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"Adeline, jest no more."
"It isn't a jest. I've merely—acquired lovely little Duman here from an Ottoman gaffer."
"A what?"
Twisted in a porous display of shouldn't-you-know, Adeline's mouth reshapes itself, puckering with delight.
"A glassmith."
"What does that have to do with the cat? Which, need I remind you, is giving me the absolutely worst look I've ever—I mean, look at him! He's doing it right now!"
"That's just his face," she nearly snarls in response.
She lifts the tiny, smudged creature by the scruff, and it dangles with all the indignation of a particularly ill-tempered persimmon. Its marble-sized eyes roll between them—Sebastian and Adeline, lined up like judges at a particularly unsanctioned trial.
"This is contraband," Sebastian says flatly.
He says it like it ought to matter, in the huffy way he's wielded since he dunked his prefect badge into the Black Lake and decided he was, by technicality, no longer bound to the Hogwarts code of conduct. The badge surface probably still glows at the bottom like a fallen star if the grindylows haven't made off with it.
Adeline's grin cracks the dam, and laughter leaks out in little shudders.
"Only if you're the sort to fear a cat."
Her chin juts defiantly, as if she expects him to argue. Sebastian can't let that little quip stand.
"If I were the sort, I'd be in Ravenclaw," he says. He feels a little pulse of pride at the way she has to tighten her lips to keep from laughing again.
"Don't project, Sallow," Adeline says. "It's honestly embarrassing."
He studies Duman, whose expression gives nothing away, as if being smuggled into Scotland at the bottom of a suitcase was its natural state. No twitch or flare of nostrils, not even a resigned sag of whiskers. Possibly not even alive, except for the periodic, weaponized thrum of purring.
They're up in the Owlery, rows of rustic pigeonholes and the reek of guano, because Adeline says it's the one place still safe from Professors Black and Weasley's morning patrol. Overhead, a fistful of barn owls turn in their sleep, rustling like cheap parchment.
"So," Sebastian says. "You've risked suspension for a cat. A cat that—"
He pauses for effect.
"—a cat that looks like someone gave it a lobotomy with a teaspoon," he finishes, gesturing at the creature's vacant, vaguely malevolent stare. "You're a true revolutionary, Adeline."
"There's more to him than that."
"I doubt he's even magical," Sebastian says.
Adeline presses her cheek to the cat's crooked brow, breathes something low and indecipherable into the tangled blue fur until, abruptly, Duman's tail whips out, thunks Sebastian sharp across the knuckles.
He startles. "Is that—did he understand me or did you just want to see if I'd flinch?"
"He's purebred Angora, first of all. Second, there's something else about him."
"He's never blinked," Sebastian says. "I've been watching since you showed up ten minutes ago. Not once."
A smothered smile on Adeline's cheeks.
"He's hypervigilant. He senses danger," she hums.
Sebastian looks around the room. Owls drooping like wet laundry, the crawl of winter light through the arrow slits, the clack of ice in the guttering.
"The only danger in here is you, and maybe the Headmaster's cholesterol and fifty kilos of ammonia pigeon shit. Hypervigilant."
"I'd suggest you get used to him. He's a permanent fixture."
He's about to say something sarcastic about how she'll get along fine with the permanent fixtures in Azkaban, but the look on Adeline's face checks him. She's not smiling—she's not even forcing it, the way she sometimes does to forestall further pestering. He feels suddenly, excruciatingly aware of every angle of silence between them, every unsaid thing. The chilly drafts gnaw at his ankles. Duman vibrates between Adeline's hands like a bomb with a slow fuse.
"You know he won't last a week before someone notices," Sebastian says, but it's not a warning, not really. "Weasley's been on a tear ever since the incident with the fire crabs. She's got it in for creatures of, ah, indeterminate magical status."
"I know how to hide things." Adeline strokes Duman behind the ears. "And you don't give me enough credit."
He wants to see her try and hide this thing—wants, more than that, to see what she'd do if pressed.
"I give you lots of credit. I mean, you did somehow manage to convince every single person in Beauxbatons that you were a legitimate exchange student from Vladivostok for four months."
Adeline grins at the memory.
"That was simpler than you think. They don't check records nearly as closely as you'd expect from the French."
"I expect nothing from the French," he says, rolling his eyes. He glances at the cat again, at the way Adeline cradles it, letting it steam in her arms like a bruised teapot. "He has your scowl, you know."
She plucks a feather from the air, flicked loose by a dozing owl. She twirls it idly.
"I take that as a compliment," she says.
"Good, because Slytherins are famous for their devastating good looks. I'd say you and Duman are the House mascots now, honestly. Who needs a snake?"
"Are you flirting with me, Sallow?" Adeline asks.
He gives the world's most insufferable shrug—monk meets guttersnipe.
"I mean, you brought a feral, embargo-violating beast up into the Owlery with nothing but a length of twine and your winning personality. Can't decide if I'm in awe or terrified."
She looks down at the cat and says, "he's only embargo-violating if you assume the Ministry is infallible."
"You realize I'm on the fence about whether to dob you in to Professor Onai, don't you?" He leans in, close enough to see the reflection of his own freckled nose in Adeline's eyes. "I mean, it's the responsible thing to do. For the safety of the Scottish countryside."
Adeline doesn't budge, but her voice goes gauzy.
"And here I thought you'd prefer blackmail. Where's your Slytherin spirit?"
Sebastian slouches against a cold marble pillar, arms folded, close enough to watch the fine skips of breath trembling around Adeline's mouth.
"Blackmail would be easier if I had any leverage," he says.
A beat.
"But I suppose," and here he edges closer, letting the word plait itself into the air, "there's always the option to bribe me."
Adeline's expression, the practiced blankness that serves her so well with professors and inferiors, starts to fracture at the corners.
"Is this where you reveal your price? I should warn you, I'm not in possession of any Turkish delights. Or loose galleons, for that matter."
Sebastian lowers his voice.
"Don't require galleons. Don't even require payment, if I'm perfectly honest." He glances at Duman, then at Adeline, then very deliberately away, which is his only defense against what her face does when she's genuinely amused. "It's more a matter of ... collateral."
"Let's have it, then," she says. "Just tell me what you want before I die of suspense or Duman eats my fingers."
"You're clever, Adeline. You must know what Slytherins trade in when galleons are off the table," he says.
She pretends to ponder this, tapping one fingertip—stained faintly with ink—against her bottom lip.
"Obligation," she says. "Information. Favors."
"Some would say," and now he dares to tuck a loose strand of her hair behind her ear, "that favors are the most valuable currency of all."
She doesn't flinch, but her skin jumps at the contact. It's almost enough to knock his nerves sideways. He steadies himself again. Come on, Sallow.
"I suppose you mean to extort a favor out of me," she says, arching an eyebrow. "Something nefarious, no doubt."
"Not nefarious. Preferably interesting. Slightly unlawful, maybe."
She gives that half-cough, the one that means she's actually considering it. "You're insufferable."
"That's a very strong employment of the word," he says.
"You're not denying it," Adeline volleys, voice finding a new register he hasn't heard before. "So what'll it be, Sallow? A favor for your silence?"
He doesn't say anything at first. Maybe because she's close enough that the gold flecks in her eyes rearrange themselves every time she breathes. Maybe because he's suddenly aware, with total clarity, that the only thing he's ever wanted to trade for in his entire life is the soft, unpracticed weight of Adeline's curiosity landing directly on him—just once, in a way that couldn't be explained away as competition, or cleverness, or the mutual boredom of prodigies.
Sebastian isn't sure if she's about to slap him, laugh, or turn to smoke and billow out the window. He certainly wasn't prepared for her to say, as if clearing her throat after swallowing a stone, "well? What's your price, Sallow? Spit it out."
He does, but in the worst possible way. By kissing her right there, in the bone-chilled spatter of antechamber light, with Duman squished between them making a noise like a kettle dying. His lips catch the edge of Adeline's, scrape a little against the shape of her smile—half because he overshoots and half because she's actually kissing back.
Bloody hell.
The cat, affronted, scrabbles to escape their embrace, and Adeline drops him with a thump. She tastes like the smoked licorice she's always pinching from Professor Sharp's office. Her hand finds his neck, not quite pulling him closer, more like making a point.
His lips, dry, chapped, and bitten, luck into hers and he recognizes with a snap of clarity that it's real. He isn't hallucinating this. It's not a test to see how far she can string him. It is—her mouth is—soft? No, it's a trap, it's—there's tongue and it's not a tame, prim Hogwarts tongue, but something avaricious that goes a little off the rails, a little more—he doesn't know the word—continental. Her hands are in his hair, she fists it near the scalp like she's wringing out all his secrets. When she tugs, his jaw slackens and she slides her tongue in again. A quick dart. Firewhisky, part novelty candy and part something darker baked beneath her tongue.
His tongue collides with hers, and there isn't a modicum of grace to describe it. It's wet and awkward and he fumbles, but Adeline is already there. Meeting him. She opens her mouth a little wider, braces her palms against his face, and shoves. He stumbles back against the pillar and hears the crack of his spine light the back of his skull. She doesn't stop. She follows, pinning him in place like a beetle. Their noses mash, their chins go slick. He barely notices that Duman has catapulted away and is now watching, disgusted, from the base of a statue.
If Adeline has a plan beyond 'render Sebastian as pliable as a bread pudding', she keeps it to herself. She breaks first, pulling away with a sharp gasp, then wipes her mouth with the back of her sleeve.
Sebastian's heart ricochets. Everything in him wants another go, even as his spine registers a formal complaint about the marble. Instead, he says the only thing that comes to mind, which is, "you're a right menace."
She looks at him steadily, thin steam rolling from her lips in the cold.
"Could have just asked, you know."
He can't help laughing.
"Didn't think—"
But he cuts off because he's about to say more than he means. Something about not thinking she'd ever let him. Or not thinking. At all.
His mouth tastes like her still. Not even from the kiss, but the breath after, the flavor of licorice and a brackish, secretive heat that climbs the back of his tongue. Sebastian huffs out a laugh, the entire world wound taut to a perfect, trembling wire.
He's about to say something, but Adeline is already crouched to retrieve Duman. The cat smears its blue face against her sleeve, then glares up at Sebastian with the aggrieved dignity of a Victorian debutante.
Sebastian can't get over how unflapped she looks.
"You really are dangerous," he says, voice still a bit thick.
Adeline noncommittally brushes cat hair from her skirt.
"Only to those who are terribly slow on the uptake. You're usually slightly faster," she says.
He gives her a look, one she definitely doesn't see because she's now intent on freeing Duman's tail from the snarl of her uniform sash.
"I was distracted. You've got a bloody cat violating every known Ministry embargo, and—" He stops, catching himself before the tautness in his voice gives too much away.
"And?" she prompts, because she knows, oh, she knows he won't drop it now.
"And it's bloody cold in here," he finishes lamely. He hates the way it sounds. Blast him.
Adeline soft-pedals over the moment, tugs on his sleeve, motions him towards the stairwell.
"We shouldn't linger here. Ominis said there's a Hufflepuff with a grudge who monitors owl deliveries for bribes. If she sees you, she'll think you're harassing me for test answers."
"I might be," Sebastian says, letting the banter find its footing while he tries desperately to regain his own.
He trails after her down the Owlery's staircase, letting the spiral spin out behind her, pretending this was just another tick on their list of points to potentially use against each other later. He follows, because the world would taste blander if he didn't.