#thanks to the girly on discord for the sceenshot for me

[kaidynsarell]

Chapter 8- Of Clock Doors and Paper Cranes

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Pairings-Sebastian Sallow x Female OC

Rating- This story is rated overall 🔞(Ch 8 is SFW)

Tags-Angst, Pureblood Politics

The full chapter can be found below the cut(4.5k words)

Ongoing Fic

Chapters 1-11 can be found on WP and AO3

Monday, 12 September, 1892

There was a quiet sort of social seclusion the library offered.  A warmth found tucked between the pages of books and curled amid the peaceful sounds of shuffled robes and rustled pages.   In the smell of quill ink and aged parchment.  In the hummed murmur of whispered voices.  The unspoken understanding of the need for companionship without the necessity of conversation.

Clara could have returned to the common room for her break after Potions. Usually, she would have. It was closer.   Instead, she'd climbed from the dungeons and found herself trading shades of emerald and rippling light for dusty browns and beiges and tucked herself into one of the reading nooks on the lower levels, her books and parchment spread out in a wide arc on the aged wooden desk.

Her second-hand copy of A Guide to Advanced Transfiguration was so battered the cover was held on only with glue and bits of spellotape. Even her muttered reparo had done little to fix the damage.  There were only so many times a thing could be broken before the spell was rendered useless.  Until it needed to be patched with stitches and tape, and its scars would forever remain on display.

The assigned reading was dull at best.  Her mind slogging through a chapter on  Gamp's Law of Elemental Transfiguration.  An increasingly tedious subject made worse with each of its theories, arguments, and exceptions. Still,  she was trying to read it.  If one could call it that when she'd hardly focused enough to comprehend a single paragraph, and the image of freckles and messy cinnamon curls kept forcing their way to the surface.

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She only offered a muttered acknowledgment when the tell-tale pulse of Ominis's wand sent crimson light scattering over the aged browns and beiges.  He pulled back the chair beside her and, as always, sat with the effortless poise of an aristocrat.  He dug in his satchel momentarily, pulling not a book but a small stack of brightly colored,  perfectly squared parchments.  Each one was so thin she could see the shadow of his hand on the other side. 

She watched for several minutes--all attempts to read temporarily abandoned-- as Ominis began to feel and fold along the edges with a meticulous, almost mathematical precision.  Each edge perfectly straight. Every corner aligned with careful accuracy.  Folded and flipped, tucked and folded again. Over and over until he took the two narrow folded points at the top, pulled them outward and down, and the unassuming square emerged as an elegant paper crane.

He could have done it with magic. She knew, but he'd insisted on folding them by hand as long as she'd known him. Cranes, flowers, foxes. Any number of flora and fauna.  Each folded with the same fastidious care as the last.

He slid another sheet of parchment from the pile and tipped his head toward her.  "Give it up, Clara dear.  We both know you're not doing homework."

" I am."  She snapped her eyes back to the book.  To the same page, she'd already read five times over and couldn't remember a single word of,  as though that might absolve her.  "I'm reading."

"Please.  I've been here twenty minutes, and I've not heard you turn a single page.  I know you do not read that slowly." He made another fold and flipped the paper over to feel for the crease.

His blindness did nothing to deter her from glaring at the side of his head. "Fine,  I'm avoiding Sebastian." 

It wasn't entirely a lie.

She had managed to avoid him through Charms and Potions, both of which she shared with the twins. However, she suspected it may have as much to do with his sudden irritation over his new classes as her attempts to position herself away from him. 

Even so, she had caught him glancing at her from across the classrooms.  Stolen moments.  Blue eyes meeting brown beneath dark lashes.  The corner of his mouth pulled between his teeth in that way, which meant he was thinking too hard about something before one of them would inevitably look away.   Too often, and her first break in classes hadn't come soon enough. 

"Clara, please do not try to tell me you are actually trying to hide from Sebastian Sallow in a library.  Merlin, you may as well stick yourself in the restricted section.  He'll never look for you there."  The sarcasm dripped so heavily that Clara almost expected the words to grow eyes of their own and roll themselves at her.

"Was it your Aunt who taught you how to make those?" She flicked her finger at the exposed edge of the folded paper still tucked under his fingers.

It was too obvious a sidestep, and the blond exhaled slowly,  lips pulled into a flat, straight line, before he finally gave a resigned sigh,  " No, it wasn't, Noctua."

Not the response she'd expected,  " Then who...."

" You do realize you cannot avoid him forever."

"It's a large castle. I think I can manage."  She'd make it her own personal mission if she had to, and

her stubborn begged control. Twisted its fingers to grasp at the places violet petals had left their imprints. "He's been here for months Omi.  Months and he never told us."

" I am well aware.  But quite frankly, Clara, all three of you have been hiding things, and I've grown rather tired of it."  

"I--"

"Did you not consider that I might be worried about him as well?"

It was the pull at his usual staccatoed cadence. The strain of weariness seeped between the letters that saw her abandon her scrambled attempts at defense.

"Right." She sighed. "I know."  The 'sorry' refused to pull itself from her throat, and she cast around for some other distraction. "What are you doing here, then, if you're not avoiding him as well?"

"I'm not avoiding,  but Sebastian still has yet to fully unpack his belongings.   I've no desire to attempt to navigate whatever mess he's made of our dorm, and  Anne is currently in Care of Magical Creatures.

" Speaking of Anne" Clara ventured, "She didn't appear particularly pleased about that letter you received this morning. Whatever it was."  It felt like dangerous territory with how his face tightened at the mention of it.  Still, her curiosity plowed on.  Too pleased to have found some other topic to ease the lingering taste of guilt that stuck to the roof of her mouth and refused to be scraped away.

" No, I rather think she wouldn't be.--" Even with his precise enunciation, the blond's voice was so quiet she had to lean in to discern one syllable from the next.  His fingers pressed against the edge of folded paper.  Flattened it to a sharp crease.  He was stressed.  More than he was trying to let on, given the way his fingers pushed hard enough to bruise over the edge of the paper.  "-Recently, my father has seen fit to remind me of my duty to our family's legacy and the continuation of the Gaunt line.  As I have thus far failed to procure a worthy consort for marriage, I have been informed one will be arranged for me."

She was used to his haughty irritation. The sarcasm and quick quips of a boy raised in a society where an insult hid behind every polite nicety.  Where war was waged over dinner parties and woven into legislature. Where every Ball was masquerade, whether it was advertised as one or not.

Clara was even used to the hurt and fear that had too often lived behind it and had begged her assistance to keep Sebastian from what he had feared was inevitable destruction.  She was used to fear.  She was used to hurt. She was not used to the heaviness she felt around him now. It was cold and thick and dark, its edges sharp and honed to razors. 

A glimpse of the Gaunt he so often suppressed and any fear that hid there now was so blanketed by the depth of his anger she could barely make out the imprints of where it still lingered--huddled and shivering.

"Surely they are aware you and Anne have courted  for nearly a year.  Why only begin to insist on arranging another match for you now?"

"At best, they've tolerated our involvement, and I have ignored their increasing encouragement to find someone more suitable."  Another fold and Omini's fingers shook as they pressed against the crease.  It was near uncanny the way he could continue to fold the parchment.  Each line and fold as precise and bruising as the last.  More precise, even with the heaviness that surrounded him.  "It almost seemed to amuse my father for a time, and I had hoped, perhaps naively, that they would simply let us alone.  But it seems whatever tolerance they had for the relationship when Anne was ....."

Dying. 

He'd trailed off, but Clara hardly needed to see the way he'd bit down on his lower lip to know that was the word he couldn't say.  That none of them could say.  As though to dissent in speaking of it directly.  In avoiding eye contact. They might have somehow staved off the inevitable.  The strongest of wards woven within their refusal of acknowledgment.  And now her health had returned, their refusal lay in the fear that to speak of it would somehow allow death's fingers to find their home at her throat once more.

"--Now that Professor Black has done the courtesy of informing them of Anne's renewed health and her return to school, their encouragement to end the relationship has become a demand."  He scoffed.  A little laugh that carried no humor.  Something hissed and bitter. "She's not even been well for a week, and they've already--"

"But you're both of age."  It sounded petulant even to her, but owing to the blond's far from subtle aversion to the rest of his family, she had assumed he would simply leave it all behind.   Now, suddenly, the whole notion felt ludicrous.  The Gaunts did not wed their sons to half-blood daughters.  To think they would allow otherwise only emphasized the naivety of a girl not raised in high society.   Still, her protests continued unhindered, her lips working furiously to outrun what her mind had already concluded.  "Surely, they cannot force you."

The small, sad smile only confirmed what she already feared. "It is not that simple, I'm afraid."  He sighed and stood before she could press further, shuffling the papers back into his satchel with a flick of his wand. "Anyway, you've no need to worry about hiding from Sebastian.  At least not for the moment."

Ominis's turn to sidestep and Clara jerked her head back just as he pulled the satchel to his shoulder.  "What?"

"I told him I'd meet him in the Undercroft before Arithmancy.  I expect he's there now. "

"Oh?"

If Ominis was aware of the implied question in the inflection of her tone, he feigned ignorance, and her curiosity beat its fists against the stubborn that refused to ask why.

Instead, he set the now-finished paper crane on the desk near her still-open book and muttered something about finding her in Arithmancy later.

She caught his sleeve just as he turned. "Omi, what are you and Anne going to do?"

He just shook his head, and fear peeked out from where it had tangled with hurt and stress and huddled beneath his anger. "I do not  know,  but I will not have her harmed."

"You think they would try to hurt her?"

She barely needed to see the way his face tightened, so reminiscent of that morning, to know the answer. Given his history with them, it should have been obvious, but it still wrapped tendrils of ice along her spine.

"They've done worse for less."

He left without another word.   On the cusp of having his heart shattered, not by death, but by the society that still bound him.

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Instead, she took to pulling at the tail of the paper crane.  The movement shifted the head and wings, and for a moment, she could imagine it was flying.  Out and away.  Icarus leaping from the tower.  Paper wings beating furiously as the little bird made its escape. But unlike the boy whose wings had been doomed to fail as he threw caution to the wayside and climbed towards the sun's light, this little bird's wings would see it safely through the bookshelves, up the stairs, and out to the courtyard.  Soaring up play amongst soft breezes.  All need for caution was discarded as it danced along the beams of golden sunshine.

But her envy was caustic and resentful, and it glowered at the little paper bird.   The stupid little bird that did not carry the weight of scarlet on its wings, whose mind did not echo with screams when it was allowed to grow too quiet.   The little bird that had not been left behind by the parents she'd never known,  by the mentors she'd failed to save, even by Sebastian, who'd vanished without a word.

By the Keepers who'd deserted their frames and shut her out since she'd returned from the Repository.   Left her stranded with an ancient power, their Trials had done little to help her control or understand.   It was a power that had forged destruction with her hands.  Painted canvases in shades of ruby and garnet and witnessed the fractures in her soul.  A power that had stopped a rebellion and crowned her the 'Hero of Hogwarts' and yet left her utterly powerless in every way that truly mattered to her.

She couldn't use Ancient Magic to save her grandmother or Professor Fig.  It had been useless to take Anne's curse or stop Sebastian from leaving, and now, short of murdering the rest of the Gaunts, she found herself powerless again. 

If the Keepers could have offered any further assistance, their perpetually empty frames had made their intentions toward any additional education with her Ancient Magic abundantly clear, and she'd long since given up returning to the Map Chamber to ask for help.

"Miss Elmore." 

Clara jumped at the sudden noise.  Snapped away from her reverie. The wing of the little paper crane tore with the movement, and the little bird toppled from her fingers.  Sprawled out against the desk, its bid for freedom failed. Perhaps it had flown too close to the sun after all.

Professor Sharp was leaned on a cane clutched in one hand.  The other wrapped around two books, the outer of which had a faded set of runic symbols on the cover she didn't recognize.  Considering the exasperated tone and the considerable arch of his eyebrows, he'd been attempting to gain her attention for a length of time she was too embarrassed to think of.

"Yes, Professor?"

"I asked if you would please deliver a message to Mr. Sallow for me?   believe you two share Arithmancy this afternoon. I was just about to be on my way to send an owl, but I am in no mood to traverse up to the Owlry, and if I've learned anything with teaching, it's that students will often spread messages far faster than anything with wings.

Clara blinked and straightened, trying not to contemplate how long he'd stood there watching her glare at that paper crane.  "Oh, sure. I mean, yes, sir."

She was not naive enough to think his phrasing it as a question was anything more than courtesy.  Refusal would be a surefire way to lose house points or earn a detention. Neither of which she fancied.  Nevertheless, she found she didn't mind the request.  

Professor Sharp was one of the few who still looked at her like she was a person—not some burdened hero with a glorious power or a frail, broken thing that might shatter at the sight of a strong wind. Perhaps it was owed to the time he'd spent as an Auror, but neither pity nor reverence held any purchase in his gaze, and unlike so many others, she found his one of the easier to maintain.

He shifted his weight against the cane "Very well. If you'd kindly inform Mr. Sallow, he will be needed in my office directly after the end  of today's lessons."

"Do you need Anne as well?"

The potions master just shook his head. "No,  just Mr. Sallow will be fine." 

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Clara could have waited until Arithmancy to talk with him.  She should have waited, and she cursed the traitorous feet that clipped her boots through the corridors to that worn wooden door in the Defense Against the Dark Arts Tower, with its clocks, stars and faded runes.

They'd hardly approached the space since Sebastian had left, and still, there was a warm familiarity in the twist of her wand and the whirring clicking of the gears.

It was only the sound of voices—raised and angry—beyond the closed door of the liftgate as she reached the bottom that halted her fingers within the cramped and dusty space.  The movement of the lift had been loud.  It always was. Even within the Undercroft, they could always hear its clamor.  The idea of sneaking up on anyone already there had long since been abandoned, but the voices hadn't faltered even slightly as she'd heard the jarring clang that marked the end of her descent.

".......Really Sebastian!  I thought I'd made my opinion on that matter perfectly clear.  What in Merlin's name  would suddenly make you think I would agree with you?"

Clara curled her fingers around the edges of the handle. She hardly needed to lean closer to hear that low, frustrated groan she knew too well—the indication the argument had been going far too long, and still, she tipped her head forward.

" We've been over this.  Anne was dying.  I didn't have another choice!"

There was a sharp tap. Perhaps the rap of knuckles on wood, though Clara couldn't be sure, from behind the closed door.

"There is always another choice!"  Ominis again.  The usual clip of his tone was abandoned.  Stretched to breaking and lost amid the stone pillars.  " But every single time, you chose to throw yourself down that path.  All those books on the Dark Arts you thought you were clever at hiding,  The Scriptorium,  That damned Relic! Again and again- "

"I did what I had to do.  I don't regret it." 

"I am all too aware!   And that's just the problem, isn't it.    Sebastian,  you do realize if anyone found out what you had done,  you would be in Azkaban."

There was a sudden crash, and this time, there was no mistaking the slam of a fist against the table. Clara jumped, knocking her elbow into the wall. Loud enough to ricochet around the small lift and out into the Undercroft, though if either Sebastian or Ominis had heard, neither gave any acknowledgment.

"You think I don't fucking know that!"  If Sebastian hadn't been shouting before, he was now.  "You think I don't know exactly what the consequences of my actions are!"

"Do you?  Because sometimes I'm really not sure you do!"

"It wasn't something  I did lightly, Ominis!  But it's done."  The shout had faltered so quickly that she almost missed the little catch in his voice before it settled to something weary and resigned.  "I can't take it back, and I'm done apologizing to you for it."

" You know I should say something."

Clara pressed herself closer to the door.  She felt the sharp corners bite into her skin as she clenched her fingers around the edge of the handle.  She'd thought they'd all been in agreement: she, Anne, and Ominis.  Sebastian's actions were reckless, devastating even.   But she'd assumed when Ominis had brushed at the idea of turning him in; it had been no more than a shadow of a consideration.  A fleeting, fearful creature brought to light in a moment of desperation.

"You won't."

If there had been a bluff, Sebastian had called him on it.  They were brothers, after all.

" No,"  Ominis sighed,  "I won't.  But  for her sake, not for yours, and really, Sebastian, you should do it yourself."

Only the quick clip of footsteps alerted Clara to Ominis's approach, and she just managed to pull the lift door open and step out before the blond brushed her.  He only nodded briefly in her direction, Sebastian close on his heels, before  Ominis stepped beyond the liftgate, and they heard the clamor of its ascent.

Sebastian froze mid-step "Clara?"

It was odd how suddenly the vastness of the room could shrink around them.  How the world could disappear entirely, and each breath could count a lifetime.

Why hadn't she waited until arithmancy?

"Professor Sharp wants to see you in his office after lessons."  The words spilled so quickly from her that she couldn't be certain he'd even understood before she bolted for the lift and wrenched the gate open. 

"Ara, wait— "

But she'd already stepped into the cramped space.  Almost in time to shut the door, when Sebastian's hand closed around her arm, and he stepped in across from her just as the door clanged shut behind them.  His touch wasn't firm. Light enough, she could've pulled away with little effort but enough to notice the warmth that melted from where his hand still lingered against her bicep,  spread across her shoulder, and trailed up the side of her throat. 

He had always been warm. Hot really.  Even in winter.

The lift jerked and rattled. Not used to elevating more than one person at a time.

"—Can we talk?"

She couldn't explain even to herself why the request boiled inside her veins.  Curled around that simmering hot coil and ignited her anger.  Even so, she made no move to pull herself away from him. Not that she had that far to move within the lift.  They were both already backed against opposite walls.

"You left us, Sebastian."  Left her.  " Without saying anything.  You've been back here for months and never told us.   You don't get to show up after a year and suddenly decide on your whim  I'm  worth speaking to!"

"I know."  His other hand pulled down his face.  Voice clenched at the corners. " I just...I  thought maybe—"

"How many times did I ask you where you were?  Do you know how many times I—"

"You think I enjoyed it?  Being alone all that time.   Cutting myself off from every single person I care about!"  He barely needed to raise his voice for it to echo above the whir and rattle of the lift.  The fire was still raw within him, only tempered to embers after the argument with Ominis, and it flared again. Flames to match her own in this fractious dance they'd found themselves in.  " I didn't have a choice!"

"You chose it!  Nobody told you to—"

"It wasn't because I wanted to!  Anne wanted nothing to do with me.  Neither did Ominis.  He's better at hiding it, but I know him well enough to know when he's putting on a facade and-

"And what about me, Sebastian?" That hot coil had flared to inferno, a blazing wildfire that crackled up her throat and abandoned all attempts to regulate any semblance of appropriate volume.  "I would have gone with you!  You know I woul-"

"Exactly, Clara!  Anne was dying.  I couldn't stop even if it destroyed me, and you'd already torn yourself apart trying to help.  You almost died in that Repository with Ranrock because you'd already depleted your magical energy in that damned catacomb.  You were unconscious for weeks! They didn't even know if you'd wake up and–" She almost missed how his voice faltered at the end.  Caught at the edge and toppled off the precipice.

"Seb, that wasn't–"

That hadn't been his fault. 

"I'd already asked too much of you.  I couldn't keep  dragging you down with me."

There was some part of her—a part she shoved below her anger that could almost see the logic in his madness, however flawed. The hastily pieced-together plan of the boy who'd lost everything in one fell swoop.  Watched his hope flare to destruction between his burned and blacked fingers and leapt at a desperate attempt to salvage the crumbling pieces. Even if it meant leaving everything behind.  It was that part of her that peeked out from below the flames and trailed up to that warmth melting around her bicep. The part of her that  led her feet to the undercroft to find him. That traced her fingers along that enchanted parchment in her pocket and pretended not to wait for him to write again.   That part of her that looked for him in every room.

That traitorous part of her soul that, even now, would follow him to the end of the earth if he'd asked.

"Do you think we'll ever get past this?"  His voice was so soft she almost couldn't hear him over the noise of the lift—barely a tremble above a whisper.

As though he didn't already know the answer better than she did.

It was strange how suddenly she became acutely aware of how close he was to her.   Close enough she almost had to crane her neck back to look at him as he tipped down to meet her.   So close she could see the little spots where the skin on his nose had started to peel from sunburn, and once again, he'd pulled the corner of his lip to worry it between his teeth.  The darkness over his eyes shifted and softened, and she could almost see the swirls of pine melting from his pupils.

How easy it would be to let go, to lean forward and let her head rest against his chest. She wondered then if his arms would wrap around her if she did.  If his fingers would curl into her hair and massage the base of her neck the way they had so many nights in 5th year.

"Sebastian, I-"   She didn't even know how to finish—caught between anger and tears and violet petals pressed between heartbeats that begged her stubborn surrender. 

But then the lift jolted violently as it reached the top, and Sebastian shifted back against the wall.  His jaw tightened ever so slightly.  Those dark, impenetrable walls slammed down behind his irises, just as cold and unrecognizable as ever, and Clara pulled herself from his touch.

"I've got class.  I just came to give you that message from Sharp."

She didn't.  The bell wouldn't ring for another thirty minutes.

They both knew it.

But Sebastian made no move to stop her when she stepped out of the lift and disappeared down the hall.

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That night, her dreams were

Pale fingers that dripped garnet against trembling blades of grass.

Choked screams. Terrified and pleading.

Golden light speckled through the rustling leaves of a hawthorn.

Swirls of emerald haze and terror wove ice through veins below puppeted digits.

The crunch of bone and crimson splattered against worn wooden floorboards.

Bright white and a darkness that crushed against her ribs, squeezed and she couldn't draw breath.

A flash of glistening hazel.

"It's okay, Sweetheart."

She woke with a start, pressed the scream into her pillow, and the next night saw her swallow a third vial of Dreamless Sleep Draught.