#phill.hc

[philliam-writes]

on that tree i'll carve our names (02)

pairing: Omins Gaunt x fem! Hufflepuff Reader / Sebastian Sallow x Male MC

summary: Call lowers his eyes to Sebastian’s, and they trade a look that feels like a dare. He realises he enjoys the challenge hidden behind those words; this little game of cat and mouse, except they both think they are the cat. Sebastian is sharp as a whip—but Call has lived the first decade of his life in a house divided where walls are thin and dealing with secrets becomes a delicate business of life and death.

notes: [01] | [03]

words: 4.9k

a/n: thank you so much everybody who left a like and a little comment!! the brainrot goes so hard, there hasn't been a day where i wasn't thinking of HL or jotting thoughts about the fanfic. also reading A LOT so if you can recommend me good fanfics, i WILL EAT

02: blackthorn makes the soul yearn

The room still spins when you climb to your feet, eyes fixed on anything but the Slytherin boy. Lucan Brattleby, for the first time since you have known him, seems to be at a loss for words. The other students have already begun casting Reparo on the destroyed objects, the giant pendulum swinging at an ankle as though barely hanging on by a thread, setting things back into order before a teacher comes up and sees the havoc you have caused.

“Does this mean we have a draw?” Lucan thinks aloud, holding tightly onto his little ledger with the bets written inside. His voice almost drowns under the turmoil of other voices.

“What was that?”

“Did you see the power of that spell?”

“Felt like some really advanced magic.”

Advanced magic? No, this felt like magic at its deepest, its most impenetrable. Old, very old.

Involuntarily, your eyes move to St. Jude. From across the room, he’s staring at you, wide-eyed and breathing hard. It frightens you how easily you can read his expression now, and it scares you more that some part of it might be mirrored on your own face before you can guard yourself against that emotion.

He looks at you as if you are the answer. As if should he trace your name, it would spell home. As though he has been waiting for you all his life. You feel sick.

“Once we’ve cleared the place, we’ll resume the duel!” Lucan announces to the crowd, trying to appease them before they pounce onto him and demand their money back.

You feel your stomach churn, cold sweat running down your back. The cheering crowd is the last drop falling into the overflowing cauldron, spilling its toxic concoction.

“I forfeit!” you bellow. A deathlike hush falls over the room. “I forfeit the match!”

The silence lasts for about a second before the crowd explodes with discord. You push Lucan to the side, who sticks to you like a tick trying to persuade you to continue. Those who have bet on you are even less happy. You duck away from their glares, marching towards Javi who’s thrown your robe over his shoulder.

“What’s wrong?” he asks. You don’t even know where to begin. How to begin to explain something you don’t understand yourself, your head a spinning container for wildly running thoughts you can’t get a hold of. For now you need to get out of here, into the Hufflepuff common room because that’s where he can’t follow—

In a flash, someone’s hand snakes out and seizes your wrist. The room comes into sudden focus. St. Jude has a wild, expecting gaze, hungry in a way that makes you immediately want to redraw your wand and throw him to the other side of the room.

“We need to talk,” he says, his voice hoarse. He holds his head slightly lowered and looks at you with his grey eyes from under thick, dark lashes.

You pry your wrist from his hold. “We have nothing to talk about.” You tear your robe from Javi’s hold, cramming your arms through the robe’s sleeves as though you’re putting on an armour. Out of the corner of your eyes you notice Javi rising to his feet, ready to step in.

St. Jude doesn’t spare him a glance. He lowers his voice, and you can her the tremble in it, how much effort it takes him to form this one little word. “Please.”

So there is reason one why you agree; or rather you convince yourself it is one of the reasons why you agree: he does something so uncharacteristically for a Slytherin; he asks. But secondly, and most important, you have to destroy this feeling by its roots; cut it off, burn it. Tear down the walls, don’t keep it in. You will not be afraid of him, of any man as long as you breathe.

Drawing your shoulders up, you jut your chin towards the Clock Tower Courtyard. “Five minutes.” Leaving no room for protests or complaints, you lead the way, swiftly dodging a floating wooden plank on its way to reattach to a bench. Quick steps hurry after you, tripping over themselves in their haste to catch up. The Clock Tower Courtyard is deserted this late in the evening, most students are still gathered inside the tower, cleaning up after the fight. The first stars twinkle through a wispy cloud cover, impatient to be the witnesses to your conversation.

St. Jude slumps onto the fountain at the centre, rubbing at his eyes as though he can force whatever exhaustion he’s feeling from the battle away. Yet there’s an energy you feel strumming in his bones as though he’s a high-strung fuse ready to blow. When he looks back at you expectantly, you make sure there’s an arm’s length of space between you when settle against the fountain.

“That’s it.” When you glance his way, he’s nodding at your wand as he speaks. “That’s the other wand, isn’t it?”

You have the urge to hide it away inside your pocket, away from his prying eyes. “So?”

“Mr. Ollivander only said—”

“Mr. Ollivander’s got a few screws loose, it doesn’t matter what he said.” It comes out harsher than intended, followed by a sharp twinge of guilt towards the old man who has been nothing but kind.

St. Jude takes a deep breath. Maybe his patience with you will run out first and he’ll leave you alone, realising whatever it is that he wants from you, you can’t give him. “All he said was I would meet someone connected to my wand.” He twirls it between his long, slender fingers. He’s wearing a ring which glints whenever it catches the light from the castle, winking at you. “And once I’d meet them—her, the Hawthorn girl he’d said, then I would get an explanation.”

“That’s a great way to leave the responsibility to someone else,” you grumble. St. Jude huffs as though saying Tell me about it. And it’s true, you’ve seen him run errands for a couple other students—for money, which you can’t really hold against him with your own little side business. But you also don’t understand why he bothers at all. He doesn’t strike you as someone who’s suffering from chronic People Pleasing. Knowing you have something common with him leaves a bitter taste in your mouth. “It’s not as though I know everything about it,” you continue. “Apart from a story Mr. Ollivander told me when he first handed me my wand five years ago.”

Now St. Jude fully turns to you, waiting. Just watching. His silver yes glint like the stars above.

“A long time ago, there was a kingdom. The king and his wife were generous, benevolent rulers beloved by their people. They could have anything they wanted, yet what their heart yearned for the most, they could not have.”

You pause, frowning. Up until now, you couldn’t even remember small details from the story. But now, next to St. Jude, it’s like a stone cracking a dam. Words pour out, a spray of water backed with the force of a river. You stare down at your wand in your hand. Maybe it’s not really you telling the story.

“No matter how often they tried, the queen could not conceive a child. In their desperation, they sought out a witch. She agreed to help, as long as they promised that should they at any point conceive a second child, that child would belong to the witch, for she was alone and lonely, and wanted nothing more than a child herself. To love and nourish, to pass on her secrets from the bog, of the rockroses and thistles. In their desperation the king and queen agreed, thinking that with one child only, their happiness would be fulfilled and therefore they would not have to keep their promise to the witch.

“So when the time came, the queen gave birth to not one, but two children. Beautiful twin boys. The kingdom celebrated for weeks and during those few days, the king and queen were the happiest people. They forgot their vow to the witch, so when she came to claim one boy, the king refused. He would go so far as to take up arms to protect his family. Of course that could not stop the witch. Angered by the broken vow she swore that she would return and stole one of the twin boys to her bog.

“The witch loved the boy as if he was her own, and he grew up to be a handsome man, kind and with a natural talent to her craft. The witch never kept from him the truth that he was the king and queen’s son. That he was heir to the throne. That he has a brother, and that one day, all that could belong to him. That he could return to his family any time if he wished so, for she wasn’t cruel. She loved him, and she wanted him happy. But the boy never wished for any of it. He was content with his surrogate mother, loved their humble home out in the wild. He had heard from the foxes and crows of how cruel the king had become, greedy and ruling with a cold iron-fist. No, he wanted no part of a cursed kingdom like that.

“One day, when he was out to collect herbs for a potion, his brother came to his home, for he was told that his brother was taken by an evil witch who steals children and eats them. He slew the witch who would never have harmed her son’s brother. When her son come home and found her dead, the pain of her loss tore him apart. He swore vengeance. He rode out and challenged his own brother, and they fought for days and days until finally, their swords pierced each other’s hearts. And where they slew each other, the earth drank their blood, and there, from one seed, grew a hawthorn and blackthorn tree.” Your mouth is dry, your lips parched from so much talking. “Our wands are made from that tree. One hawthorn, one blackthorn. Or so the story goes.”

The silence that falls is deafening. You feel a little light-headed after recounting that tale, confused and weirdly shaking with anticipation as though after speaking these words aloud, a century-long closed vault has been unlocked and the hidden contents set free.

Beside you, St. Jude is very quiet. He’s staring out at the courtyard, unblinking. He seems as far away as the stars twinkling above you in the black sky as though laughing at whatever strange tale is unfolding; as though already knowing how the story will end yet undecided if to call it a comedy or tragedy.

Finally, St. Jude exhales very, very slowly. “What exactly does this mean for us?”

You sit up a little straighter. “Nothing. It’s just an old tale. There is no us.” The word scrapes along your spine like a jagged knife.

“You felt that,” he says, his voice urgent. “There’s more to this than just a story.”

“You want to believe that, don’t you?” You try swallowing down the irritation, but you have never been good at keeping down your scorn when it comes to believing old tales. The paper cut that kills one, the priest that one ignores; listening to voices of the deep, joining the wolves that circle around the sheep. Don’t point at the moon or your ears get cut off, don’t whistle at night or wandering spirits will carry you off. Your mother’s voice is a raging cacophony thrumming in your head, stirring and probing in a flesh wound that hides your heart. “In a blood feud? Fratricide, by Merlin’s beard.” You unhitch yourself from the fountain and start pacing. “Someone must have come up with the story to make the wands more exciting, that’s all there is.”

“And if it’s not? What if it’s real?” St. Jude’s voice is calm in comparison to your agitation. It makes you even angrier to see him this composed, so full of himself. To believe in superstition and words that have lied dead for so long speaking them now kicks up age-old dust that makes you choke. “I don’t think we are meant to follow in their steps and duel each other to death. But there is more to the connection. Maybe an end to the feud.”

You roll your eyes so hard you get a headache. He gives you a headache. “Rubbish. Why us? We’re just kids.”

St. Jude’s eyelashes flutter as he lowers his eyelids, looking like a martyr put on the cross. Infuriatingly, transcendently beautiful; you don’t know what to do with something so naturally beautiful except maybe corrupt it.

“Providence,” he then whispers. “The wand chooses its owner.”

You bark out a hollow laugh, ghastly and horrible in the growing night. “You think this is a prophecy? You think we are meant to do something?” You stop pacing, shaking your head wildly as though trying to snap your own neck. Paying attention to prophecy is like tossing real diamonds in the air mixed with shards of broken glass. The grab is rarely worth the injury. “You’re wrong.”

Finally, St. Jude looks up. There’s a blaze in his eyes, a roaring fire, threatening to consume you. “You are afraid,” he says slowly, understanding dawning. “Of what? Fate?” He leans forward, bracing his elbows on his knees and intertwining his long fingers. “Me?”

“I’m afraid your ego might be a little too big for you to handle.” You brush dirt from your robes, meticulously taking care that no crease sits in the wrong spot just so you don’t have to look at him. You fear all your secrets will be plain on your face for him to read. “This conversation is over, St. Jude. I’m wasting my time here.”

You really should have known better than to allow him to step inside your life. This was a mistake, one you don’t intend to repeat. You turn towards the Clock Tower, ready to leave when you hear him stand up behind you.

“You’re going to ignore it? Just like that?” St. Jude calls after your, and he has the gall to sound accusatory—where has his calm gone? Nothing of the composed boy remains, he looks furious. Betrayed, even. He looks like he is one argument away from a scream.

You whirl around, your tone taunt like a bowstring drawing back a poison-tipped arrow. “What did you expect? Do you think you’re the main character of some story? That we’re on a big, great adventure? Grow up, St. Jude! Stop bothering me because you wish any of this was real!”

Before he can say anything, you go—flee, almost, and make sure to bump bodily into Sebastian Sallow’s shoulder who’s standing in the shadows of the Clock Tower’s passageway, waiting for St. Jude. It feels good to lash out, to do something with that raging anger thrumming under your skin, always kept on a leash, and nothing gets your blood quite boiling like the sight of Sallow parading around as though he owns the place.

You can’t deal with these expectations, all based on nothing but a tale. If Callum St. Jude wants to play hero, you don’t want to get involved.

With your nerves on fire and raw, you don’t notice the boy until it’s too late—you walk right into a Slytherin who has his back to you. After what just happened, seeing the colour green only stokes the raging fire in your chest. “Watch where you’re going,” you snap at him, voice loud enough it draws the attention of a few other students.

The boy turns. You immediately recognise him and feel the ground give way under your feet. “As you can see,” the boy—not just a boy, Ominis Gaunt, says calmly, his voice colder than the Black Lake in winter, “I can’t.”

A burst of laughter explodes around you. Of course with all your luck today, you had to encounter the third of the infamous Silver Trio. There’s not a single soul at Hogwarts that doesn’t know the name of Ominis Gaunt, heir to the House of Gaunt and descendant of one of Hogwarts’ founders: Salazar Slytherin.

Heat rushes to your cheeks. You’re painfully aware you’re standing too close to him, right at the centre of a Slytherin group that stalks around you like hungry hyenas ready to pounce on their prey—and that’s new, since when are snakes pack hunters?

Gaunt tilts his head towards the crowd only so slightly, his brow slightly furrowed as if he doesn’t quite understand the joke everybody is laughing about. His unseeing eyes are set ahead of him, unblinking, like a silver coin glinting off moonlight.

You can’t even bring up a half-hearted apology, feeling like you’re drowning in the turmoil swirling inside you. You’re not sure what it is you’re feeling. Something like anger, but with far more shame attached. Anger as a means of defence, anger you know is completely misplaced. But still you sneer at him, “All that pure-blood you Slytherins pride yourself on and you can’t even find your way around without being on Sallow’s leash like a dog?”

He halts. For a moment, you think his eyes settle on you, but then they graze over your head and he moves—fluid, abrupt, and far too close. You can practically—no, definitely smell him. Earl Gray tea, the breeze of the black lake, and something else, something sweet you can’t place. You grow very still, as though despite being unable to see, he might sense your slightest move. “Careful.” His voice is quiet. Lethal. Just a drop of poison in a tea cup left to do its work. “Dogs on a leash have the most vicious bites.”

Ominis steps away, as though nothing has happened. You expel air very, very slowly. What is that intoxicating sweet smell on him? Subtle, but fogging up your brain and making it hard to think.

Javi appears at your side, nudging your elbow. The crowd is dispersing, everybody is returning to their common rooms.

“Come one, Gaunt, let’s go before more rats from that piss-yellow house show up,” a Slytherin boy says—none other than one of the Malfoy siblings you have the misfortune to be in the same year, Tiberius Malfoy. He and his sister, Drusilla, are both Chasers for the Syltherin team, playing dirty at every opportunity and cheating through every test. They’re cruel, think their good looks and family name can excuse anything, and have no shame or conscience setting Muggle-born students’ robes on fire whenever they feel like it.

Ominis pulls out his wand, its pointy tip flashing red as he moves—seemingly ignoring his fellow housemate, he manoeuvres smoothly through the web of passing students towards the Clock Tower Courtyard, undoubtedly in search of his surrogate pair of eyes, Sallow.

You don’t miss Malfoy struggling, face flushed, to keep his anger under control at being ignored, dismissed, like that. When he notices your eyes on him, he snarls, “What are you looking at, filthy half-breed?” Boiling with anger, he can’t even think of a more creative way to insult you.

With the adrenaline still coursing through your body, and everyone’s hunger for a proper fight, maybe you should continue right where you left off and blast Malfoy a new second hole between his legs.

Javi, sensing you’re a walking landmine ready to maim Malfoy with the next wrong step, he swings a broad arm around your shoulder and leads you towards the exit. “See you on the field, Malfoy,” he beams at the Slytherin, if only to relish at his repulsed expression.

Javi has stopped caring about being called Mudblood or whatever other slur other students fixated on pure-blood supremacy call him. You’re proud of him for that, remembering his weeping, small form during the first year before he grew a thick skin—and big hands strong enough to break Malfoy’s neck.

“We’re going to put them into the hospital wing, right?” you say, turning your head up to Javi and smiling at him as you make your way through the narrow hallway towards (place away from Clock Tower).

Javi grin up at the starlit sky. “Oh, for sure.”

~ ⋆｡°✩ ~

Callum drops into the warm, cushioned armchair, long legs stretched out in front of the fireplace. Most students from his house have retreated inside their bed chambers, leaving the common room empty safe for a few in a last desperate effort to finish their homework.

The sound of quills scratching against parchment and the quiet crackling of the fire turn Call’s eyes heavy as lead. His head keeps lolling forward as though he doesn’t have the strength to keep it up anymore. The sparks flickering inside the fireplace remind him of the battle, of vicious Confringos and the last one, an Expulso that surely would have blasted him to bits. He still smells the char from the blown up furniture, the smoke and fire.

With your moods as changeable as sparks, he had expected a challenging fight. He did not expect to blow up the Clock Tower. Or that his wand would conjure a magic stranger than the ancient magic that would bind him to a person so clearly despising the mere idea of a secret that begs to be unveiled and solved.

He’s had six years growing used to it, and still it is the strangest feeling when magic starts to work on one. And this one, unlike the ancient magic that feels like a clear spring welling up after a long cold winter, feels like a hook in his stomach. Pulling him towards you, the need to touch and hold. To rip your ribcage open and fall into you.

Rubbing the spot on his chest above his heart, Call thinks back on your expression when your wands connected, on your harsh words after you finished the story of the hawthorn and blackthorn brothers.

Growing up in a place where surviving every day relied on growing acutely attuned to the moods of other people, Call knows what he saw in your defiant eyes: fear. Of him? Of the truth?

If anyone had told Call six years ago that he would not only be the only one to see and wield ancient magic, but also own a century old wand with such a special story, he’d laughed in their face.

The St. Jude Orphanage does not produce special children. Those leaving the institute are never meant for great things. Usually thrown out at the age of eighteen with little to no education, they become society’s scapegoats. Newsboys, shoe polishers, the work house. Thieves, drug addicts, prostitutes, criminals.

Call knows he would have met the same fate were it not for Professor Fig who had saved him from a life of diseases and unspeakable atrocities. Even today, Call still remembers every orphan from his home that died to fever, who ran away trying their luck out on the street only to be found swimming face-down along the Thames—if they were found at all. Who were beat to death by their caretakers for disobedience.

Without Professor Fig appearing at the orphanage’s door one day, Call would have followed that same fate. Instead, he was allowed to step into a life full of wonder and magic, of everything he once thought impossible suddenly within reach. Six years later, and Call still has not eaten his fill of the Wizarding world, waking up every morning feeling even hungrier for all the marvel waiting for him.

“Knut for your thoughts?” comes a drawling voice from his left. Callum, his eyes half closed from exhaustion, barely moves to acknowledge Sebastian Sallow’s presence, which in turn is rewarded by a slap to his legs to pull them back and make room for Sebastian on the rug in front of the fireplace. “You’ve been awfully quiet since the duel.” Sebastian makes himself comfortable on the rug right in front of the fire. Call can’t imagine it’s that comfortable. The stones of the Slytherin dungeons seem impenetrably cold, as if housing centuries worth of its inhabitants’ seclusion—a den of snakes shedding their skin for the new day to come.

“Just a lot on my mind.” Call stretches his limbs like a cat, sinking further into the cushions. If he doesn’t move to his bed soon, he might as well just fall asleep right here. “We’re still missing a Crossed Wands Champion.”

Sebastian hums thoughtfully. He’s sitting cross-legged before the fire, having taken off his robe sometime along the evening. Call watches the flame’s light dance over his face, drawing soft shadows over Sebastian’s handsome features. “I think you had a good chance. I should teach you Confringo some time so you can start dealing some serious damage.” He braces his elbow on one knee and puts his chin into his palm. “A shame the Hufflepuff turned tail and ran.”

Call gives a non-committal hum. He doesn’t really think you’ve run away; he thinks you’ve saved up the actual fight for a later time judging by the way you wear your strange, rough beauty like war paint.

“So,” Sebastian continues, “what did you two talk about?” He makes it sound so casual, just a polite question among friends, but Call has already figured out that nothing about Sebastian Sallow is casual. Just like when he smiles, it seems that it hides something beneath it that belies his composure.

Sebastian Sallow is . . . intriguing, to say the least. When they duelled on Call’s first day, it wasn’t as though he had flawlessly given Sebastian his Galleons for the run—even though the whole of Hogwarts begs to differ. But there was an immediate connection, an easy back and forth that felt almost familiar. When Sebastian managed to hit Call with Levioso, and instead of unleashing a flurry of spells, he had said, “What are you doing up there?” in a playful voice tinged with mirth as if they were both in on a joke and he’d found himself up there rather due to unfortunate circumstances than at the hands of Sebastian.

Travelling with Professor Fig has always been a great joy for Call, but now with Sebastian, he’s for the first time surrounded by a boy his own age. A charming, handsome boy with a tongue richer than honey and gilded words easily potting Call to follow him into any mischief.

He wonders how many secrets he’ll have to keep by the end of this year, his own and others. To Sebastian, he only says, “She wasn’t feeling well.”

Sebastian considers him for a long moment, then throws his head back and laughs out loud, a rich and alluring sound in the dark that has Call leaning forward as though he could put it in a bottle. He has a hard time looking away from Sebastian’s neck, from the chords of his muscles tensing as he leans back and props himself up on his arms.

“Wasn’t feeling well?” Sebastian chortles. “I’ve seen that blasted girl hang onto her broom in a game after getting her nose broken by an opposing player’s foot. All just to win the game. Trust me, she doesn’t just quit because she feels unwell.”

Splaying across the couch, fingers intertwining, Callum asks with a smile, “Do my ears deceive me? Is that admiration I hear?”

Sebastian scoffs. “It was our team that lost the game. Someone ought to teach her when it’s best to quit.”

Callum seriously doubts quitting exists in your vocabulary. Judging from the way you fight, you’re a hurricane, and no natural force simply stops without causing havoc and fatalities in its wake, nor does it yield to man’s pleas.

“That means,” Sebastian continues leisurely, flicking his gaze at the flowering embers in the fireplace, “either she lied to you.” His eyes flicker towards Call, his gaze sharpens like a hound on the scent, sending Call’s heart into his throat. “Or you are lying to me.”

Call lowers his eyes to Sebastian’s, and they trade a look that feels like a dare. He realises he enjoys the challenge hidden behind those words; this little game of cat and mouse, except they both think they are the cat. Sebastian is sharp as a whip—but Call has lived the first decade of his life in a house divided where walls are thin and dealing with secrets becomes a delicate business of life and death.

One would think because he grew up with nothing, Callum would want everything. But he doesn’t. He’s always been fine with settling for less. Just this one time though, he’ll allow himself to be selfish.

He wonders if it’s the magic or something sitting far beneath his ribcage, fragile like a bird’s wings and just as easily destructible, but he knows two souls don’t find each other by simple accident.

a/n: that was a lot of exposition, so with the next chapter we'll finally tackle the characters and their dynamics and i can't wait