Chapter Text
If you ever need a partner, don’t hesitate to call me, he had said to her, callused fingers gripping the wand he yielded. The Hufflepuff girl simply laughed, her head falling back at the thought of it – Sebastian Sallow, at her watch, her side – a continuous sort of thing, not at all like the one time arrangement they set up to fight that troll in Hogsmeade hours previous, but instead something permanent. A partnership set in stone saying that he would be there if she needed, without pause nor wait nor hesitation.
“Do not laugh at me,” Sebastian stated as he registered her laugh, wand spiraling in his hands nervously. “I am serious.”
“I am aware,” she nodded in return, rocking on her feet.
“Then there is no need to be this red,” Sebastian chuckled, stepping forward into her space, infiltrating the intentional boundary she placed around herself. “Unless you are thinking of some other partnership, hm?”
Blood rushed to her cheeks, thick and hot beneath the flesh of her face, and she could not help but look away from him. Yellow is not a flattering colour on me. It only highlights just how crimson I am.
“Never seen a Hufflepuff so red,” Sebastian murmured, his voice low in her ear. “It is quite amusing.”
He turned around abruptly, the edges of her thick robes thrown backwards with the sudden gust of air. “I’ll see you around, Red.”
Not if I can help it, she mused instinctively. And I will do everything in my power to ensure I do not need another to further my own strength and fortitude.
---
How foolish I am now, she thinks as she lay paralyzed, to not take advantage of the partner so willingly offered at my feet.
---
She walked with him. It was perhaps two weeks after his first offer, maybe slightly less, but it did not matter, as she did not think much about it, anyway. Hogwarts was still unfamiliar to the Hufflepuff thrust into magical life. Sebastian sauntered beside her, stepping across stone like he had been aware of it his entire life. Maybe he had – though that she did not know. Fifth year was an odd time to be forced into something, and she began to hope incessantly that he could not see how unsure her steps were across these halls.
“I’ve met you before, you know.”
She stopped in her tracks. Her eyes wandered over him precariously, looking, wandering. He was standing as if he was just as uncomfortable with his surroundings as she was. He was standing like something he’d said made him want to bite back and retract it from its fizzling disappearance into the air as soon as he formed the words. But most of all: he looked hungry. Empty for something she did not recognize, couldn’t fathom or possibly name.
“What?” She scoffed, as politely as she could manage.
“We met in Defence Against The Dark Arts, right? You fought against me and… well, won. You had a dirt covered scrape on your chin.”
“What?” She said once more, and a small smile creeped on her face. She was profoundly interested in this incomprehensible game he was playing.
Of course I remember this, she thought. Is he questioning my memory or his relevance?
“What, am I speaking another language? Red, you remember that, right?”
She decided to play along, nodding. “Yeah.”
“That wasn’t the first time.”
“The first time... we met?”
Sebastian laughed at her confusion. It's sound was joyous and free, and she erupted into a light giggle at the sound of it. “My word, Red. No, it wasn’t the first time we met. Do you know why I remembered you had a scrape on your face?”
She shook her head, and he lifted a knuckle to the base of her chin, the bone of his finger connecting absentmindedly with the rough plane of her jaw. He lifted her head up gently, and her eyebrows created two steady lines curling upwards. He ran his thumb against the scar it had left, and he didn't even notice how her diaphragm gathered in a sharp breath. “Here,” Sebastian said, and the torches along the walls flickered. The marr on her skin lifted his fingertip up off of her flesh slightly, and the way it stitched the fibres of her face back together results in it puckering upwards awkwardly. She wondered if he noticed, or if he was too consumed by the hunger that was darkening his cheeks and slackening his lips.
“It was your first morning here, I’d reckon. You were wandering in the safe part of the forest, and you saw a deer. In the distance. It was eating plants that were nearby, and it was crouched like prey.” He breathed in, relishing in the memory, scoffing slightly. “You knew something was coming for it. You could feel it.” He dropped his hand. “And you saw someone in the trees. They were also crouched like the deer. They were not a student, but a wizard with full and horrid intentions. You were shocked, but… not in the way like you should’ve been. You watched them, and my word, you did not waver, but you were shocked that they were there. Not what they were.”
Her eyebrows furrowed and he mocked her for a second before finishing his story. “You were just... standing there, and looking at it. At the figure crouched, but you started to turn. Like you didn’t care about the wizard in the brush, that the deer was more beautiful, more worthy of your attention. He pulled his wand free, and a spell rang out. You thought someone had killed the deer, and the way your eyes were... I've never seen empathy like that.”
“Were you... the wizard? In the grass?” She could barely breathe.
“No,” he says, “but the deer was not killed. And… neither was the man. The deer had ran away, and when you turned back to the wizard, he was on the forest floor. You ran, and you tripped. You cut your chin on a branch, and when you were on the floor you saw the man up close. Someone had–”
He took a breath before continuing. “Someone had knocked him unconscious.”
“How do you fit into this?” She asked, laughing awkwardly. She rocked on her feet, increasingly worried.
“I was behind you. Behind all of this. He was going to kill you, Red.”
“What?” She asked, shocked. It was leaking through her face, through her bones, spilling and sinking and spreading like some sort of lead drug lulling through her veins. She felt it in her stomach, which had been heavily lowered to her feet, which were now numbed beneath herself.
“He took a step towards you. You had turned to the deer. It was so beautiful, and somehow you weren’t even worried about the man,” he laughs. "He took advantage of that. He held his wand out, and I knew what he was going to do before he even said it. I was behind a rock. I cast a spell in another direction so your attention would be to the deer. I didn't even know you,” he scoffed. “All I knew was that you were fascinated with the deer. And I hoped your worry would go to the deer. And not to the man–”
He did not look at her as he spoke. “Not to the man who was going to kill you. The man I disarmed.”
“Where did you go after?” She asked, against all logic, taking a calm step towards him, and not away.
She did not have a single faint clue why this did not elicit a deep and thrumming fear in her. Why she felt more protected than anything. And why, most specifically, she was not asking a million questions like “where-the-hell-did-you-learn-that” and “who-the-hell-are-you-really.” She was aware Hogwarts taught a great deal of protection to their students, but this was different.
“Behind a really big rock,” Sebastian huffed out. It was a breath, one that lowered his shoulders and untwined tension from his neck. A low laugh erupted from him, but her face stayed flat, unchanging. He looked down, ashamed of what he'd told her. Embarrassed, even. Fearful of what she might think. “I don't want to scare you,” he whispered, and it made something burn behind her ribs. This is a mystery she could not solve, a situation she could not fathom, and most specifically it was being clouded by an odd emotion that was throwing her off.
“Sebastian,” she responded, her voice sounding deeper than she had expected. His nose was close enough to bump hers, and she desperately attempted to fathom what was happening but all her mind was repeating was the insistent action of pressing both palms to his face. “I am not afraid of you,” she whispered. “You do not scare me.”
The field of her mind was usually filled with numbers and twirling letters looping to solve a mystery, but somehow it was quiet – and she could visualize was the spark of visual electricity that her movements would elicit, and in her head her hands are dragging across his face and neck, down to his chest and the static that would follow. And then: she wondered what he would taste like. It was not even a thought, really – it was pushed down immediately, and it was more like a sudden heat, a pulse behind her teeth. She bit the inside of her cheek, horrified by the way she looked at him now. A secret she wanted to learn with her mouth, to devour and eat alive.
However, she was endlessly confused because her once perfectly calculated brain filled with emotions and tendrils was now warm in his gaze, and her cheeks burned and so did her ribs and her entire body was on fire.
“It’s fire,” he whispered, his voice breaking. “Like your limbs are being eaten away and you can barely breathe. Like your stomach is tingly and dropped to your feet.” His nose barely brushed hers.
“I don't care about fire,” she said bluntly, lying through her teeth. It was devouring her. Immediately the lie caught her off guard.
“You do, Red,” he responded. “I’ve never seen a Hufflepuff so crimson.”
I don't care about fire. I don't care about fire. Funny, because she was leaning into it. Funny, because she’d gladly let the world burn for thirty more seconds of this. Her face danced around his, inching closer, her eyes finding their way to his lips.
“You saved me.”
“Of course I did, Haley,” he murmured, voice barely discernable in the night. Haley, Haley, Haley. What a beautiful name on his tongue. He had not used it in so long she briefly believed he had forgotten her calling.
Haley.
Haley.
Haley.
The fire halted to a stop when her name was called. Her dormmate leaned her head out of the window, forearms on the splintered wood, and let her call echo through the cold winter air. Haley, and that was all it took to dissolve the heat pinkening her cheeks beneath the freezing flurry of snowflakes. Haley, and she was back, all calculated and understanding and not at all slurring her words and allowing the drunkenness of perpetual warmth to take over. Haley, and it was gone, and she walked off into the night without looking back.
Haley, and she is no longer shrouded in memory but crumpled in a bleeding heap, nestled in a pile of pristine snow. You have to stay, she hears Sebastian say, and she is not sure if she is imagining it. There is still far too much to do.