My Dear Old Friend Part 2
Synopsis: Sebastian ended up going to Azkaban, as Emcy and Ominis discussed in the end. Years later, Wyanne decides to pay a visit to an old frenemie.
<<<Part One
It was as if Sebastian never existed.
November 5th, 1897
Life didn't treat Wyanne more kindly after Emcy's departure. But then again, Life wasn't merciful; if it were, God would've never crossed anyone's mind.
During her sixth year, she became an assistant to Professor Hecat, the ex-Unspeakable, after she expressed an interest in the career. She quickly realised the mountainous amount of secrets and pressure she'd have to hold inside, and for the sake of her mental health, she eventually turned to healing instead. It was quite a few interesting months, but the high ended one night while she was at St. Mungos and a patient was rushed in. Their mangled body, burned black and bloodied red, lay there pitifully on the bed as a dozen Healers and nurses rushed around them. All the while, the only scene she saw was Emcy's breathless corpse in her arms, that night in the repository. The next day, she withdrew from the training program.
After graduation, she watched as each of her friends slipped away from her. Poppy and Amit started travelling abroad, saving beasts as a professional rehabilitator and studying the stars or whatever else astronomers did. Imelda went to join a Quidditch team (she didn't know which one, she never asked), Natsai returned to Matebeleland as a Defence professor at Uagadou, and Weasley settled down with the love of his life while balancing his job as a potioneer in Diagon Alley.
Ominis and Anne had escaped to America as soon as they had collected their diplomas. They changed their names and kept contact at a minimum, only a handful of letters in different handwriting every year.
When Wyanne finally looked up, she realised her friend group from school had already scattered like a snapped string of pearls on the floor. She was alone.
And for an introvert, that wasn't the worst thing. She dealt with her grief in the quiet whispers of the night, she found a love for research, and her dedication had earned her a small fortune and fame in the Wizarding society. It wasn't common for witched to partake in solo researches, let alone research about something so vague and hardly recorded as Ancient Magic. It was more than just the power that Emcy had wielded, she realised, but an entire field of different forms and types of magic. What Emcy wielded was simply one branch of an entire tree, possibly a forest.
The music played in the background as she tried to translate the runes she'd discovered during her last venture. This whole passage was what she'd been working on for the last two nights and two days, and it didn't help that it was a mix of different languages. She didn't know who carved these, but she wanted to punch them as well as praise them for their intelligence.
This word could maybe be translated as "pragmatic", but if it's not spelled with the line on the right it would be "danger"... that word exists both in Latin and Dalmation, but they mean differently in different contexts...
Her neck ached from her posture, and she desperately craved a shower. However, her stubborn mind wouldn't allow that. She must finish this! This was important enough for her to be eating the same menu for the last few days, and she was almost done...only 4 more pages, after all.
She wanted to hit her head against a wall as a migraine started developing. Or maybe it's because her brows have been scrunched up for the last hour. Was that even biologically possible? Maybe not. But she's a witch, so maybe her nervous system worked slightly differently? There were live statues out there, so maybe she had a talent for that as well...
Her train of random thoughts were interrupted by a hoot. An African Grass owl stood on her window sill with the same ol' serious glare with a letter clutched in its claws. She rolled her eyes at its attitude when it gave another impatient hoot.
"I'm working?" Hoot. "No I wasn't." Hoot hoot. "Okay, fine, yes, I was spacing out. Pretty normal, isn't it?" She sighed and slumped back in her chair as Achilles continued with his incessant hoots. She stared up at the ceiling as Achilles hooted twice again. "As normal as arguing with an owl..." She was losing her damn mind.
The owl could've rolled its eyes at Wyanne's dramatics. It decided to drop the letter on her face instead and quickly escaped to its room before it would face Wyanne's wrath and her death iron grip.
Wyanne smirked wryly as its last feather disappeared from her peripheral vision. She really traumatised it that bad -- that was in fifth year! Besides, it hadn't solely been her fault! Monkey had tricked her...
Monkey? Who was...
Sebastian...
She frowned. She hadn't thought of that name in such a long time, yet it popped up so naturally like she'd said it yesterday. She could hardly even remember his face anymore, just that her first impression of him was (1) a bit rude, and (2) freckle explosion. She snickered. Freckle explosion?
Shaking her head, she focused on the letter in her hand. It wasn't rare to find a letter from the Minsitry, addressed to her, though she'd expected the report to come later than now. Thinking it was no big deal, she ripped the envelope open...only to find it wasn't what she'd expected.
It wasn't the report of the specimen she'd sent over to Weasley. Then again, that would probably take another week anyway. She'd hoped for a split moment that it would be from Ominis or Anne, but a quick glance at the font of the typewriter and it would be evident it was neither. Instead, it was from someone she'd never thought she'd see under the title of Auror -- Comstance Dagworth. She'd interacted with the Ravenclaw in class a couple of times, and Emcy had praised her during Crossed Wands... That was it.
She read on. Her eyes widened by a fraction more with each line. Ahe blinked several times to make sure she wasn't dreaming.
She practically threw the letter on the desk like it just burned her. Her eyes stared like it just bit a chuck of her hair and swallowed her forefinger and she was trying to grasp on reality.
The clock on the wall ticked, ticked, ticked.
She snatched the letter and read again, licking her cracked lips and let out a bated breath she'd been holding in. Surely, she misread it?
...Sebastian Sallow, I’m sure you remember? The lot of you were thick as thieves during fifth year. I always wondered where he went until... Oh, that doesn't matter much, does it? The auror who handled his case passed away a few months ago, and i managed to get hold of the records. I noticed some suspicious aspects in his case during my morning tea, and I've managed to postpone his execution, which is due soon.
Exe-what?
I know you supposedly had nothing to do with this (you were notorious for despising him back then, I know), but I believe there's more to his case than meets the eye. You're the only living person I can contact within the entirety of the British Isles. Can we plan date over tea some time next week?
Of course.
Wyanne sighed and buried her face in her hands. Out of all the letters that were only about her researches, studies, and etcetera, the single one that stood out was about him. Sebastian Sallow.
It was like fifth year all over again.
"Wyanne, I'm going to Charms with Sebastian today!"
"Wyanne, keep an eye on Sebastian while I work on this, will you?"
"Wyanne, stop arguing with Sebastian!"
"Wyanne... He's been through a lot... Please don't pressure him..."
"He's...gone back to take care of Anne. She's gotten worse."
Even Emcy's last letter had a whole paragraph dedicated to him.
"The truth is, Sebastian killed his uncle. I'm sorry I didn't have the strength to tell you in person..."
The reminder made Wyanne angrily bite the inside of her cheek. No, she didn't taste copper, but the dull pain itself was enough to ground her feelings and think straight.
She didn't like Monkey. She almost loathed him, for his blatant way of speaking that was reserved for her (for some god-forsaken reason), for his smugness that oozed out of every pore whenever he scored higher than her, for his narrow-minded prejudice against goblins, for his stupid desperation to save Anne so much so that he didn't even care about what she wanted, for his quick and sharp silver tongue that helped him slither out of trouble, and for his cold-heartedness when it came to using Ominis and Emcy. And don't forget how he called Emcy "ignorant"! Just because she slapped him didn't make up for that.
But did all that rivalry warrant his unjust death? Did all the arguments mean his life wasn't just as precious as Emcy's? Did all her distaste drive her to abandon him?
His uncle didn't believe him. His sister denied him. His best friend of five years gave up on him. Emcy betrayed him.
Was she going to tread the same path, and lie that she was doing it for the better, when she was just...afraid? Like how they all were.
Solomon was afraid of his success, because he failed at being a proper Auror. Anne was afraid her brother would lose himself, because she'd lost herself to the curse. Ominis was afraid of the Dark Arts, due to his heritage. Emcy was afraid of what he'd do with the knowledge he knew, that he'd kill and eventually hate himself out of hatred.
What about her?
She had nothing to be afraid of. She was never close enough with him to know his true weaknesses and ambitions. She knew he was soft for his sister and extreme in his methods, that he was often top of the class and got pitied by the faculty, that he used to be kind but shut down after Anne got cursed, that he broke school rules so often even Black had him on his black list. That was it.
And now here she was, holding the power to possibly reverse his fate despite their oppositions, or seal his ending like everyone else did.
She stretched in her seat and breathed in deeply.
PART 3 >>>
