Of Sparrows and Sunsets
Friday, 16th September 1892
Anne Sallow was lounged back on the small two-seater settee. Ever the chaotic mirror of her twin, the brunette had opted to throw her legs over the arm of the furniture and now lay with her head in Clara's lap; her copy of Goshawks Guide to Herbology: Year 7 levitated over her face as she turned the pages with lazy flicks of her wand.
The magic was bordering on unnecessary, yet she'd insisted on it. Too long since she'd had the ease of it at her fingertips without tempting the cost of pain, and lately, she'd made every excuse to whip out her wand, even for the most menial of tasks.
A feat she'd taken to with surprising ease given the length of time she'd been out of school. Still, Anne was almost as intelligent as her brother, even more so in some aspects, and aside from most practical demonstrations of magic, she had managed to keep up with most of her written and theoretical coursework over the years she'd been away. Her practical wand work had not been far behind.
Clara shifted under the weight of the woman's head and flipped the page of her own book. Sebastian and Ominis had already departed for History of Magic twenty minutes earlier–a subject neither Clara nor Anne, it seemed, had seen any interest in continuing beyond O.W.L– and Anne had managed to drag Clara from her dormitory for what she had deemed some much-needed girl time. Which, in the end, had turned into Clara trying to catch up on her schoolwork while they devoured a tin of brightly wrapped toffees Anne had kept hidden from the boys.
Anne's book snapped shut and fell with a muffled thud to the ornate rug at their feet. She stretched back, arms reaching behind her head, fingers fumbling toward the tin of sweets resting atop the small black end table on Clara's other side.
It had become so customary for Clara to see the woman hunched and bundled. A shawl, a constant presence over her shoulders, coupled with thick sweaters even in the hottest dregs of summer. And that ever-present careful curl of her spine, the near continuous, almost unconscious guarding of her abdomen.
To see her now– stretched out like a cat, her abdomen fully extended and cheeks flushed with the strained exertion of fumbling for the tin of sweets at such an awkward angle.
Clara watched and waited for the twinge.
Too much of a habit to monitor for the indicative hints of her discomfort.
But, as had been the case for several days, the pain never came. After a moment, Anne's body slumped down, arms falling to her sides, and she caught Clara's eye with a single raised eyebrow and a half-smile quirking at the corner of her lip.
The right side. Sebastian's was always on the left.
"I know; I keep waiting for it too."
"What?" Clara feigned ignorance and dropped the box of sweets into the brunette's lap.
"The curse." Anne pressed. "You're still looking at me like Sebbie used to...or still does sometimes.
But it's gone. I can feel it. Or rather, I can't feel it anymore."
Clara frowned. " I don't...is everything...has it all just been settled between you two then?"
The whiplash had been so severe she'd half expected to wake up one day and find things thrown back to the way they'd been only days before. To find Anne back at home curled beneath the weight of the curse and Sebastian's name, a taboo that danced on delicate threads in the shadows of their conversations.
"Oh Merlin, no. It's–" Anne sat up abruptly. Another movement to send Clara searching for any subtle change in her demeanor, but once again, there was no sign of discomfort from the woman aside from the frown and the deep crease between her brows. "–I can't excuse what he did. Using the killing curse and....well...I don't know that I'll ever be able to forgive him fully for that–"
Clara said nothing. The man had been far too willing to throw curses at children for her to excuse him. Still, the subject of Solomon Sallow had always been tenuous at best, and Clara had too often found her opinions overshadowed by those who drew their line of morality firmly in front of dark magic. A line Sebastian had been all too willing to dip his toes across when it came to the subject of protecting his sister.
A line Clara had all but obliterated.
"–But having that week together." Anne continued slowly. "It gave Sebastian and I a lot of time to discuss things. Work through some stuff, I suppose....and well...at the end of it all, he's still my brother, so..."
She gestured around vaguely as though that last statement explained everything.
Clara supposed it did, in a way she couldn't fully comprehend the subtleties of.
"And that healer, Fawley? Have you—"
"I wrote to him just before we came back to Hogwarts." Anne unwrapped a toffee, tossed it up, and caught it in her mouth. "I've not heard back yet. Though, I'm not sure I can still be of much use to that department, really. According to Fawley, they were trying to study the curse, weren't they. So—"
"Ugh! I am going to kill Sallow!" Only the brazen figure of Imelda could shatter the relative peace of the near-empty common room with such brashness and only mildly attract the attention of a couple of first-years, who'd jumped at the sound of her voice. Still not attuned to the woman's unapologetic presence.
Anne raised her eyebrows, her mouth half quirked in that place between confusion and amusement. "Excuse me! What did I ever do to you?"
But Imelda just waved her hand dismissively. " No, not you. The other one. Your brother."
Anne only laughed, and Imelda slumped onto the carpet. Legs spread out in a decidedly unladylike manner, which would have seen most others astounded by her severe aversion to more genteel mannerisms.
"What's Sebbie done now? Do you need me to hex him for you?"
"It's what he's not doing that's the problem."
Clara leaned forward and told herself she didn't particularly care what Sebastian did or didn't do when curiosity's eager form sprung the question from her lips: " What's he not doing?"
"Quidditch!" Imelda threw her hands up. "He refused point blank to rejoin the team. Wouldn't budge, no matter what I said. Just kept telling me he had other things to focus on. I even complimented him." She spat the word as though it were some unspeakable horror she'd sooner forget. "Told him he was the best Beater I'd played with."
Anne's mouth flattened, her brows lowered, but it wasn't confusion that traced through her expression. Clara knew too well how the brunette's mouth scrunched and twisted to one side when she was perplexed. This was more like understanding, more resignation than anything else. "No, I'm not surprised actually. I fear you might be out of luck, Melly."
The woman on the floor only bludgered on, apparently unperturbed. "Why, though? We are talking about Sebastian, right? Your less attractive twin. The same Sebastian that showed up with his broom first year and tried to bully Rosier into letting him try out."
Anne snorted. "That's the one. He's stubborn, my brother. You'd have better luck teaching a troll to tap dance than trying to convince him otherwise once he's made up his mind on something–"
Imelda flopped back to the ground. Spread eagle on the ornate serpentine rug as though the very aspect of it might drain her life away.
" –You sure you don't want me to hex him for you? I've been dying to try out this bat-bogey spell.
Within minutes, the conversation had devolved into vacillating between Imelda's complaints at Sebastian's stubborn refusal to rejoin Quidditch and Anne running through an increasingly ludicrous list of reasons why making grotesque bats fly out of her brother's nose would prove the most helpful. With a smirk, Clara stole the last three toffee's, kicked at Anne's foot to let her know she was leaving, and climbed upstairs to fish under her bed for that polished mahogany box she'd taken far too long to reach for.
><><><><
The sun had melted from thick butter yellow to tangerine flares and painted sherbet hues over the rolling landscape as Clara climbed with the mahogany box clutched against her chest and settled amongst the waving blades of grass. A narrow outcropping she'd stumbled on in 5th year during one of her extra assignments for Professor Garlik. Nearly hidden from prying eyes with the way it backed into the hillside and the thick hazel trees on either side, it had become a sort of hidden refuge on those days she could find enough fortitude to climb from the nest of blankets in her dorm.
She carefully flipped the latches and lifted the hinged lid of polished wood. Aside from the burgundy scarf Omnis had purchased for her, it was one of the few items in her possession that hadn't seen another owner's hands first.
A Windsor and Newton watercolor set– twenty-four brilliantly colored cakes, five sable hair brushes of varying sizes, and a stack of thick, cold-pressed, pure cotton paper.
It had been a gift from her grandmother the summer before she'd left for Hogwarts at fifteen. Tied with bows of thrifted ribbon and fresh-cut lavender. Clara didn't like to think how much it must have cost her.
Another day, she might have painted the sunset—the complementing contrast of deep pine greens to fiery oranges, the thick clusters of varied greys and pinpricked golds of the castle to her left, and the even deeper rippling blacks of the lake ahead of her, and the melting swirls of tangerine, lemon, and grapefruit twisting through black and bleeding across the uneven surface.
Instead, her attention had been drawn to the branches of the small tree to her right and the little brown sparrow who'd posed so perfectly as to be framed by an interlocking wreath of branches against the backdrop of the blazing sunset.
The small, unassuming creature sat bathed in fire. Its glistening black eyes alight with a reflection of the flames beyond—tiny embers within the obsidian.
The preliminary sketch was quick and rough—just enough to garner a general sense of the shapes before she muttered a quick 'augamenti' and brushed clean water over the paper with her largest quill-tipped mop brush.
The wet page, coupled with the watered mix of varied yellows, oranges, and reds, served best to melt the fiery blend of pigments across the expanse of thick, textured paper.
Normality was a fickle thing. Like water cupped in her palms. A sensation so delicate and fragile it could be destroyed with the slightest lapse in concentration. Something she'd searched for and clung to any remnants of since the Repository. Since that fated day in the carriage with Professor Fig, really.
But it was here she found it most steadily. Here, she could almost forget her stress enough to let her mind wander unhindered. As though her brush connected to the paints was a conduit for her thoughts without the distraction of emotion. In the concentration of mixing pigment and water, in the focus of blending vibrant shades and laying them on paper, she could allow her mind to travel to those spaces she fought to keep buried.
Clara had thought, perhaps too often over the subsequent months, about the hours after Solomon's demise. Even more so in the days since the argument with Sebastian in that cramped and dusty lift. Turned the moments over and over in her mind as if she examined them closely enough, she might unlock some new understanding. Find some old forgotten keyhole. Some unknown piece of the puzzle that would give further explanation for Sebastian's sudden departure.
From his erratic pacing and near incomprehensible muttering outside the catacomb that 'he'd had to do it'— which had done nothing to distract her from the way his hands had shaken or how his ribs had pressed up to his collarbones with each uneven breath. To his frantic pleading in the Undercroft hours later as, he'd begged Ominis to take him to Anne. To the way Sebastian had turned to Clara once the blond had left. His eyes had been too wide and unfocused then–lost, cast aside, and adrift. He'd all but collapsed against her. Laid the fractured pieces of his soul to bare in salted drops against her shoulder.
She'd turned this moment over the most. Sure, this must have been when she'd gone wrong. Too many nights, she'd wondered if she'd held him tighter then or said the right things if he would have stayed. Would it have made a difference if she'd told him the words that had been stitched over her heart for months, or would saying them have only left her bleeding if he'd decided to leave anyway?
Given what he'd said in the lift, she supposed now it wouldn't have made a difference. Perhaps if she'd ignored the Keeper's summons. Left Ranrock for the Ministry to deal with as he'd been urging her to do for months.
She exchanged the larger mop brush for a smaller one–more adept at fine detail–and mixed trays of magnesium brown and burnt sienna with hints of black and yellow ochre.
You almost died in that repository.
He'd not been wrong.
She'd been demanded away to the Map Chamber too quickly to properly recover after the catacombs, and Rookwood had died only hours after Solomon with that fated sentence on his lips.
He'd not deserved the Avada she'd afforded him. So unlike his men whose remains she'd scattered in wide painted arcs of deep crimson and pink viscera and shattered bone. But crucio had never tasted sweeter on her lips as it had in those moments he'd screamed until scarlet poured in pretty ribbons from his eyes. He'd been incoherent before the end. Bitten off most of his own tongue, too, with the way the bloodied muscle lolled and flopped uselessly from the raw crevice of his mouth. She'd relished in it, and the knowledge of the depth of her depravity left her sick.
She'd not even had time to tell Sebastian before Ranrock had infiltrated the Repository, and a child had been called upon to face down a threat Ministry official had been so keen to ignore.
Attempting to contain the repository of Isadora's pain magic had taken too much from her, and she remembered only fragmented moments before the blast of blinding white light had consumed her. Drowned her in its depths and overwhelmed every other sense.
When she'd woke two weeks later, the repository was contained, Professor Fig was dead, and she'd been crowned The hero of Hogwarts atop a mountain of bodies. The adornment had never been earned. Crooked and dented from the start. A farce to hide the truth of her terror. But history was written by the victors, and piles of bloodied corpses looked prettier to other people when viewed behind the rose-colored glasses of a savior.
The sparrow had flown, and the sky deepened to rubies and garnet by the time Clara switched her brush again for the smallest of the five and a shade of deep, muddied brown. She worked it into the shadows. In the spaces between the bird's feathers. Careful not to let the darker brown bleed into the lighter colors.
She was focused so heavily, lost in the detail of the painting, that she didn't hear the faint rustle of the grass to her left, where the outcropping sloped down sharply, or the crunch of dirt under boots until the proteon charmed parchment rippled in her pocket and she jumped so violently her heavily pigmented brush swiped across the painted bird.
A great muddied stripe across the little sparrow's body.
Clara swore loudly and ripped the parchment from her pocket, ready to glare at the damned thing until it caught fire.
Her gaze met only one sentence. Inked in that interminably messy scrawl.
.::You need a better hiding spot, Elmore::.
She blinked and spun around to the freckled boy standing just off to her left, several feet down the hill. Sebastian shrugged and waved his own parchment at her.
No one ever found her here.
Of course, of all people, he would be the first to do it.
"You ruined my painting, Sallow!"
"I–" Sebastian crossed the rest of the way up the slope until he stood beside her, his eyebrows scrunched " –what?"
Clara glared and jabbed her finger at the slash of dark brown pigment across the painted bird. " You! You ruined it! Do you know how long I–"
"I'm sorry! I swear I didn't mean—" But rather than looking at all 'sorry,' his eyes darted over her face, alight with mirth. His lips turned down in that way which meant he was trying not to laugh.
Maybe she should hex him. Anne would have to get in line.
"This paper is not inexpensive and–" The cotton paper was expensive, at least in comparison to the scrolls of parchment she otherwise used for her school work–though hardly enough for a single sheet to set her back any significant degree. It was more the principle of the matter. Still, she glared at him all the harder, though this seemed to do little in the way of subduing his levity. If anything, the opposite was true. "–don't look at me like that!"
" Like what?"
"Like...Like–" She searched in vain for an adequate word–one that would thoroughly describe the nature of his crime– and finally threw her hands up, still glaring up at him from where she sat on the ground. "–like you find me amusing...or...I don't know."
He opened his mouth as though to speak, then seemed to think better about it and closed it again. Though with the way his eyebrows had raised and the little quirk of his mouth, she was almost certain he'd been on the verge of saying precisely that. Which only served to anger her further.
Still, this anger felt better. Easier somehow. There was something so pedestrian and unencumbered in it. So much like the banter they'd had in the before, and she relished in its familiarity. Simpler than confronting that deeper, festering hurt. The one that had lingered in the days since Sebastian's return. In the year since he'd vanished if she were truthful about it.
"Can I sit?" Only then did the bubbling mirth start to soften behind his eyes.
Clara shrugged. "Sure."
He could sit, and she could leave.
They hadn't spoken, not really, since that heated conversation in the lift four days ago, though it wasn't from lack of trying on Sebastian's part. Too many times, he'd tried to catch her after class or find her in the common room, and each time, she'd made her excuses to dart away from him.
She unclipped the now ruined painting from the inside of the lid and tucked it away beneath a stack of finished pieces.
She could almost hear the way his shoulders slumped. She heard the little defeated sigh in any case. "Will you stay if I sit?"
" Sebastian, I don't-"
"I brought you...I mean, I wanted to just–" He reached out, and only then did she notice the sprig of flowers clutched between his fingers. Tiny bell-shaped flowers falling over calloused fingertips in pearlescent white drops.
Lilly of the Valley.
Sorrow and a return to happiness.
She looked for a moment between him and the flower but made no move to take it.
Sebastian's hand dropped to his side almost as quickly as he'd offered it, the other clutching at the thick fabric at the end of his navy sweater sleeve. " Ara, look, I'll–" He paused momentarily, his gaze flickering across her face and then down to the ground, where a little brown sparrow, perhaps the same one she'd painted, had landed near his feet. The little creature tilted its head at him; something twitched at the corner of his mouth, and his eyes snapped back to hers again. Soft and chestnut and almost resolute in the depth of their intensity. "–I won't... If you really don't want me around...I promised Anne I'd stay at Hogwarts for our last year, but I'll keep out of your way if that's what you want. You don't have to see me or..."
He sighed and gestured around vaguely. It was so reminiscent of Anne that she'd almost have laughed if not for the way he'd started fidgeting with the end of his sleeve again. His fingers worked against the knit fabric with such ferocity he might have worn a hole through the material.
Sebastian was nervous.
Perhaps it was this that laced hesitation to the tips of fingers still packing her paint and brushes. That curled around violet imprints and settled deep into those spaces that searched for his smile, his voice, in every room.
She said nothing; she wasn't even sure what she wanted to say. A part of her still wanted to turn and scream at him, to leap up and run away, while another traitorous part of her begged him follow. But instead of closing the polished mahogany box, she pulled another blank paper from her dwindling stack and clipped it to the lid.
Sebastian seemed to take this as her acceptance because moments later, she heard the rustle of grass and the soft exhale as he sat carefully beside her.
Clara didn't look over at him. Not fully, but her periphery gave a glimpse of his arms wrapped around his knees and his head tipped up to the deep indigo and pinpricked stars that trailed after the dying sunlight as though he might find some further wisdom in the constellations.
Still, she made no complaints as a soft summer breeze wafted around them, and she was met with the familiar scents of juniper and cloves and that masala chai he always drank.