Hereafter // Sebastian Sallow x Original Female Character (Post Game)

Chapter 2- Stranger

Sebastian Sallow never made Lara concerned about whether she had food in her teeth, at least not previously. Though she had barely taken a few bites of the marvelous food on her plate, Lara's gut focused on whether she smelled good or if her hair had fallen upon her shoulders in an enticing way.

Her nerves sparked aflame as she noticed that he was walking towards her. No, not just her, towards all of them.

Lara's eyes managed to meet her plate just as Sebastian found her face. Her fork spun the pasta growing cold before her. She wasn't nervous, she wasn't. Why wasn't she?

"Sebastian bloody Sallow!" A booming voice charged through, interrupting Lara's busy mind from about ten students down the Slytherin table.

Sebastian smiled and reached out for a very manly hug. "Caraway, it's good to see you."

Augustus Caraway had commonly been referred to as either Caraway or Auggie. He had been one of the most popular fifth, now sixth, years Lara could manage to remember. She often recalled hearing girls talking, mostly crying, about him in passing. He certainly was good-looking, eyes green like emeralds and hair jet black. He was on the thinner side as Sebastian was most definitely stronger than he. However, their height was nearly identical. "What have you been up to? Hopefully chasing you know who?"

Their conversation died in volume a bit as Auggie coxed Sebastian to sit down next to him and a few other well-known Slytherins.

Lara was doing her best not to look up. She didn't know if he even cared to look back at her Imelda and Ominis.

"Don't tell me he sat with him," Ominis said.

Imelda's eyebrows furrowed as she swallowed her desert before answering. "Unfortunately he did."

"I'm lost, I thought you said he wasn't coming back," Lara interjected.

Ominis took another bite of his food. "The last time he sent me an owl was at the beginning of summer. It simply stated, 'I won't be coming back Ominis, too much has transpired and it's more than I can bare. Take care of yourself.'"

"You memorized that?" Imelda seemed disgusted.

"Oh shut it, Reyes! He is— was my best friend. I tried sending owl after owl for months but got no reply. I'm just as stunned as you both are."

"I think you and Lara are the only ones with your jaws on the floor. Everyone else seems to be pretty buddy-buddy with Sallow. Almost as if he only told you that he wasn't returning."

Though they weren't exactly thrilled at the fact that Sebastian had completely ignored them, Imelda, Ominis, and Lara continued their dinners catching up with one another.

As the night grew darker, and many students finished their meals, headmaster Black demanded the students turn into their common rooms for the evening. Classes would start in the morning and Lara was eager to get up early to start her very normal day.

Ominis chose to walk back to the dungeon on his own. He claimed that he wanted time to himself to spit out ill thoughts of Sebastian lying to him. They didn't blame him.

Imelda ran into the Ravenclaw quidditch captain on their way to the grand staircase. She asked Lara if it was alright if they caught up some more the following day.

Lara had been left alone among the sea of students filtering through the stairs, some going up others down. Her eyes caught the attention of the same Ravenclaw boy she glared at on the train platform earlier that night. He was leaning over the high ledge of the entrance to Ravenclaw Tower, looking down directly at her.

She looked up at him quizzically. Lara didn't realize that she stopped making her way down the stairs when she did. The young man above her seemed to laugh when someone bumped shoulders with Lara.

She snapped out of her trance. Her eyes followed the main structure of the grand staircase back up to find that the Ravenclaw boy was gone.

---

The Slytherin common room was rather quiet despite it being the first night back. Lara assumed Ominis had already gone to bed and Imelda was chatting away in their shared room with another girl. Lara was tired but she decided that falling asleep to mindless chatter wouldn't be beneficial for her first day back.

Lara snagged a book off a shelf next to the fireplace. It was titled The Secrets of Merlin. She was hoping this would put her to sleep. She plopped down on the loveseat across from the flames and the common room become dead silent among the flickering firelight.

As Lara's eyes grew heavy with the words of Merlin's adventures, she nodded off right there in the middle of the common room for what felt like five minutes.

She woke suddenly to the boisterous laughter of boys. Auggie and Sebastian stormed through the common room unaware of her presence on the loveseat.

"Mate I'm telling you, she was disastrous! A crier, a nagger, just overall pathetic."

Sebastian laughed again, "I didn't tell you to screw her. She sounds like baggage to me, can't have that."

"Tell me about it. Alright, it's late enough, see you tomorrow Sallow." Caraway strode off down the boy's hall knowing Sebastian wouldn't be sleeping anytime soon.

Only then, when the clacking of shoes on the metal grate ceased did he notice a head of golden blonde hair facing away from him.

Lara knew he couldn't see her face. There was no way to tell that she was no longer reading, no way to tell that she had been listening in. Her eyes widened slightly and nervously grabbed the flames for sanctuary, fingers clutching the pages of her book harder than before.

He took a few steps toward her then stopped.

Silently he stood there, just facing the back of her head. The head he stood behind nearly all of last year through thick and thin. The head he followed into caves of spiders and through catacombs of death. The head he put in grave danger because of his selfish actions. A head he ultimately decided not to face tonight.

Lara knew he was standing there for a moment too long. She waited patiently to see if he'd come to finally talk to her.

She moved her chin up slightly and turned to the left, striking a bit of anxiety into Sebastian's hands. They buried themselves into the pockets of his pants, and they grew a bit sweaty from the flowering heat of the fire.

He quickly turned on his heels and began walking off into the colder corridor of the boy's sixth-year hallway.

Lara couldn't help herself, she grabbed the back of the loveseat and sat up quickly, turning to see his back walking away from her.

"Sebastian." She called.

He continued, without a shutter in reaction to his name spewing from her lips.

"Sebastian!"

The door to his room opened and slammed shut quicker than a golden snitch flew through the wind. Lara was startled by the sound. Her chest heaved inward and a small sad moan exhaled from it. She could sense that something wasn't right.

The hour was beyond late and her bed beckoned at last. Tomorrow might be a better day to confront him, for Ominis's sake. Yeah, for Ominis.