Silver and Green with Envy: A Sebastian Sallow Story

Chapter Thirty-Two

~~~Harlow

"You told me there were only going to be a few of you. Last I checked, Seven is quite a bit more than that."

"That happened very last minute, I wasn't expecting the others and-"

"It doesn't matter, really. We'll just have to come up with something different this time. The problem is getting her alone. Or at least cut off from those other two."

"...What about another arena?"

"...Go on...?"

"Weren't you telling me about the dragon? A Horntail, I think? I know you've started some of those fights back up. Get them into the arena, figure out a way to cut them off from one another."

"You know, I think I might have misjudged my initial thoughts of you...Go get some letters out, and a few notes to the right people..."

"Do you think we should wait a bit? You wanted to see her at full strength, did you not? That's not going to happen if we keep giving her a reason to run off all the time."

"Yes yes, too right. Give it...a month? Lure them into a false sense of security. They'll be suspicious, surely, but there isn't much choice in that. Nice work."

~~~

~~~Elena

Natty, Poppy and I were having lunch together on the stairs of central hall when the inevitable got brought up. I'd been waiting for it, really. Natty took a sip of her juice and sat her goblet down, fiddling with its placement on the step she was sitting on. 

"So...You haven't heard from them at all?" 

Poppy shook her head. Her contact amongst the poachers, met through her Grandmother, whomever they were, had stopped writing a few weeks prior and even still, had been silent. "I even asked my Gran, since they wrote to her too. She said she'd gotten a letter a week or so back, hinting at less movement while something else was being put into motion, but that was it. She thinks they got too busy to write as they used to."

"Too busy, or in too deep?"

"I don't really want to think about that. Without them, I feel like we'd start treading water, fast. The poacher rings have gotten too closed to get information the way we had been. Without them we're going to be entirely in the dark, and I don't know about you two, but I don't fancy the idea of randomly wandering dark forests or any more swamps, hoping we run into someone."

"Well, we're going to have to figure out something."

"I'd say try to sneakily get information out of Sebastian but I know that's impossible."

"I'm not risking that, anyway. I don't know what that vow he made entails, so..."

"He's probably thrilled right now. No movement means you haven't been getting hurt and I noticed you don't seem to be fighting as much."

"Oh. No we fight plenty. You didn't see him the other day when I tripped and some poor fifth year Ravenclaw tried helping me up. I think the two of you are an exception, but he absolutely cannot handle anyone else touching me. I know he gets jealous but it's like he's...scared. You aren't wrong, however. These past few weeks, it's been easy to forget what's been going on at all. Like this entire year has been a typical one."

"...I'd figure even in a typical year there'd be nothing 'typical' about courting that boy."

I snickered into my own juice. 

"And what exactly wouldn't be typical about me, Natty?"

Sebastian had walked up, grinning. Xander and Ominis were following behind him, as had become the norm. Natty threw a biscuit at him, which he immediately caught and started eating.