How to Make a Villain - [Sebastian Sallow x F!OC]

[seven]

Idiot, thought Sebastian as he paced back and forth before the castle's gates, his steps cutting a track into the well-worn path that led away to Hogsmeade.

Big, stupid, tactless, dumb idiot.

He pulled a face down at his shoes; his relentless pacing had covered the once-polished leather in a fine layer of dust - evidence of his anxious thoughts manifesting as an inability to stand still. It had taken him an hour to finally decide on these bloody stupid shoes, and now he'd gone and ruined them.

Idiot, idiot, idiot.

Sebastian had always been a pacer. Unable to sit still even on a perfectly peaceful day, his pacing was a constant source of annoyance to the poor souls who had to endure it. Anne had always said he must've been born with ants in his veins, to which he'd always countered that if he had ants in his veins, then surely she must've had them too, being born only five minutes apart. But Anne had not been a pacer; she'd never fidgeted or squirmed relentlessly. In fact, if Anne were still here to bear witness to her twin's internal meltdown, she would sit him down, give him a glass of water and instruct him to count backwards from one hundred. Then she'd lecture him fiercely about being a Sallow, for crying out loud, and not an unfortunate member of the spineless Hobhouse family.

But Anne wasn't here, which meant there was no one to calm him down any more.

And so he paced.

Above him, the morning sun was playing hide and seek with the clouds, seemingly just as restless as he was. One minute, the rugged Scottish landscape was bathed in autumnal hues of warm gold and rich ochre, the next plunged into deep steely greys and cold blues. A sharp breeze blew across from the Black Lake, biting at the bare skin of his hands - but Sebastian hardly felt it; he rarely did feel the cold any more.

It had been Ominis's waning patience that had forced Sebastian to take his pacing outside. Having endured as much anxious fidgeting as he could handle, Ominis had fled the common room early that morning, muttering under his breath about needing some alone time before he, too, 'lost his bloody mind'. Sebastian, left alone with the memory of how he'd bullied the new girl into accepting his invitation to Hogsmeade, had also fled, hoping the wide open sky might help calm him down. It didn't, of course. Very little ever did.

Idiot, idiot, idiot.

There'd been a time once when his best friend had, if not actively helped him with his problems, at least begrudgingly listened to them. But not any more. Not since Anne, and certainly not since Solomon and the resulting fall-out from that particular mistake. Besides, Sebastian had a feeling that asking Ominis for advice on how to fundamentally change his entire personality overnight probably wouldn't go down well; not because his sharp-tongued friend would have any shortage of helpful suggestions he'd be willing to impart, but because Sebastian wasn't sure he was ready to handle that level of criticism.

And so he found himself outside, pacing back and forth across the gates awaiting the arrival of a girl who was absolutely without a doubt not going to show up to meet him. And who could blame her? Nobody in their right mind would want to spend time alone with someone like him.

He cringed again, checking his pocket watch for the umpteenth time that morning. Had it really only been half a minute since the last time he'd checked it? He was losing his mind, his thoughts a tangled mess over a girl he'd known less than a week.

If he were smarter, he'd forget the girl he inadvertently marked as his nemesis, who he'd bullied into joining his duelling club and whose shoes he'd accidentally ruined with dragon dung. If he were smarter, he'd simply write off every mortifying interaction he'd had with her as a loss and move on with his life. And yet he couldn't. Because that girl, whose talk of magic being neutral and the use of the Unforgivables being acceptable in the right situation, had been the reason he'd been up all night. Coupled with the fact that he was pretty certain her parents were dead, too, made it virtually impossible for Sebastian to walk away. He was intrigued, and once the tendrils of his curiosity had wrapped around something, he was loathe to let it go again.