A Walk in the Light | Sebastian Sallow

1. Move-In Day

            I lower my trunk onto the floor in front of my bed and end the spell with a flick of my wand. Above me, thudding and cursing is audible through the floor.

"For the love of—Sebastian, I said beside the bed," Ominis chastises. The two continue to bicker in Ominis's room above mine.

"It's going to be like this forever now," Anne warns me as she leans into my doorway.

Dad turns to her with a genuine smile and responds, "I'm counting on it." He steps away from the frame he hung next to the bookcase in my room--an interview in the Prophet that I reluctantly agreed to just the Quidditch finals. Of course, reporters had been there to cover the event, but when they spotted me, they saw the massive opportunity and took it. Dad was so proud that his daughter was labeled a hero on the front page of the Prophet.

He was just as proud to see Sebastian hoisting the Quidditch cup. As was I. The celebration that night led to a three-day hangover and the necessity of forcing a scarf into my attire in the middle of a warm spring.

It was obvious what it was for. Nerida laughed for two weeks about it. I nearly killed Sebastian when I woke up that morning, but I'd live that night with him again in a heartbeat.

Slytherin claimed the House Cup for the second year in a row, thanks to "the heroics of one particular student and her unconditionally supportive friends," as Professor Weasley put it. The House Cup was wonderful and all, but this is really what I looked forwards to most. The smile on Dad's face at a house full of joy, laughter, and bickering.

"If you want it different, do it your damn self."

"I'm fucking blind, you insufferable—"

I slip past Anne and lean up the top few steps of the stairs. "BOYS!" I holler, putting a pause on their bickering. "Don't make me come up there!"

"I wish you would," Sebastian shoots back, his head popping over the railing of the stairs.

"Ah, ah, no girls allowed on the boy's floor," Dad tuts.

Anne snorts in response. "Like you're going to be able to keep the two of them apart," she responds as she gestures between Sebastian and me. "In hindsight, you really should have put us upstairs. Now he's got an excuse to be on our floor in passing."

"I thought about it heavily, but I felt safer with the girls sandwiched between the boys," Dad reasons. "Are you all settled in? Did you need help with anything?"

Anne perks up at Dad's offer. I know she was struggling with her bookshelf, but Ominis wouldn't spare Sebastian for even a minute until his room was situated to his liking.

Dad's distraction leaves me the perfect opportunity to slip upstairs and steal a moment with my boyfriend that I haven't had even ten minutes with in the last three days between packing up at school, moving the rest of our belongings from the old house, and getting all four of us moved into the new house.

Sebastian also sees the opportunity and meets me halfway down the stairs to grip my hand and tug me up to his room. Giggling like a schoolgirl as he pins me to the closed door and lifts my legs around his waist, I let his lips assault me as much as they desire and wherever they desire, though I know our moment will be fleeting at best.

"I'm going to need more than a stolen moment with you before I leave," he grumbles between the gentle nips against my neck. I grip a fistful of his hair and pull his head back.