It's not like any other love | S.S. | Part 1
— PAIRING: dark!Sebastian Sallow x F!MC
— SYNOPSIS: In order to cast an unforgivable curse, you have to mean it. So how does Sebastian make himself want to hurt the girl he’s been harbouring a huge crush on?
— WARNINGS: angst, jealousy, unrequited love (or is it?), hurt/comfort, abstractly violent imagery, suggestive wand-work, and just an unfun time in the catacombs with Sebby and Omi and the MC that’s caught between them.
— WORDCOUNT: 1.3k
— A/N: Not beta read (except by remus-levioso 🙏 tysm) or existing with any sense or purpose. I just wanted to write something for this little troublemaker and I couldn’t stop thinking about how Sebby could hurt MC when he only seems to have positive feelings about her. I started to think about how he could hype himself up to wanting to hurt her, and just went down a rabbit hole of angst. Spoilers for the game, obvi. I hope you enjoy this, my lovelies 💞
“It won’t work unless you really mean it,” said Ominis, or something along those lines… Sebastian was already a wreck of fidgeting and frets as he stood in front of that door of marbled horror, watching from the corner of his eye while his new friend tried to get Ominis to cast the unforgivable. He didn’t want to think that they were doomed to die here, even with Noctua Gaunt’s skeleton beside him — he couldn’t accept it. Sebastian would batter his head against this problem, like he had done with every other one before it, and prevail.
He tapped his foot on the floor and slid a glance to Ominis again. As expected, he was shaking his head “no” and physically distancing himself from the new fifth year. Coward, Sebastian thought before he could stop himself — because it wasn’t fair, he reasoned, to hold it against Ominis after what he’d been through with his family. He promised himself he’d understand his friend, would sympathise, would listen… But what a coward.
“Ominis won’t cast it,” said the girl once she was by his side again. “What do we do now?”
And that’s how it started.
Sebastian was soon placed in the uncomfortable position of having to give free rein to those parts of himself he had, especially as of late, try to restrain. He was striving to be softer, gentler, more understanding — for Anne’s sake if not his own, and Ominis seemed to appreciate it too, and it wouldn’t do to scare off their new friend either. How sad, then, that casting the curse meant that Sebastian had to dig up all those freshly buried feelings that caused him so much regret — and all of them about the girl before him.
He prepared to cast the curse. In his mind, with one quick force of will, memories of recent days were summoned to the surface.
First, he brought up that spark of envy from when she first defeated him, at the duel in Professor Hecat’s class — the twinge of shame as well, because he liked it, because he wasn’t even mad that she had bested him, because she was genuinely better. Better than him? Hatred, jealousy, resentment.
Second, their meeting in the Charms class — which didn’t happen because she sat next to a Gryffindor and why? Why? Did she think him not good enough to sit with?! He’d joked to Ominis about casting Accio on people, certain that his blind friend wouldn’t know who he was looking at, but from Ominis’ suggestive retort — “Well, you’d be using it on clothing to be precise, Sebastian.” — he couldn’t be too sure of that. And how cruel of Ominis, if he said it on purpose, to make him think of summoning the clothes off her, pulling her toward him, landing her naked and helpless, in his arms… Resentment, longing, complete and utter despair.
Third, the Library. After he offered to show her the forbidden section, after he waited for her by the stairs for hours like a lovestruck puppy, after he protected her and took detention for her… all she had to say was “thanks”? He’d never felt so stupid as when he realised he expected far too much for far too little — because the only thing he really had to offer to her was himself, his knowledge, his skills, his sacrifice. Was he just not chivalrous enough? Was he not impressive enough? Was he just not… enough, at all? Despair, shame, crippling self-pity.
But she was enough for him — or so it seemed to his stupid smitten head, his roiling heart, his swirling dreams at night like so many teasing mermaids tucked behind their algae in the lake, like her in her forbidden bedroom up the stairs that slid beneath his feet — after just a couple of duels and a nighttime escapade among his favourite books and a trip to Hogsmeade to the flutter of lacewing flies (and the thumping of trolls). Sebastian couldn’t remember the last time he was so smitten so quickly and he wasn’t even sorry, he gladly shared every secret with her one by one just to see the sparkle in her eyes and would go into the deepest dungeon with her just to show off and he caught himself saying the stupidest most barefaced lies just to see her smile.
But no, she was impressed with Ominis, and his ability to talk to snakes, his sad past, his Undercrof… What a fool. Ominis wouldn’t be the least bit interested, he was too caught up in himself, too distant, too troubled — and in his more humane moments, Sebastian felt sorry for him, which perfectly counterbalanced the moments when he wished he’d been born in Ominis’ stead and had parents that taught him forbidden spells and told him all the time about his great lineage descending straight from Salazar himself. Oh. Of course she’d like Ominis better. Ominis, tragic and handsome and kind, who knew all the darkest curses and a catalogue of hexes and worse, who would rather die than hurt her. Well, Sebastian could do better than that, at least — he’d hurt her eagerly.
She wanted to learn the curse, she said. So he taught her. He showed her the motion, took her cold and clammy hand in his and guided her wand from behind, whispered the curse in her ear until he was satisfied she did it right —
“You need to say it as your wand descends.”
“Now?”
“No, start from higher. Like this, arm bent… Toward me. Closer.”
“Now?”
“Yes. Like cutting through flesh. Strong, forward motion.”
“Like this?”
“Just like that. Perfect, you’re perfect. I love teaching you curses, you’re so good… so good at it. Now, say it as I told you to.”
— and then, once she was ready, Sebastian took his place before her.
For once, Sebastian forgot how he felt about himself, and focused his emotions — mixed and myriad and primal — on her. It was, unsurprisingly, very easy. With the warm and soapy scent from behind her little ear and the tickle of her hair against his lips still fresh, he said it. The curse was tinged with his resentment for her, his jealousy of her, his yearning and hatred and want.
The flash of red moved in such a way as to cleave her open, as if he could, with a bolt of light, break her apart and peel her ribs away one at a time until he could get right to her heart, cup it in his hands, and steal it away.
What a piercing cry she gave, high and frail and consummately feminine. From the side of his senses, Sebastian could tell even Ominis was shaking, there in his corner where he cowered from the act. He could hardly blame his friend, it made his skin shiver too to get her to sound like that, to bring her to her knees, to make her moan and tremble with the aftershocks of pain. He’d admired her before, but now he just desired her — she’d never looked softer, more mortal, more fleeting, her skin drained of all colour as blood rushed away to escape the pain, her bones looking delightfully breakable, her chest heaving with sinking breaths that choked her and strangled her from within and left her dizzy. Sebastian was by her side as soon as the curse was over, equal parts fascinated and contrite, hands burning with the desire to just hold her.
“Are you alright?” he asked.
Part of him hoped more than anything that she was, that she forgave him, that she understood he had to do it. But another part wanted to see her scarred and ruined and at his mercy, his to nurture back to health, his to sustain, his to hold.
She got up before he even got to touch her, his hand left hovering in the air just above where she shoulder had been, and beside them the door of muted screams melted away, revealing the Scriptorium.
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