Of Honey and Pine
Saturday, 10th September 1892
It was strange what could happen to words when one read them over and over again. Stared until they melded together, flattened over one another, and lost meaning entirely.
I cured Anne of the curse.
Since the end of Fifth year, there had been two universal truths that held precedence in her mind. Two statements that had taken over the place where the threat of Ranrok's rebellion and the Keeper trials had shadowd each decision she made and every action she took. One set of anxieties traded for another.
Anne was dying, and Sebastian was gone.
Now, in the space of six words, the truths that had colored her life since Sebastian left had been flipped on its head, and beyond the shock where she'd thought she would have found solid ground, she was left unbalanced and unsteady. Trembling fingers flattened over the rough texture. Pressed against the parchment as though she might unscramble his sentence to find some other meaning behind it.
I cured Anne of the curse.
As though touching it might let the ink seep into her fingers and solidify the sentence as something more than a distant fantasy—a delicate hope they'd clung to with aching fingers—something that lived amongst shooting stars—wishes only truly hoped for in the softest of whispers lest they be snatched away with the wind.
Clara traced the words again and again until the inked symbols danced over one another on the page, twisted and swirling, her eyes bleary with strain and lack of sleep. The unspoken how traced to the edges of her fingertips but failed to grasp her quill to solidify the question into writing.
She folded the parchment and let it fall against the sea of green. Her quill had disappeared somewhere in the blankets. She would no doubt find it at some point, along with a mess of black ink, and she only had the vague thought that 'scourgify' ought to work to remove it before she slumped back against the mattress.
The words spun over one another behind her eyelids.
I did it, Ara
I cured Anne of the curse.
Sleep did not grace her presence, and all thoughts of the Cherrywood box and Dreamless Sleep Draught were pushed aside. Left to the darkest corners of her mind.
Anne's owl came before the sunrise.
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The pulse of apparition saw she and Ominis outside the Sallow home as the early morning sky painted shades of palest pinks and lilac purples across the thatched roof and caressed the curling wisps of candyfloss clouds.
They'd only just reached the door when the indigo was flung open, and the scent of caramel and vanilla launched at her in a mass of gigging cinnamon waves. The abrupt force of Anne's hug nearly sent her off balance, and it was only with a careful set of oddly coordinated steps that they managed to stay upright.
Clara pulled back and tipped her nose up. Fingers tapped to the tops of Anne's shoulders, and in the pale whispers of sunlight, she could see the newfound fullness in the woman's cheeks and the rose flush that colored them. The wide grin that masked none of the pain, Clara had grown so used to seeing tucked behind the heaviness of her eyelids and hidden at the corners of her mouth where her smiles had always disclosed the lies that lay beneath.
Her fingers squeezed the woman's shoulders, pressing down the soft warmth of her arms until she settled against her hands and pulled them into her own. " Anne... you look..." Healthy? Happy? "How do you feel?"
Her grin only widened. " Brilliant, really! I'd grown so used to the pain; I'd almost forgotten what it was like not to feel it."
Clara waited for the subtle wince to crease the corner of her eyes—the slight bending in her abdomen or the minute clenching in her hand—any of the tale-tell signs she'd come to routinely search for when she knew the brunette would rather cut out her own tongue than admit she was hurting.
She was so focused on searching Anne's face that she almost didn't notice subtle movements behind her—the careful footsteps within the shadows of Sallow's home—until Anne stepped around her and launched herself toward Ominis. Clara only registered the little "ooof" as the blond caught the newly spry woman before Sebastian stepped out of the shadows.
He stopped in the doorway. Fingers clutched at the edges of his sleeve. Worried against the fabric of his cable-knit sweater and his throat bobbed once.
Eyes locked with hers.
"Hello, Sweetheart."
Whispered words echoed between splatters of ink on parchment.
Odd how time could stand still within a fraction of a moment. In the single breath his gaze found hers and held her while everything else moved around them.
He looked more different than she'd expected. Older than the almost eighteen he should have been. His hair was longer now, falling in soft cinnamon-brown curls nearly to his shoulders. His skin was tanned, sunkissed red across his cheeks and the tip of his nose, and sprinkled with more freckles than she'd ever seen on him. It did little to distract from the way his face had hardened and thinned or the shadowed darkness that folded through his eyes.
It left her the most disconcerted.
Clara knew Sebastian's eyes. He'd laughed at her when she'd said she wanted to paint them, but he'd not protested much when she'd knelt in front of him and taken his face in her hands. His cheeks had been warm and squished under her fingers. They'd been fuller back then. Still clinging to the remnants of boyhood.
"They're just brown," He'd said. " It's nothing special."
But Sebastian was never 'Just anything,' and his eyes were no different. She'd studied them intensely. Knew them perfectly. Every shade and hue. She knew the precise color of chestnut she needed to mix with the tiniest dab of dark umber. The shade of crushed pine that bled out from his pupils and the exact pattern of the swirls as two colors melted into one another. She knew if the sunlight hit them at just the right angle, she would find flecks of honeyed gold sprinkled through his iris. As though his freckles would not see themselves contained to his skin.
It was gone.
All of it.
The soft chesnut, the swirling pine, and the flecks of honey were left darkened and solid, replaced by an inpenetrable wall too tall and wide for her to see past.
She had only read briefly of occlumancy, but if one could visualize it, Clara was certain it would be found folded over Sebastian's features. She couldn't place exactly why the idea of it coiled hot inside her chest and burned at the back of her throat.
Wherever he'd gone, whatever he'd been through, the boy who'd left to save his sister was not the man who had returned.
"Sebastian?"
The sharp clip of Ominis' voice snapped Clara's attention over her shoulder to where the blond stood beside Anne. She had looped her fingers around his elbow and settled her head below his shoulder. He was the tallest of them, and even with Anne now standing at her full height, the top of her head barely reached his chin.
Clara didn't miss the heavy tension that settled between the two men.
The tapestry their childhood fingers had woven with the innocence of love and friendship had been left tattered and threadbare—a tapestry Sebastian had torn with his own bleeding fingers. Interwoven with tangled threads of hurt and betrayal, and attempting to patch it with hasty apologies would do little to mend what had started to fray long before Sebastian had ever added murder to his repertoire of sins.
"Hey, mate." Sebastian's attempt at a casual tone fluttered through the air and faltered somewhere as he made half a move to step forward and seemed to think better of it.
Ominis only narrowed his eyes. "I thought Anne said you'd cured it?"
Sebastian's brows lowered, thick and heavy over those dark, impenetrable orbs. "I did cure her."
" Then why do..." The rest of it fell away midsentence. Head tilted slightly. Something twitched between his brows and Clara only just caught the slight tension at the corner of his jaw.
" I'm fine, Ominis. I'm okay. The curse is gone. I can feel it!" Only the soft hum of Anne's voice seemed to soften the crease between his brows as she gathered his hands and lifted his fingers to her face.
The corners of his mouth tugged upward. " Yes, of course. I know, darling." He placed a kiss between her brows, to the tip of her nose, one to each of her cheeks, and Clara turned away.
It was far more affection than she was used to seeing from him in a public setting.
On her other side, Sebastian made a disgusted sort of face and mimed wretching. Under different circumstances, she might have found Sebastian's antics amusing, but the soft bubbles of laughter cowered beneath the hot anger coiled to burst at the back of her throat, and she clenched her fingernails against her palms.
It wasn't the emotion she'd expected to find here. She'd not been angry when she'd finally opened his letter and written back to him. She'd not even truly been angry with any of his responses. Amused, irritated, infuriated at times, but never angry.
Not really.
But now it burned hot and red and threatened eruption with every breath that slipped between her teeth.
" I don't understand. How did you do it?" Ominis had straightened himself from Anne's hold and turned with uncanny accuracy to where Sebastian still stood in the doorway.
He shifted slightly against the door frame, fingers fidgeting against the bottom of his sleeve.
" Potions," Anne offered simply.
"A series of potions." Sebastian started, " Came across the recipes while traveling. They're ancient, really. Nothing that would have been taught in European medicine. Which is why neither St. Mungo's nor Nurse Blainy would have known to suggest it. They're bloody difficult to brew, and you can't even find the majority of the ingredients on this continent. Hell, some ingredients have gone extinct since the recipe was invented, but I managed to find adequate substitutes and ..." He gestured vaguely toward his twin.
Clara didn't turn to the other woman. Her eyes still locked on Sebastian and the solid, dark umber wall that hid all that was him even as he stood before her.
" They actually worked," she finished. " It took a few days for the effects to register fully, but..."
" A few days?" Confusion laced through Ominis' words pulled them higher, and elongated the normally staccatoed cadene. " How long hav.."
" How long have you been here?" The hot coil snapped in an instant, and despite the heat that had burned for so long the words bit sharp and icy against Clara's tongue.
" Sebbie got here on Monday. I got his owl after you both left last week and..."
" No." She jerked her hand up and only just turned in time to see Anne's eyebrows shoot into her hairline at the dismissal. Clara was rude, and she was certain Ominis, or if she were actually unlucky, Anne herself would have choice words for her later. " How long have you fucking been here, Sebastian? Near Hogwarts? Close enough we could have apparated to you?"
"Elmore..."
"Tell me!"
He worked his jaw only a moment before his shoulders dropped, and he sagged against the door frame. " A couple of months"
" Months! And you couldn't have written to us? You couldn't have told me that? How many times did I ask you where you were?"
"I couldn't..."
" You asked him?" The icy snap of Ominis's voice tore Clara's attention from Sebastian. " I thought we weren't able to contact him? We sent owls and got nothing. How long have you two been talking behind my back?"
" Ominis, it's not the same as..."
"Is it not? Is it not the exact same? The pair of you keeping secrets again, after everything that's happened! Hurt tasted sour and traced the curves of his syllables.
She would have to deal with it later.
Clara forced her gaze away from them and back to Sebastian, who'd still not moved from his place against the doorframe. " So what happens now?"
" We've spoken to Professor Black and Professor Weasley. Arrangements have been made, and Anne and I will both be returning to Hogwarts starting on Monday." He was looking at her again. Those dark eyes solid, impenetrable and wholly unfamiliar.
" It's like that, then? You leave out of nowhere and think you can just drop in, and everything will just go back to normal?"
She didn't know when she'd started yelling or when the stinging behind her eyes had begun to pool below her lashline.
Anne's curse had been cured. She was going to be okay.
" You expect us to sit here and pretend like you didn't completely abandon us?"
Abandon her.
Anne wasn't dying, and Clara should have been happy.
She shouldn't have been screaming at Sebastian, and yet her voice was tearing as the words ripped from her throat, and she couldn't see properly because her vision had melted into blurry, unfocused haze.
" We're supposed to act like we didn't spend months. Months! More than a fucking year Sebastian! Terrified you were sick or hurt or ..."
Her voice choked and faltered, and for the first time since they'd arrived, he moved from the doorframe. Stepped forward, his fingers tipped toward her, " Ara, I'm sorry....I never..."
But whatever he was going to say was lost to the wind as she spun on her heel and sprinted through the softly waving grass, past a grove of trees, and the snap of apparition deposited her at the edge of Hogwarts grounds.
The sun's light had not burned away the glittering beads of dew, still clung to blades of subtly shifting green when Clara collapsed into the grass at the edge of the forest and scattered the delicate drops in her wake.
She buried her face into her hands and ignored the salted dampness on her cheeks and the soft tremble of her shoulders.
She wasn't crying.
Anne had been cured, and Sebastian was home. He was safe, and she was happy.
She was supposed to be happy.