Unspeakables; Rule One

Chapter Fifteen: How Death Invites Itself In

There was a heaviness in the air, something distant yet present in every corner of the boy's 7th-year Slytherin dorm room; even the furniture was waiting in anticipation. It was the sound of shoes scuffing stone, pacing back and forth. It was the enunciated crack from the fireplace as if the wood was spitting something poisonous. It was heavy, frustrated breathing and the chill that bites into your back when something feels out of place. It was a clock ticking so noticeably, yet when you try to focus on it, the rhythm is wrong, and it's not catching up. It's a cold room and being covered in too-warm blankets.

Ominis couldn't see, but he could feel it all.

It had started a few hours into the evening and only subsided a few minutes before Sebastian arrived in their shared room. Upon his best friend's entrance, he was quiet, a piece of his heart expecting Sebastian to speak first; that piece dying when he remembered he wouldn't.

Sebastian Sallow became a closed book as his desperation to heal Anne grew thick; it was as if the pages were pressed together and sealed with every punch he threw, every spell that left his lips, and every night he lost sleep while humming the song his mother would sing to soothe the pain.

Death played a funny game with Sebastian Sallow. It kept Sebastian out on a wire, dangling him on the edge of a cliff where everyone he loved dwelled below him.

Life promised Sebastian safety, but Death purposely broke that promise.

When his parents died, when his childhood home burned, when his Uncle whipped him, and when his sister was cursed- Death stepped in and swore its loyalty to him. It made an oath that so long as Sebastian remained obsessed with Death and its prevention, he could escape its inevitability. With one eye over his shoulder, Sebastian listened as Death told him to run.

And so the chase began.

Ominis felt unbearably vulnerable on nights like these. It was obvious that Anne should be here storming into their dorm, demanding her twin to look at her as she peeled back his sealed pages and found exactly what was bothering him, stopping Death's game. She should be sitting with Ominis, wrapped in a blanket, listening to the fireplace and the clock, studying or sneaking baked treats into the hidden depths of their hiding place.

And what a perfect hiding place it was.

It was a secret room that had been a well-kept family secret for generations. In his first year at Hogwarts, he had found it just as he was instructed to, and it had looked exactly as his father declared it would. It was dirty and dingy, and it felt so entirely encompassed by his family that he hated going in there. Instead of practicing darker magic in those quarters as he was supposed to be doing, he brought Sebastian and Anne, spoiling generations worth of secret keeping. The three called it the Undercroft, and a new meaning sprung to life in the stones. Suddenly, the darkness became light, and the love of the Sallows cleared a room that had the scorch marks of his family's hatred. That healing sort of love that Sebastian said his mum always carried in abundance.

It had been the fourth year in the Undercroft, and after a round of Gobstones, Anne had laughed at Sebastian's story of snogging Adelaide Oakes in a broom closet, embarrassing her brother until his freckles were pink and his ears were warm. He had stood up quickly, almost kicking a Gobstone before storming out.

"You shouldn't be laughing at me like that! Adelaide said it was a perfect kiss; I don't care if our teeth knocked into each other!" He barked out in anger.

Anne couldn't stop the hysterics. She was keeling over and slapping Ominis' arm with so much force that he had to scoot back. Sebastian groaned in frustration and left the Undercroft quickly. His exit speed was either from the flaming self-consciousness or because he had shot up in height over the summer and could cross distances much faster. More than likely, it was the latter.