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In a different world — perhaps not softer nor crueler, just an alternative one. Like when the branches of a tree crack and scatter from one another, still connected at the root but growing in other directions — things had gone differently:
The news of an arriving new student doesn’t thunder across the high archways of the castle with spiraling rumors of dragons and bloodthirsty goblins looming between the empty spaces of teeming students and staff alike; traces of ancient and dark magic never touch the soft folds of Sebastian’s lips, never damage his mind into absolute ruins, and green light doesn’t strike through the damp air in that ill-fated tomb, so lightning-quick like its hungry to catch fire as if it were an emerging spark devouring surrounding oxygen.
In another universe, Sebastian Sallow does not murder his uncle.
(In a separate one, dispersed even further away with different choices made and certain opportunities and chances of fate missed, Anne Sallow is never cursed, never bound to the hot, burning darkness that coils in the pit of her stomach and scrapes its razor-sharp nails down the rest of her.)
But in this world, this very tangible one that grows and shifts uncomfortably beneath Ominis Gaunt’s polished feet, there is grief and the ugly taste of death in the air.
There is no changing, no fixing what has unfolded. There is only going forward now, and so—
(Just like every other time, whether it be him picking himself up from his house’s floor where his siblings tormented him on with cruel spells and even crueler words, the prickly grass his broom had flung him onto during class, or the cold tile of the Undercroft where he’d sit and play Gobstones on for an ungodly number of hours he’d lost track of.)
—Ominis begins to move and allows his wand to lead the way.
It starts with a well-bred name, an entitled kind of taste that flitters almost indelicately in the atmosphere, and a blackness that harbors and festers itself under the cracks of intricately pressed attire and perfectly coifed hair. A stark reputation hangs itself over the shoulders of an eleven-year-old Ominis, and he proudly carries it like he wears his newly acquired Slytherin robes as his wand guides him through the noisy hallway of Hogwarts’ castle.
With a last name like his, despite his evident disadvantages no one oversteps him but no one really prods further to regard him either. He’s quiet in his first week of classes, raising his hand when he knows the answer and thinning the lines of his mouth shut when he doesn’t. He starts to recognize the voices of his teachers, becomes familiar with his walking pathways, and forms opinions of which classes he assumes he’ll enjoy and which ones he already knows he won’t. He’s almost like a normal new student only except he’s anything but that.
And that’s so glaringly apparent by the red light that emits from the tip of his guiding wand, to the glassy color of his eyes, and abundantly obvious lack of social engagement from his surrounding classmates.
He knows no one will ever cross him, not with his family so deeply entangled with Headmaster Black and with, so to speak, other blacker, darker things. They may even come to him when they need a little assistance, a little influence leaning in their favor, but the space between himself the rest of his peers is nearly deafening. It’s almost so tangible, so real, it feels ice cold and impenetrable to touch.
And that’s perfectly fine. It’s what he’s used to. Ostracized by his own brothers, so sleekly merciless behind their polished appearances and knifelike smiles, and unimpressed parents with their blatant distance from him drawn so sharp and loud, he doesn’t mind the feeling of being alone in this school either.
It’s fine. It’s normal. Just like the nightmares that force him to relive anguished screams and desperate pleas of release he experienced at home, cased within the depths of his room. But he doesn’t know he yells with his relentless dreams, almost wonders if his siblings take delight at the sound when he’s home, and he immediately shoves the hands away from him that awaken him one night during his second week at Hogwarts.
“Get your hands off me!” he snarls out and he’s met with an almost offended huff.
“Alright, alright, let’s settle down,” the voice sounds familiar, obviously another first year that had been sorted into his house. If Ominis had been anyone else, he might’ve felt a bit embarrassed by the lack of familiarity with one of his housemates and, subsequently, very own dormmate but names exchanged during quick introductions really held no meaning if there’s barely any other further interaction behind it. “Sorry chap, didn’t want to wake you but it just didn’t sound like you were having a pleasant time is all.”
Ominis pauses, now finally feeling his cheeks flush with humiliation, and listens for a moment. The rest of the room is nearly silent, the only sound of genuine, soft snores cutting through tiny gaps of air relieves him and assures him no one else is awake.
He collects himself for a moment before drawing his covers tight over his body while that darkness that’s known to interweave within his family name emerges and sharpens the edges of his words like a knife as he says, “whether it sounds like I’m having a tea party or anything else in my sleep doesn’t concern the likes of you.”
“Merlin, I was just trying to help,” the boy replies back, his tone just as barbed. “But duly noted. Let today mark the only time Sebastian Sallow minds the business of Ominis Gaunt.”
There’s a bit of shuffling of fabric from the location of where Sebastian’s voice comes from, presumably just noise of him trying to resettle into his own bed and after one final creak of his mattress, quietness fully engulfs the room.
It starts with a well-bred name, resolute and so imposing, no one ever questions or defies his family or him. Not even Sebastian Sallow.
Still, Ominis decides to read late in the common room for the next few nights in attempt to avoid his dormmates as much as he can and simultaneously tire himself out to the point of primal exhaustion so his body is forced to take in whatever sleep he allows it, keeping the nightmares at bay. On his fourth night of his new endeavor, he knows he’s not alone despite the intentional effort of someone trying to mask their already light footsteps.
“I can hear you, you know,” he announces and his voice rings out into the common room, bouncing off the stately stone walls and tall glass windows. No need to slink around, he wants to say, because Slytherins don’t slink nor lurk. They’re very much present; very much heard, whether its earning points in class, outwitting the best of the Ravenclaws, or acquiring high positions in the Ministry, clawing their way to the top and maintaining their distinguishably eminent titles.
“As I can hear you,” the voice that answers back is almost defiant. “Or the book that’s reading itself to you, that is.” There is a brief pause, and then, the voice even closer now, adds—this time—softer: “It’s nearly 2AM. There’s other times to study, you know.”
“Astounding revelation,” he deadpans and he catches the sound of his counterpart’s sharp intake of air.
Instead of taking the bait of his rather unkind comment, the stranger simply states next: “You’re Ominis Gaunt. My brother, Sebastian, is your dormmate.”
“I presume you’re his sister then,” is all Ominis says next, now connecting the voice to his roommate’s twin sister and fellow Slytherin, Anne Sallow. He’d heard her a few times in classes, her answers always right, and her sighs quite exasperated whenever Sebastian answered anything wrong (though, admittedly, that rarely ever happened).
“Correct,” she replies cooly, “well, I just wanted to see who was down here or if someone left a charmed book behind accidentally. Goodnight, Ominis.”
He doesn’t respond but it doesn’t seem like she was expecting him to, the near palpable sound of her footsteps already halfway toward her own dorm, and he feels relatively alleviated that that unnecessary exchange was over.
Until, that is, it repeats itself the next night. Anne’s voice fills the cool, open room and for some reason (Ominis says he can’t remember what exact reason it was, because why should he care she’s utilizing the same public space as him?) she’s there earlier than 2am. Maybe it’s around 10PM this night. A more normal time. He listens to a shuffling noise of her getting comfy in a velvety smooth armchair a few feet away, and then the familiar sound of the soft cracking of a book’s spine it makes when its opened.
They don’t interact for the rest of that night, and neither during the following nights after that, but she makes a routine of inhabiting the same area as him in the common room and he makes a habit of never acknowledging her.
The sixth night he slips up and ends up nodding off around midnight and dreams of something awful.
He’s never been able to see, never been able to even trace the outline of what he thinks a person looks like. He’s ran his hands over his own face before, mesmerizing the arch of his eyebrows, angle of his nose, and dip of his chin, but he could never assemble these parts of him together enough to even attempt to conceptualize what he actually appears as.
But his nightmares manage to fuse together what he can only imagine is an awful, distorted caricature of a face with cheekbones stretched so wide and empty black holes for eyes and a mouth, opened and wailing viciously in his ears. It sounds like all the muggles’ his family’s ever tortured screams mixed into one, the blaring screeching rattling violently against his eardrums, and he can’t help but to scream along with it to relieve the building horror mounting painfully within his chest.
So he screams and screams alongside it, thrashes about to push it away, and his lungs feel like they’re decompressing, stealing the very air from him. It’s like he’s fallen into the Great Lake that surrounds their dormitories, immersed in freezing water, and he begins to drown until something warm grazes his cheeks and he suddenly feels like he’s being pulled forward into the heat, fracturing his dream, and dragged him back into reality.
“Ominis! Ominis! It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s just me!” Anne tells him, her voice shriller and higher than usual. Like she’s panicked. Like she’s scared for (or is it scared of?) him.
He goes to push her away, much like he had with her brother a week or so ago, but his body feels unnaturally heavy, as if its made of lead. It’s like he’s quite literally frozen in place and the only warmth available to him is within the small curves of Anne’s hands that are gingerly cupping his cheeks.
It almost feels reminiscent of the first butterbeer his parents allowed him to have, heating him from the inside out, and he feels humiliatingly pliant within her touch right now. He listens to her inhale a shaky breath, a long and suffering sound, before she slowly removes her hands. To his surprise, she doesn’t withdraw them completely, just moves them further down and rests them on his shoulders, steadying him.
“Sebastian told me you had nightmares but I didn’t think…” her voice is soft, so hushed and it wavers a bit, nearly shattering at the end of her sentence. His stomach burns with embarrassment and his cheeks must visibly be matching because she adds hastily: “he was concerned when he told me, Ominis. He’s the one who suggested someone check on you… I thought you were fine the first night I saw you down here but he… Never mind that. We’ll never have to speak about this again, okay? Not me, you, or Sebastian. I swear it.”
It starts with a well-bred name, a pre-conceived destiny of tangible distance between Ominis Gaunt and the rest of Hogwarts.
It ends with Anne Sallow’s hands gently holding his within the dimly lit Slytherin common room, in the dead of night.
Summers in Feldcroft, he quickly realizes, are just as rainy as they are in Little Hangleton.
He wasn’t sure what else he expected, knowing the old tale of the once drought that plagued the area only to be restored by ancient wizards. It still somehow manages to feel warmer than his family’s estate, perhaps because the interior of Sebastian and Anne’s home is rather miniscule, almost forcing the heat of their fireplace to reach the corners of every room, compared to his family’s handsome mansion with steely, vastly wide confinements. He imagines the town is quite quaint with its cobbled roads and its fields overgrown with wildflowers and callunas, their sweet, honey-like smells tickling his nose during his stay.
Upon his initial arrival to the Sallow home, he allows his wand to guide him through the unfamiliar house, vibrating in his hand during certain times as if it was encouraging to him reach out and touch the kitchen countertop, the mantle of the fireplace, and (what he can only assume due to the slightly unbalanced craftsmanship of) the homemade dining room’s wooden table and chairs.
“Won’t get too tripped up here,” Sebastian tells him lightly, though there’s a small strain to his voice that would’ve gone undetected to anyone else but Ominis. They’re now in the twin’s room and it feels just as small as the rest of the house, with separate beds for the siblings — now one transformed into a bunkbed to house Ominis’ additional body — and small dressers to hold what little clothes they own. “We’re not exactly working with a lot of space here, as I assume you realized.”
“It’s more than enough space,” Anne cuts in rather pointedly, her voice located under the archway of the bedroom. “Solomon’s been thinking of adding another room next summer just for me so you’ll be able to explore another area too, Ominis.”
Sebastian tuts lowly at that. “Sure, Anne. You can show him around the exact same furniture you have now.”
“I think your house is lovely,” Ominis announces, settling any further rebuttal from either of the twins. He looks toward the direction of where he believes Sebastian’s voice is located as he adds earnestly, “thank you again.”
Any irritation from earlier leaves his friend’s voice as he answers back just as sincerely, “anytime.”
(Ominis thinks this is the sound of Sebastian smiling. After nearly an entire school year of weeding out the different fluctuations of his friend’s voice, he thinks he’s been able to map out the exact curve, the rhythmic variation, that unmasks Sebastian’s true feelings of delight, of pure contentment.
Until, that is, it becomes veiled again three years later and he finds himself unable to distinguish the dip and rise of his friend’s voice. Unsure if the smiles Ominis is certain are stretched across Sebastian’s face when he helps another student with classwork, receives an owl from Anne, or marvels briefly over how Samantha Dale’s hand brushed against his during Charms class, are genuine anymore or just perfectly practiced like the rest of him is now.)
Ominis tries not to lament too much on that fateful night. His mind recalls details in the only way that it can to compensate his lack of sight: through feelings, tastes, and sounds; and he’s learned from an early age to compartmentalize moments and things that leave his chest aching, his mouth burning with an acidic palate, and unpleasant noises that rattle against his eardrums.
But he cannot help but remember the unnatural heat of the fire, scorching and wild outside, the thick, smoldering taste of smoke wafting into the Sallow’s household in unannounced waves, and the sound of Anne’s door slamming open as panicked screams shot through the empty black sky.
From their separate beds in their adjacent rooms, Ominis hears both her twin and uncle cry out in unison: “Anne, wait—!”
Finally the pair fall into the same rhythm, the same thought pattern, as they both jolt out of bed but they’re much too late. She’s already out the door, would’ve probably been halfway there by now had Ominis not intervened. He’d been downstairs at this time, trying to figure out exactly what was happening as he hurriedly observed all this moment’s rapidly moving parts (sounds, taste, smell) and constructed them together.
At the sound of Anne’s sprinting footsteps, he doesn’t even remember pivoting and moving but instead he lets his wand pull him in her direction as he attempts to chase after her. Even with his broad awareness of the space with his perpetual summer stays, he still feels wobbly and frighteningly uncertain of his surroundings as he bursts out the door in the wake of her departure. He finds he’s unfortunately right to some degree, forgetting a portion of the paved road had been redone and he trips over a rock that shifted during initial construction.
He then haphazardly tumbles into her and they fall to the ground. He instinctively tries to curve his body around hers, taking most of the fall, and feels her scrambling against his long limbs as she tries to get up, still defiant as ever.
“Get off, Ominis!” she yells at him and Ominis tightens what grip he has left on her. “Get off me this instant! We need to help!”
“We need to wait for your uncle, Anne!” he pleads with her back. “Anne, please listen—"
But she’s no longer there to listen to him, her mind already wherever that burning fire is. She hesitates for a miniscule of a moment (because of incoming guilt, he now thinks) until she sharply brings a knee in between his legs and he feels the wind absolutely knocked out of him. With her sudden advantage, she squirms her way out of his arms and continues her pursuit. He thinks he hears her whisper an apology to him but it’s drowned out by Sebastian and Solomon’s voices now emerging from the threshold of the main entrance, not far behind.
Solomon stops to help Ominis to his feet while Sebastian whips past them, ignoring his uncle’s orders to stay behind with his frantic thoughts tunneled and fixated on only getting to Anne.
But like before he’s much, much too late.
The sounds that erupt from twins in the distance, the antagonizing scream from Anne first and then an echo of it jagged with desperation and primal fear coming from Sebastian next, sear even louder into the sky than anything else that night.
In his mind —in the tight compartments of it buried under the rubble of his natural distrust and inherent secrecy— sometimes, he believes Anne is still at Hogwarts with them.
Sometimes, he hears her voice intermingle with the other students in the noisy hallways, giggling occasionally on the sidelines with Grace Pinch-Smedley, kindly commenting on Poppy Sweeting’s natural affinity with this year’s magical beasts, and agreeing with Sebastian when he notes how interestingly powerful the new student, Natsai Onai, is. Sometimes, he thinks he feels her shoulders brush past his as he and Sebastian make their way toward the Great Hall or their classes. Sometimes, he can even swear (to no one but himself) that his nostrils tickle at the smell of the shampoo she always brings to the castle from Feldcroft to remind her a bit of home, of the sweet calluna flowers that inhabit the empty fields of her town.
But then he’s reminded again and again — when she doesn’t accompany him in the Slytherin Common Room during some Quidditch games (the noise is far too overwhelming to him, he rarely ever makes sense of what’s occurring even with Sebastian or Anne whispering a play-by-play in his ear) and when it’s just two piles of Gobstones blowing up in the dark space of the Undercroft — that she is not here. She hasn’t been in a while.
He thinks—No. Not thinks. A part of him unwillingly admits; a part of him just simply knows, a fragment of Sebastian hasn’t been either.
Something in Sebastian dies the day Anne is cursed.
Ominis wonders if it’s a twin thing. They’re not necessarily always in tune but are certainly just a few steps away from one another. Both are fiercely intelligent, picking up on wand work and spells with frighteningly easy talent, and where one sibling may lack in a particular area, the other makes up for it tenfold. Where Anne manages to conjure spell combinations in a blink of an eye that could make your head whirl about trying to keep up, Sebastian releases the most intense and steady incantations that rival the same ferocity of skilled wizards twice his age. Where Anne is kind and outwardly stubborn, Sebastian is rather pompous and charmingly persuasive. One knife always sharpens the other.
So when Anne is bound to an ill-fate, Ominis cannot help but contemplate if Sebastian willingly ripped a part of himself away too that night.
(Although the answer to that is quite perfectly clear.)
“No, um, interesting additions to your potions today, Garreth?” Ominis hears Natsai’s calming voice question her potions partner and fellow Gryffindor, Garreth Weasley.
“Bit of a new development,” Sebastian’s close voice rings out next. “Usually one of my eyebrows is singed at least partially off by now. Is Prewett trying to blackmail you into behaving? Honestly, Weasley, you can’t possibly believe he could actually prevent you from trying out for your Quidditch team next year just because his brother’s captain. Pretty sure his own brother isn’t too fond of him.”
Poppy Sweeting masks a giggle with a strange hiccup of a cough at that remark.
The boy in question clears his throat a bit hoarsely. When he speaks next, Ominis notices a strange waver in his voice. It’s subtle and Garreth attempts to mask it by talking a bit louder and more boisterous than usual, “ah, no — just thinking, you know, maybe shuffling around some of my time to brew these potions outside of class might have less… collateral damage?”
Sebastian snorts loudly at that. “Collateral damage?” he repeats. “What exactly defines collateral? Love to know as the top half of my hair burnt off last year clearly didn’t make whatever cut you’ve got so precisely defined.”
“I’m sure it’s now within that definition, Sebastian,” assures Natsai, placidly. “Perhaps Garreth can explain more to us whenever he wants to at a more appropriate time. I didn’t mean to pry this far.”
No further prodding continues as Sharp dismisses their lesson and the students, with most of their minds already flittering to their next class, begin to gather their books and other assorted school items before shuffling out. Sebastian blows a quick stream of air through his teeth: a telltale sign of annoyance clearly centered around his rather unfortunate and unexpected hairstyle fiasco last year. Madam Blainey assured him he was lucky his skin wasn’t burnt but that didn’t deter from the fact that he had to make a swift, unplanned visit to Madam Snelling’s Tress Emporium that cost a small fortune to reverse the damage.
Ominis hears Sebastian continue to grumble next to him as they maneuver about the halls, only offering his personal observation in attempt to shift his friend’s attention elsewhere: “Weasley got that new student in trouble last time.”
“What?”
Ominis sighs. Anne would’ve already chimed in by now and closed the case. “Did you breathe in too many potion fumes that day? Does stealing something from Sharp’s office, then covering for Garreth after only to get a pretty big earful from Sharp ring a bell?”
“Oh. The new fifth-year,” Sebastian catches on. “Wonder if the sorting hat made the right choice with that one. Getting charmed into assisting Garreth with his bizarre concoctions doesn’t sound too, well, Ravenclaw to me—I mean, nice girl anyways, I suppose.”
There’s another pause and then he asks, “you reckon Garreth’s taken a liking to her?”
Ominis doesn’t answer for two reasons: One—he’s not really certain and it would be unbecoming of him to just assume, especially with someone he doesn’t really know. Two—he’s not entirely sure what the dynamics of liking anyone romantically really entails to begin with. A small part of him that he’s pushed toward the very back of his mind says with unkind, curled lips:
you know, of course you know—
But then he tells himself, does he? How, in Merlin’s beard, could he ever?
To keep their inner circle well-structured and controlled, the Gaunts only participate in arranged marriages to other pureblood families built on wealth, elegance, and a certain type of notoriety within their small community. It was a tradition laid out generations before even his great-grandparents had wed. Marriage was not love, it was not companionship, it was simply an equal exchange of power and affluence between families and that was always very apparent within his household.
It was engrained within his and his siblings’ heads nearly upon birth. Marriage is politics, marriage is diplomatic; marriage is empty.
His brothers certainly understood that, already some of them wed to equally callous women whose presence makes the hair on the back of Ominis’s neck hackle up. He’d never ask but occasionally he’ll muse over some of their couplings, speculate whether they fall asleep next to each other in their house’s master bedroom, wonder if their partner’s briefest of touches feel warm and inviting to them.
By the malice that carves his brothers’ worlds, of the violence that paints their walls and mouths, he can only assume one answer to that.
Sometimes, he wonders if things would’ve maybe been different if he or any of his siblings were conceived by love.
(Ominis notices next time Sebastian is rather quiet during their potions class, probably attempting to be observant of Garreth in some sort of scheme to use whatever he finds to his advantage. Sebastian’s always been quite clever at that: being attentive to others needs and stepping in to help them in ways that benefit the both of them. His concentration, Ominis suspects, is quickly broken with the task of brewing a complicated counter potion that serves as an antidote to Amorentia, the love potion. Sharp stalks around the room with the open bottle in hand as he introduces it to the class, awarding points to Ravenclaw when Amit Thakkar correctly defines it and its counter potion’s ingredients.
Sebastian groans lowly to himself and Ominis’s ears bristle at the rather unusual amount of giggles emitting throughout the classroom but pays no more mind as the ingredients Amit mentions earlier appear on his workspace. As they work through the instructions, Ominis notices his nose prickles sharply as the sweet smell he can only assume is the scent of Amorentia wafts irritatingly through the room and he muses briefly if he’s somehow allergic to it but doesn’t voice his strange observation.
They manage to scrape by with an average mark and mild criticism from Sharp.)
O,
Thanks for the letter earlier this week. Nothing, as you can imagine, has changed much in Feldcroft. We have some new chickens though! I’ve already named them, I can’t wait to introduce you to them next time you visit.
Sebastian has mentioned he wants to bring someone to meet me soon. He says it’s a new student. He sounded excited in his last letter but if I’m being honest here, I’m a bit surprised. I can’t quite place my finger on it. I want to say maybe he likes her but he sounds a bit different when he talks about her. At least, different from that time in our third year when he was all… wait for it… “moony-eyed” over Caretaker Moon’s daughter in the grade above us. Get it? Anyway, I don’t think he’s going to pour hours of his time over writing poems about this new student like he did with Gemma Moon. Shame really, I’d love to charm them again to follow him around and recite his awful sonnets.
Tell me what you think. Would love to hear from you.
With love,
Anne
Anne,
Good delivery with that joke. It made me cringe less than Sebastian’s puns usually do anyway.
The new student is nice but I do believe she has a slight inclination to… trouble. I’m sure Sebastian’s already told you about the rumors. She knows of the Undercroft too, I’ll let you give him an earful about that when you see him next.
He hasn’t mentioned visiting you to me recently, so I wager my involvement isn’t in his plans this trip. I’ll visit you another time soon and maybe I’ll invite him if he behaves.
[Ominis pauses speaking, the sound of his enchanted quill scratching against parchment fading alongside his voice as his chest constricts. There’s nothing else he wants to add, or really inform Anne of. He’s always been brief in his letters to her — this time is no different than the rest. But for whatever ungodly reason, his mind feels like its burning a bit too much for him to complete and send off this letter just yet.
He rakes his brain to think of the last correspondence he sent her and some of the times before that as he embarrassingly wonders how did he sign off then? (With love? Your friend? Love your friend?)
It takes nearly another fifteen minutes and the sudden bemoaning of a nearby mirror in the room (“oh c’mon, you’re looking like a right prat now. Just get on with it!”) until he finalizes the letter with:]
Yours Truly,
Ominis
Turns out, Anne’s right — like she normally is — and Ominis fears he should’ve paid more attention to Sebastian and his newfound Ravenclaw acquaintance. (His mouth tastes bitter as he bites back the word friend, refusing to paint it in between his best friend and the new Hogwarts student.)
Something is quite different about the student but not in the way either of them suspected and Sebastian immediately latches onto the Ravenclaw after she tells him Ranrok is out for her blood. Anne initially brushes it off as her brother’s admiration of someone their age already so powerful with little formal training and reminds Ominis of the letters Sebastian would send to her about Natsai and her wandless magic abilities when she first started Hogwarts, but Ominis hears the strain in her tone. He knows she doesn’t even quite believe her own reasoning.
He also knows there’s a change in Sebastian’s voice that he can’t mask from Ominis too long. It feels conflicting to hear — twisted with something light and airy like optimism but, at times, it feels too bright. Like the excitement and newfound elation is overshadowing something else.
Something murky and dark; something very wrong.
The festering darkness finally breaks to the surface when he hears the word Scriptorium and his chest constricts with burning panic as Sebastian moans out in absolute, unbridled agony next to him. The loud rumbling of moving stone, the reward to the spasms of immeasurable pain Ominis knows too well that are spiraling up every angle of Sebastian’s body, vibrates through the trio and nearly mirrors Ominis’s own accelerated heartrate thundering against his ribcage.
There is no turning back at this point. Ominis is certain of this, but he still pleas with his oldest friend in unbefitting desperation.
Sebastian’s reassuring words sound sweet like honey-dipped candy, all sugar and no substance, and they crack and shatter completely when he still leaves with the hidden room’s spellbook.
Anne sends him a letter a few days after the failed escapade. After he feels like he’s showered and scrubbed his skin clean enough from the stench of death and decaying ruins. The letter doesn’t start with his name or even end with hers signing off. Its simply a time and location.
He knows not to share it with Sebastian, not that he’s even been able to cross paths with his best friend with the latter boy missing the remaining of their classes and his body conspicuously absent in the dormitories and common room.
Aesop Sharp, surprisingly, accompanies him to the funeral.
He wasn’t sure the exact years his professor and Solomon were aurors and wonders if they’d even crossed paths before but assumes there must be some sort of collective respect within that particular occupational community, so he never prods Sharp any further about the matter.
Instead, he and his professor remain in the back of the small, gathered crowd. Funerals are always quiet, but Ominis notices there’s less heat in this open area and even less breathing and crying which draws him to suspect maybe only a handful of others had attended. He thinks Solomon would’ve preferred it this way, anyway.
Solomon Sallow is buried in Feldcroft’s small cemetery during his funeral on a reticent, warm day.
The world in turn continues to spin on its axis, bearing no mind to it.
Sharp leaves right after but not before asking his student to give Anne his condolences.
Ominis swallows thickly at the request. Truth be told, he hadn’t intended to speak with Anne during or after this. Not that he didn’t want to, but rather because he thought he ought to let Anne grieve in quiet. For all the years he’s known her, he’s only ever heard her cry twice. Once when Lucan Brattleby accidentally landed a perfectly executed Confringo spell on her (it was really Prewett’s fault for blocking too last second) and another time when Sebastian and Solomon had one of the worst fights Ominis witnessed throughout their years of constant clashing, leaving both of the Sallow men’s voices hoarse and raw from all the screaming and cutting, cruel words.
There is a moment where he thinks he’ll leave without seeing her, but his wand hums in between his fingers and he follows the direction its pulling him toward.
She’s tucked away in her house, and he hears her straighten herself a bit up when he creaks the front door open. The exhale of breath from her that emits from her next guides him to believe her body’s back to being hunched over at the dining room table again when she realizes it’s just him as he enters, all prior pretenses fallen.
“Ominis,” she says, her voice hushed but gentle. “Thank you so much for coming.”
“Sharp sends his sincerest condolences,” he tells her quietly and he suddenly wants to pivot and run from this very moment. But upon that panicky thought his wand vibrates almost violently in his hand in protest, as if to say:
Don’t you dare.
So instead, he lets it lead him to an unoccupied chair near hers and he slides carefully onto the seat.
“Please don’t mind the mess, I haven’t cleaned anything in days,” she sighs, “this place looks awful. In fact, I look downright ghastly myself.”
Ominis wants to say he highly doubts that with such fierce conviction in his voice but quickly cages that thought back into the base of his throat. He doesn’t think his reassurance would hold much meaning coming from a blind boy but he just can’t imagine Anne looking anything but absolutely lovely.
(He always wondered what constitutes someone to be attractive or not.
He used to muse over his very own looks when he was younger. He’d been educated early on that not only did last names govern your worth, but your physical appeal always dictated the overall treatment of you and opened up pathways to even more benefits and opportunities to take advantage of.
Ominis knows his own mother is exceptionally beautiful by the way people would utter her name, like just the mere thought of her took a portion of their breath away. Her beauty holds so much value within the Gaunts’ small community, the family often receives free attire and accepts exclusive invites on behalf of her. Cold and impassive as she is, she always doted on him and his oldest brother the most when he was younger, whispering lowly into their ears only, “my handsome boys, the world will grovel at your feet when you’re older.”
He assumes his mother’s predication was a bit of an overstatement, maybe clouded by her own pride, but perhaps she wasn’t completely far off the mark. He realizes as he grows older some of his classmates he’d have normal brief conversations with years prior now suddenly have a slight stutter whenever he speaks to them, especially after his third year. Maybe it’d been because his height had shot up over that particular summer and showed no signs of stopping yet or that his voice had lowered an octave, but the change in diction hardly went unnoticed by him.
Sebastian—Ominis perceived from a very early age just by the way others acknowledged his friend—has always been considered handsome. And he’s so keenly aware of that fact, too; invariably using it to his advantage whenever he can whether it’s him charming his way out of a detention or persuading another student to read over his schoolwork. Despite the simplicity of what his Feldcroft home offered him, he always presented himself as so posh and put together. Ominis used to cringe when Adelaide Oakes nearly crooned about how crisp Sebastian’s uniform was or how perfect his hair looked on sunny afternoons any chance she got during their second year.)
And Anne, Ominis knows for a fact, is attractive too. He knows this not just because she’s twins with Sebastian so genetically that must account for something, and most certainly not because Andrew Larson and Everett Clopton faithfully send her separate singing valentine’s day cards every year since she started Hogwarts, but because of the warmth in her voice. Because of how quickly others join her side whenever she speaks, whenever she laughs. Her voice just draws others in with no effort on her part.
He wants to tell her that, he wants to tell her everything he’s thinking about: of his mother, of Sebastian (oh dear merlin, his oldest and dearest friend and her ruined brother, Sebastian), of the dungbomb he secretly paid a nameless Ravenclaw student to set off in the dormitories which Larson and Clopton slept in one year, of the ache that builds in his chest when he thinks of her—of Anne Sallow, so extraordinary and kind and brave.
But his mouth is strangely dry, like he hasn’t drank water in days, and all these thoughts die on the tip of his tongue before he can utter a single syllable of them. He notices his hands are shaking a bit now like they do when his wand is trying to guide him somewhere but his wand is neatly placed on the table besides him. There’s a force of gravity that leads them to Anne’s hands without Ominis’s consent, like his body is moving on autopilot, and he’s now just suddenly feeling how perfectly intertwined his hands are with Anne’s. How every curve and angle of their connected skin just melts and shapes into one another.
He feels his cheeks burn from his uncharacteristic boldness but before he draws his hands away with an apology, Anne squeezes them tightly.
“Ominis,” she says with her voice barely above a whisper, sounding like she’s calling for him even if he’s right there.
He remembers a particular night from ages ago, the night tucked away so securely in his mind, when Anne with her small hands held onto him until he could breathe properly again, until he felt warm. Something compels him to mirror her past movements and his embarrassingly clammy hands slip from hers to rest momentarily on her shoulders until her breathing steadies a bit, eventually rising them high enough to gingerly cup her cheeks.
Her skin feels wet and sticky from tears and his chest constricts painfully at the thought as he finally answers her back, “Anne.”
In a different world Solomon Sallow survives, Sebastian remains a clever student and kind friend, and Anne isn’t bound to an uncertain future.
In this world, though, Ominis tastes the anguish; feels the searing hot coil that is grief from all the opposite endings.
And in this world, its only now within the messy confinements of the late Solomon’s home that Ominis Gaunt realizes— that he knows with overwhelming fierce certainty as he delicately cradles her face with his unwavering hands—he’s so unequivocally in love with Anne Sallow and that, for once; for right this very moment, is enough.