Silver and Green with Envy: A Sebastian Sallow Story

Chapter Two

Diagon Alley. Always bright, loud, teaming with students and regular patrons alike. It felt dull to me today. Everything was wrapped in the same fog that was clouding my brain, and I wandered with no real purpose, despite the book list folded and forgotten in my coat pocket. What did I need again?

Ominis wasn't standing in front of Flourish and Blotts, but I hadn't expected him to be, so I kept going. 

Madam Malkin was displaying a new pattern of house robe, a gaggle of new students bouncing on their toes over how lovely they were. They weren't bad, if a little tacky.

There was a line out the door for Gringotts. Last minute student rush before term.

Gambol and Japes was advertising a new jinxed quill, making whatever it wrote completely vanish after a couple of hours. The teachers would absolutely love when those inevitably made their way into the classrooms. 

Before I knew it, I had traveled the entire length of the place, staring at the front of the junk shop like I was under a Confundus charm. Well this wouldn't do. I needed something better to focus on, something new to trick my brain. Anything had to be better than living in a daze over the five seconds Sebastian finally looked at me. Five seconds that I felt like an utter ass for.

I started to walk back, planning on getting an ice cream, when a small sign caught my attention out of the corners of my vision. 'Knockturn Alley'. I straightened my posture and looked at it properly. I'd completely forgotten it existed. With good reason to be sure, but for the moment I was desperate for something to relieve my mind and peeking into the window of Borgin & Burkes actually seemed like a not so bad idea. Natty told me she'd snuck off and done it once before, and it really wasn't that bad as long as you didn't talk to anyone or touch anything.

I peered around, not seeing anyone really paying attention to me, and rounded the corner into the alley. But I didn't get very far.

Fingers closed around my wrist and pulled, spinning me around before my back hit the brick wall of the path I'd been traveling. My lips parted in a surprised cry, though if I was being attacked, it truthfully wasn't loud enough to have alerted anyone. 

"Where the hell do you think you're going?"

I looked up at Sebastian. He easily stood a head taller than I did, though that difference was made much clearer to me this close to him. My chest heaved from the adrenaline of being snatched up like that, but there was plenty of relief as well that it was someone I knew and not a stranger. Though he may as well have been one to me lately.

Sebastian wasn't looking down at me, but away, even as he kept me loosely pinned to the wall. The lighting was abysmal back here but it was still enough that I could make out the sharp angle of his jaw, and how it was working over and over as he clenched his teeth. Was it frustration? Anger? He was harder to read than ever before.

Shocked as I was, and as meek as I could appear to be in times like this, the frustration I'd been feeling for a while came to the surface just a little bit. "Are you actually speaking to me now? Funny that, I thought maybe you'd forgotten how to talk at all. Let me go, Sebastian." 

I slipped under Sebastian's arm and pulled away, headed down the alley again only to once more find myself pinned like a bug in its display case. But much firmer, much closer, this time. 

"Damnit, Elena. Stop."  He growled at me, his face too close to mine.

I struggled a little bit, trying to ignore the heat I could feel rising in my face. "Excuse me? You haven't spoken to me in how long, you can't even look at me, and now you're trying to tell me where I can and can't be? Where did you even come from, were you down there? Get off of me." 

The moment drew itself out. The scent of him filled my nose. Smoky cedar, cinnamon, rum. I wanted to suffocate in it as much as I wanted to never smell it again. It brought back memories I couldn't bare right now. The span of a few heartbeats was all it took for him to ease off of me and back up, though he was blocking access further into Knockturn Alley. 

"Get out. And I better never see you attempt to walk down here ever again." 

"Really? And what if you do?"

"I'll lock you in a closet and lose the key. Get out." 

I wanted to argue. I wanted to scream. He had no right at all to do that. Maybe if things had been different between us last year, but not now. Not after cutting me off the way he had. But in my own frustration and just wanting to be away from him, I turned and left, tears stinging my eyes.

I was angry, confused by the interaction that just happened, but it did dawn on me as I headed back toward the Leaky Cauldron that this was actually a good thing. If Sebastian was off on his own, that meant Ominis was around by himself somewhere, and I needed to find him. I wasn't waiting for him to just show up at the bookstore anymore. 

Betting my last knut that the was in the tea house, I walked that way, finding it less than crowded for once upon entering and immediately congratulating myself for winning a knut. 

Ominis sat at a small table in the corner, sipping something blue from a rather dainty teacup. It made me want to laugh for a moment. Like Sebastian, Ominis had also filled out well over the past  year or so and the cup in his hand looked so small it was comical. 

I walked over and sat down across from him, making him start a bit, putting the cup down. "Back so soon, Seb-"

"It's me, Ominis."

"Elena!?" He looked panicked. "Look, we should meet tomorrow, I-"

"I was just scared half to death by Sebastian in Knockturn Alley. You need to tell me what's going on, and now."

"What were you doing down there!? Elena, look..." Ominis looked down into his teacup, and while I knew he couldn't really see what he was looking at, it made him appear no less contemplative.

He drained his teacup in a single swallow and stood, holding out his wand, the little red light emanating from the tip of it. "Not here, there's a spot behind the apothecary. Come on."