Mallow

From the second that he had set eyes on her, all that time ago hair and eyes silver-tinged in the moonlight of the Great Hall, looking surreal and harried but upright and proud, he knew that she would be his.

You see, Sebastian Sallow too had an appreciation for collecting.

His was a different type of collecting, although beautiful nonetheless. What Sebastian craved involved knowledge. He wanted to surround himself only by the people and things that could help him; once he had something, he was always loathe to let it - them - slip out of his grasp.

It was fate. It is fate. The two of them are kindred spirits.

He looks over at her now, surrounded by her beautiful flowers, the scent of honeysuckle and lavender perfuming the air, and smiles at how beautiful and his she is. She’s stopped arguing so much with him and he knows that she’s begun to see things his way. As he knew she would.

It’s peaceful now, although it wasn’t always like this.

There were times when Sebastian had been ready to give up on her, go to drastic measures, but luckily none of that matters now. They’ve fallen into a peaceful rhythm, a wonderful way of just…existing. Together. Sebastian always wakes before her, tucks the blankets around her as he slips out of bed - never forgets to spray some of her favorite perfume in the air - and goes about his morning rituals.

For almost a year now, they’ve been sleeping together in the Room of Requirement. It’s shaped itself into a quaint, cozy cottage: a rose garden for her outside, perpetually-summertime-long-days-golden-sun-lazy-heat, and she hasn’t yet gotten tired of sitting outside surrounded by her beauty.

As Sebastian walks through the halls to his first class of the day - he’s never late this year, upcoming NEWTs requiring more studiousness than he’s used to - he ignores the murmurs that plague him. They’ve died down somewhat, since last year, but still persist. There’s an air of paranoia amongst the students, a relentless discomfort that has lingered since she disappeared.

Really, these feelings may have started the year that Anne didn’t accompany him back to Hogwarts.

Ominis wrinkles an aristocratic nose as Sebastian takes the seat at his side and turns his head away slightly. “You smell terrible again. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you’re not in the dorms anymore because you’ve taken to sleeping with the basilisk.”

Sebastian ignores the remark, sparing Ominis a bright, cheerful smile that he knows will go unnoticed. But he tries to make up for it with an upbeat sort of voice. “You need to get your nose checked, mate.”

Anne had always told him that he took things too far. That he didn’t know when to stop. She had always reigned him in, redirected his attention, but it all changed when she became sick.

The illness slowly wore away at her, and in turn Sebastian’s resolve to do good went away while she deteriorated. As fifth year passed incessantly, marching forward without pause, he almost couldn’t bear to go back to Feldcroft to see her. The tiny cottage stunk of death; rot hung around in the corners of the room where Anne lay, dying, the stench threatening to overtake his vision and clog his mind. Towards the end, she barely turned her head in acknowledgment that he had entered to see her. Her fragile eggshell hand, wax-paper skin…it all disgusted Sebastian and yet he couldn’t help but come every weekend and see her and refuse to listen to her hoarse pleas to just let me die.

She seemed at peace towards the end.

Death, who had clung to the shadows just outside the periphery of the flickering candlelight, came to take Anne not long after OWLs had finished. Although it seemed peaceful, a small smile finally gracing her wasted features, Sebastian vomited. The dark, frigid atmosphere was at odds with the birdsong of late spring just outside and he couldn’t believe it was possible. His other half, the reason he had had to do it all in the first place -

She followed shortly after Anne.

It was too much for Sebastian to handle - he couldn’t - it wasn’t -

“How many flowers do you think are in this field?”

She’s lying on her back, hair spread around her face in a soft, dark cloud. Sebastian’s fingers are running through her hair, absentmindedly playing with the curls, massaging tiny patterns into her scalp. A hand reaches up to touch his jaw.

“Do you think you have more freckles?”

Fingers gently trace his lips. Sebastian leans down to kiss her and he feels her smile against his mouth and then–

(he’s trying so hard to listen to Anne and create a life of his own)

–the two of them moving together, irresistible, wonderful, wrapped up in each other, it’s perfect, maybe he can spend the rest of his life with her and try to move on from all of this tragedy but he should have known it would never last.

Nothing beautiful ever does.

Between classes, Sebastian manages to go to the Room of Requirement and see her for a while. He smiles fondly when he sees she’s still in bed, and helps her out of it, gently carrying her to her favorite spot in the artificial rose garden. He sprays some of her favorite perfume again - Ominis was wrong wrong wrong, it smells lovely - and puts a hand to her papery forehead.

Despite the warm, summery day, she is ice-cold to the touch. Sebastian carefully wraps a blanket around her frail body, making sure her limbs aren’t bent unnaturally and snap like they had the week before.

Her head lolls to the side, dull hair covering her face. Sebastian lovingly pushes it away, tucks it behind her ears, and ignores the small moans that come from her as he cracks open her novel where they had left off the day before. She’s been having difficulty reading lately but he never wants her to not have everything she wants. In a way, every lovely thing she had always collected is his now too.