went on and Sebastian and his new friend more or less stopped seeing each other altogether, Anne began to feel a little sorry for her brother. Sebastian looked… well, lonely was probably the most fitting word. He loitered around the cottage, irritating Solomon endlessly with his sad puppy eyes and slouched posture, and made Anne’s heart ache a little every time she left to meet Ominis. She considered inviting him along, but decided against it each time. Ominis hadn’t asked after Sebastian either, and as much as she sympathised with her brother, she knew it was his own fault for ending up in this situation. If Sebastian wanted to reconcile, he’d have to take the first step.
One evening, near the end of summer, Anne sat on the small bench beneath the tree behind the cottage. She liked to sit there and read, or simply gaze out over the fields, enjoying the cool summer breeze. She and Ominis had spent the day in Hogsmeade, picking up new supplies for the coming school year and finishing the outing with a Butterbeer at the Three Broomsticks. Sirona had asked them where their “third appendage” was. Ominis’ face had fallen at once, and Anne had hurried to say something about Sebastian being busy helping their uncle patch up a few things around the cottage.
As they sipped their Butterbeers, she’d considered bringing him up, but the moment she touched on the subject of her brother, Ominis had withdrawn, clearly not in the mood. So Anne had let it go.
Now, however, her brother sat down beside her on the already tiny bench.
“Shift over.”
Anne scowled. “There’s no room to shift over to. The bench is already too small.”
“Or you’re just too fat.”
“Not fatter than your ego.”
The bickering came naturally, but she stopped short when she realised what she’d just said. Sebastian bit his lip, looking ashamed.
“My ego’s been pretty big lately, hasn’t it?” he said, his voice surprisingly small. Anne frowned and closed her book.
“I mean,” she said carefully, “you’ve been… pretty neglectful of your friendships. We’ve all made new friends over the years — I know Imelda and I were practically inseparable in fourth year — but that doesn’t mean you can forget about the friends who were there for you first.”
Sebastian nodded, still not looking at her. Instead, his gaze drifted out over the fields, towards the blazing orange sunset. His hands twisted absently in his lap as he said,
“Do you think he’ll forgive me?”
Anne thought for a few seconds. In truth, she knew the answer, but she wanted to make Sebastian sweat a little.
“Yes,” she said at last, noticing how his tense posture eased a little. “But you need to talk to him. Apologise. A proper apology, not just a quick ‘whoops, sorry’. He’s been feeling…” She hesitated, unwilling to betray Ominis’ confidence. “Very left out,” she finished.
Sebastian nodded again.
“Yeah,” he said quietly. “I realise that now.”
He was silent for a long time, and Anne was just considering going back inside — it was getting a bit draughty — when Sebastian spoke again.
“I really fucked up, didn’t I?”
Anne couldn’t help herself; she slipped an arm around her twin’s shoulders. Sebastian leaned into her at once, what little energy he had seeming to drain away.
“Yeah, you did,” Anne said honestly, running her fingers through his thick hair. “But the good thing is that Ominis will forgive you. You haven’t done anything irreversible. If you apologise, and mean it, it’ll be fine.”
Sebastian nodded against her shoulder, one hand reaching up to grasp hers.
“I owe you an apology too.”
Anne gave a short laugh. “For what?”
“I’ve neglected you too, haven’t I?”
“Maybe.” Anne rested her cheek against her twin’s hair. “But we’re twins. We’re bound to drift apart and come back together again — that’s just what we do. We’ll always have each other, in the end.”
Sebastian squeezed her hand.
“Besides,” Anne added, “it could always have been worse.”
There was a wet-sounding laugh.
"I guess so."
Anne was profoundly relieved when sixth year began and things seemed to settle back into normalcy. Whatever had happened between Sebastian and the new student had clearly fizzled out completely over the summer — Anne didn’t know the details, and Sebastian refused to talk about it — but his full attention was once again fixed on her and Ominis. Especially Ominis.
She still didn't know exactly how their conversation had went down, but at least it had gone well. In fact, well might have been an understatement. Sebastian had come back from the manor practically glowing, with red cheeks and tousled hair. Anne didn't even need to ask: it was clear they boys had ... reconciled. To what level, she wasn't sure, but at least things seemed to be back on the right track.
It was as if fifth year had been erased, and they were back to how things were in fourth. Only now, Ominis was every bit as lovesick and yearning as Sebastian had once been.
Anne, now quite content being single, decided to finally take on the role she realized she should’ve played from the start: wingman. Or, well, wingwoman.
She began lingering after lessons so that Sebastian and Ominis could walk ahead and talk before she caught up. She’d sometimes sit with Imelda at breakfast instead of the boys. During Potions, she volunteered to partner with Poppy, forcing Professor Sharp to pair Sebastian and Ominis together.
Most importantly, Anne started cancelling their usual Hogsmeade trips. The three of them had always gone together, but at least every other time, Anne would suddenly claim she had a headache or too much homework.
Sebastian, who knew full well that Anne never got headaches, and Ominis, who knew she was the only student in their year more ahead on readings than he was, both gave her suspicious looks but didn’t argue. They offered the obligatory “Are you sure?” before she waved them off, and soon enough, the boys were disappearing down the corridor together, both wearing the faintest hint of a blush.
When they returned several hours later, that faint blush had transformed into full-on flushed faces, and they were walking much closer together than when they’d left. They’d always come find Anne afterwards, chatting innocently about how much fun it had been and how it was “a shame you couldn’t come — maybe next time?” But their satisfied, glowing smiles told her everything she needed to know.
Still, for all her careful maneuvering, both boys were too stubborn to take the next step, which eventually drove Anne to corner Sebastian and practically blackmail him into admitting his feelings for Ominis. He refused at first, but Anne had a lifetime of blackmail material to draw from: the time he walked straight into a suit of armor because he’d been too busy staring at Ominis’s mouth, or when he peed in Solomon’s flowerbeds. By the end of that conversation, he had caved.
Anne was mostly just relieved, and a little smug, to see the radiant blush that now bloomed on Ominis’s cheeks every time Sebastian pulled him close and kissed him on the cheek in the corridor, or reached for his hand beneath the Great Hall table. It was so disgustingly sweet that she couldn’t even bring herself to tease Sebastian about the lovesick look he wore whenever he looked at Ominis.
After a few weeks, Sebastian and Ominis finally made it official: boyfriends. The announcement shattered a good number of hopeful hearts and daydreams around the castle.
“Honestly,” Anne said at last, when a fifth-year Slytherin — who she was fairly certain had never even spoken to her brother — burst into tears at the sight of Sebastian and Ominis snogging happily against a pillar, “he’s really not as amazing as he looks. He picked his nose until fifth year and is almost as scared of Puffskeins as Duncan Hobhouse.”
The girl didn’t seem to hear her.
Sharing a bed in Feldcroft had now become both less and more of a problem than before.
Less, because Sebastian and Ominis were more than happy to share a bed these days. Anne had to admit, it did look ridiculously sweet when they settled in for the night, Sebastian’s arm snug around Ominis’ waist.
More, because despite dragging her own bed as far away from theirs as physically possible, Anne still couldn’t escape the sounds coming from their side of the room at night. She pressed a pillow over her head and tried to hum her favorite tune in her mind until it was over.
At breakfast the next morning, Solomon refused to look any of them in the eye. Anne caught Sebastian’s gaze across the table and gave him a disgusted grimace. Sebastian only grinned, looking far too pleased with himself, and slung an arm around Ominis — who, completely unaware of their silent exchange, leaned happily into his boyfriend.
Seventh year passed without much fanfare. The Yule Ball happened to fall that year, and while Anne was content to attend as part of a single-girls trio with Poppy and Imelda, Sebastian seemed to be working himself into a frenzy over how to ask Ominis.
“You’ve been together for almost a year,” Anne groaned eventually. “You could’ve asked him while you were both in the lavatory — don’t lie, I know you two sit in there and talk — and he would’ve said yes.”
In the end, Sebastian settled on a plan that was surprisingly romantic for someone who was, in most other respects, an idiotic seventeen-year-old boy. He taught himself Braille and wrote several small notes with random phrases, handing them to Ominis under the pretense of wanting him to check if he’d written them correctly. Then, after a few decoy messages, he gave him the one that asked him to the ball and waited, breath held, while Ominis traced his fingers over the paper, a small smile playing on his lips until he suddenly froze, realizing what it said.
From the balcony above, Anne and Imelda, who had shamelessly been eavesdropping, both made matching faces of disgust when Ominis said yes, followed by several unmistakably wet kissing noises.
“Being single is better,” Imelda muttered. Anne, who had heard the horror stories about what it was like to share a dormitory with those two, couldn’t have agreed more.
This year was mostly filled with intense studying for their NEWTs. Anne, who used to like studying with Ominis and didn't mind studying with Sebastian too, now refused to sit with either boy for more than ten minutes. Sebastian, if separated from Ominis for more than fifteen minutes, turned into a full grown sulking baby, whining about how he missed his boyfriend and was going to die if Ominis didn't come over to the library and kiss him soon.
"Just one kiss," he had told Anne once, "and then he can go again. I just need like, two minutes snogging, as fuel. Then I'm good to go."
Ominis wasn't as co-dependent as Sebastian, but it didn't make him much better, honestly. While he could focus for 45 minutes without craving physical contact with his boyfriend, it was clear he preferred Sebastian's company over Anne. Anne, who had seen them study just the two of them and knew they had a reward-system consisting of kisses and snogging sessions equivalent to the amount of pages read or correctly cited sources, knew it was time to pack up when Ominis' already distant eyes turned glossy and longing.
Once, and only once, had she done the mistake of studying with them together, having hoped that their proximity would alleviate Sebastian's need for constant kisses and Ominis' need for Sebastian's hand carding through his hair as he read out loud for him.
"Honestly," Anne had said fifteen minutes into their study session. "I get that you're like, together and that you miss each other despite being glued to the hip for 23 hours out of 24 possible ... but Sebastian, does Ominis really need to sit on your lap when we're revising the uses of Acromantula venom?"
Both boys blinked at her, looking genuinely confused. Ominis sat in Sebastian's lap, both arms around his neck, and Sebastian's eyes kept straying from the book he carefully manouvred in his free hand to the long line of Ominis' neck.
"What's wrong with this?" Sebastian had asked.
Anne stood up.
"I'm leaving."
Still, it seemed as if their method of studying did actually work, at least to an extent. Ominis and Anne received, unsurprisingly, O's, while Sebastian was pleasantly surprised with an E.
"Your boyfriend's not a dimwit, baby!" he'd told Ominis, lifting his boyfriend up and spinning him around.
"Put me down!" Ominis had shrieked, despite his laughter. "I never said you were," he added softly when he landed on his feet again. "You've always been brilliant, Sebastian. You just need someone to guide you, sometimes."
"That's why I have you, right?" Sebastian had answered, brushing away a lock that had fallen over Ominis' forehead.
Anne, the ever so dutiful sister, gagged. Neither boy seemed to hear her, even though she gagged even louder when they kissed.
After graduation, not much really changed. Sebastian and Ominis found a flat together in central London, while Anne stayed in Hogsmeade, sharing a small two-bedroom with Imelda. Still, most weekends she Apparated to London for dinner with her friends; to play Exploding Snap, trade stories about their apprenticeships, or simply lounge around while teasing Sebastian for his hopeless domesticity.
Sebastian had started training as a curse breaker, and Anne was mostly just relieved her brother had finally found something he was genuinely passionate about. Something that didn’t end with detentions or near-death experiences, yet still sated Sebastian’s curiosity for the dark arts and magical, dangerous objects.
And then, a few years later, Sebastian pulled her aside and opened a tiny black silk box with a nervous, questioning smile. Anne couldn’t help herself, and threw her arms around him.
“Do it,” she whispered against his ear, swallowing the lump in her throat. “He’s going to be so happy.”
Sebastian laughed, brightly but nervously, and turned the box over in his fingers.
“You think he’ll say yes?”
Anne drew back and gave him a firm look.
“Sebastian,” she said, “Ominis has been by your side since first year, even when you weren’t by his. Of course he’ll say yes.”
Sebastian looked a little ashamed at the reminder of fifth year, but he closed his hand around the box and nodded.
”Hey,” Garreth’s voice rasped, reaching Anne through the glass shards that were wrapped in cotton in her head. Bleakly, she slowly turned to him. ”What’s the clearest sign a stag do was a success?” he asked, lowering his sunglasses and squinting at her.
Anne, whose headache was pounding so violently she could swear her vision had a heartbeat, managed a weak, “What?”
Garreth pushed his sunglasses back up again. “When you can’t remember a single thing from it.”
Anne let out a small laugh, immediately regretting it when a wave of nausea rolled through her. She rested her head on the cool table surface, savouring the chill against her skin. Poppy and Imelda were sprawled on the sofa, dead to the world; Imelda’s eyeliner now looked more like an attempt to mimic a panda than actual makeup, and Poppy’s ladybird bow had vanished completely.
Sebastian and Ominis, in their usual co-dependent fashion, had ignored the idea of having separate stag dos and held a joint one instead. Considering that their friend group was basically the same people, it made sense. And seeing as half of them were girls, there hadn’t been anything particularly traditional about the whole affair anyway.
Anne turned her head slowly. Amit was passed out across the coffee table, legs dangling off the edge, still hugging an astrology book even in sleep. His normally dark hair was streaked with pink.
“What did you put in the drinks last night?” Anne asked.
Garreth shook his head slowly. “Happiness,” he said. “Success. And regret.”
“You nailed it.”
A few hours later, once everyone had finally stirred and Sebastian and Ominis emerged from the master bedroom — looking far too pleased with themselves and far too well-rested, considering the state of everyone else — they were sitting down to a slow, hungover breakfast.
“So,” said Garreth, eyeing the two purple hickeys on Ominis’s neck. “Been practising for the wedding night, have you?”
Sebastian, sporting a crudely drawn penis on his forehead and a smear of jam on his cheek, grinned. “Of course. We’ve been practising since sixth year. I’d say we’re pretty well prepared.”
Anne nearly spat out her pumpkin juice.
The ceremony was beautiful. Anne stood as Sebastian’s bridesmaid, though she knew Ominis knew she would have been just as happy to stand on his side as well. Garreth and Imelda filled those spots instead, and even Imelda’s eyes were suspiciously shiny when Ominis and Sebastian exchanged vows, then rings. Garreth whooped loudly when they kissed, and Sebastian flipped him off without breaking the kiss, which made for a perfect wedding photo.
After the cake-cutting and some posing for wedding photos came food, laughter, and a lot of wine. Chairs were pushed aside to make room for dancing; Ominis and Sebastian swayed together through their first dance, before Garreth entered the dance floor and practically hip-checked anyone who dared dance too close to him.
“You know,” Anne said, slipping up beside Sebastian later as he stood watching from the edge of the crowd — Garreth now spinning Ominis in a wildly uncoordinated routine — “I knew this would happen the first time you introduced me to him.”
Sebastian jumped, nearly spilling his drink. “What do you mean?”
Anne smiled, shrugging lightly. “We were just kids then, so it wasn’t love yet. But I could see it in you, even back then — how special you thought he was. Your eyes always shone when you looked at him, or talked about him. Whenever something happened, you always looked to Ominis first. And as much as I love you both, and you’re my best friends, I always knew there was something different about what you two had.” She raised a hand quickly when Sebastian opened his mouth. “Don’t apologize. It never bothered me. I’m just… glad it all turned out this way.”
“Yeah.” Sebastian swirled the liquid in his glass, eyes soft. “I almost ruined it in fifth year. I know that now. But back then, I was so confused. I didn’t understand what I was feeling. He was my best friend, and suddenly I couldn’t even look at him without my knees going weak. Running away was easier than admitting it.”
“You were kind of an idiot,” Anne said matter-of-factly. Sebastian gave her a dry, put-upon look that clearly said thank you for that.
“But,” she added firmly, “you grew up. And you fixed it. And now, here we are.”
She raised her champagne glass. Sebastian smiled, touched his glass gently to hers, and echoed:
“Here we are.”