Sanguinis et Omnium Fractorum//Sebastian Sallow

Of Stubborn and Impatience

The tea had long since cooled in the time it had sat, untouched on the little table near her four-poster bed. Clara Elmore had not moved since the clink of porcelain against the wood had snapped her unfocused gaze up to the round-faced blonde who'd set it there. Grace's soft eyebrows had been pulled together in an expression she'd worn far too often around Clara over the past year. Worry. It made Clara's bones itch. Worry lived too close to pity, and she hated pity.

She'd seen pity too often since the events in the Repository, and each time tasted more bitter against her tongue.

So, she'd hardly acknowledged her roommate's presence as the blonde had carefully set the tea down, and muttered something Clara hadn't been paying attention to. Probably something about being around to talk if needed. Grace was kind and Clara was being rude. She couldn't find it in herself to do more than chew on the inside of her lip and Grace had gone without another word.

Still, she sat there, staring across the emerald bed hangings of the two other four poster beds and stubbornly refusing to move from the spot on her mattress; until one particularly uproarious cheer from the common room below reminded her the others would eventually be coming back to the dorm, and she desperately wanted to be in bed before then.

Her being 'asleep' meant no one asked how she was doing, and that was preferable to giving some vague well-rehearsed lie, or worse, attempting to coalesce the cacophony of rambling anxieties into something that resembled sentence structure.

The latches of her secondhand trunk clicked noisily, though, not as loudly as the creak of the hinges which were well in need of oil. Morning would bring the official start of Seventh-year classes, and sleep meant finally unpacking and tidying the trunk she'd been neglecting. Uniforms came first. Second hand, like her trunk. But repaired, washed, and pressed by the warm wrinkled hands of her grandmother; who had insisted on caring for Clara's uniforms when she couldn't afford the cost of new robes. If love could be stitched, Clara would swear she could find it woven into each of the places her grandmother had repaired the holes and worn edges.

The soft feel of cashmere met her fingers next, and almost without thinking, she brought the deep burgundy scarf up to her face and brushed it over her cheek. It had been an unexpected Christmas present from Ominis in 5th year and was one of the only items she possessed that hadn't been loaned or purchased secondhand.

Being blind, the blond had not known what 'burgundy' meant when the shopkeep had told him the color. Instead, as he told her, he'd selected it because he thought it felt nice and believed she might enjoy it.

"Besides-" He'd clipped, in that biting tone only Ominis could achieve. "-I can hardly think these days with the excessive chattering of your teeth. Perhaps this will make them stop."

His sarcastic irritation painted only a thin layer over the kindness of the gesture. A shield against the brief vulnerability the gift had shown her.

So, despite it being almost Gryffindorian by nature, she'd worn the scarf nearly every day that winter; much to Imelda's chagrin and Sebastian's amusement.

Below the carefully folded uniforms and scarf, the remaining disorganization of the trunk could have convinced her she'd spent far more than two years surrounded by the walls of the castle. Her grandmother would have been disappointed. Clara dug on. Pulling out heavy books, jars of dittany and mallowsweet, spare wiggenwelds, broken quills, scraps parchment, and a pouch of seeds Poppy had insisted were a favorite of jobberknolls before her fingernails scraped the threadbare material at the bottom and settled on a worn leather journal.

Clara opened it, almost without thinking. Allowing the pages to fall open to a sprig of baby's breath, pressed between pages speckled with ink; as though the journal itself had known the ghost of the boy who'd given it to her.