Of Lilies and Libraries
Friday, 16th September 1892
Clara could never be sure how long she stayed there with her paintbrush once again sweeping over the page. Long enough, the final incandescent rays of sunlight had left farewell kisses on distant peaks, and they'd blushed crimson in return. Past when the last hints of ruby had faded to indigo along the skyline and the stars had scattered diamonds into the vast expanse of midnight.
Hours, if she'd had to hazard a guess.
The presence of the sparrow perched on the branch of the hazel tree was a mere memory, but Clara had sketched it with little effort and ignited the page with the fiery hues once again. Lost in the trance of watching the colors melt into one another and in the delicate strokes of creams and browns that made up the details of the little bird's feathers while Sebastian sat silently beside her.
He'd not said a word since he'd joined her on the grass, and it was only after she added the last dab of brown paint she realized he had maneuvered himself forward and was now holding his lit wand aloft—angled so as to perfectly illuminate where she'd been working. She hadn't even realized he'd lit it, too lost in her work to question how she could still see perfectly despite the lack of sunlight.
He shifted slightly as she turned to him and reached into a small leather satchel with his free hand. The evidence of the undetectable magical extension charm all too apparent in how his arm disappeared nearly to his shoulder.
It was probably illegal, though given Sebastian's propensity for dark magic, an undetectable extension charm was almost laughable.
When he finally pulled his hand back, he clutched a small cloth bundle, which he tugged open to reveal a handful of fresh strawberries. He held them out to her, almost expectantly.
They were her favorite, a fact she knew Sebastian was aware of, but Clara only glanced between him and the enticing red berries balanced in his palm, her stubborn clamped firmly around her fingers. "What are you doing, Sebastian?"
"You haven't been eating," he muttered. "You've not come to a meal since Monday, and don't tell me you've been going to the kitchens because I know you haven't—"
Clara opened her mouth to argue.
"—And no, those little trays of nuts around the castle don't count. I mean actual meals."
She glared. He sounded far too irritated for someone who, just hours ago, had vowed never to show his face around her again if she so wished.
"I've eaten more than that." She had. She and Anne had nearly polished off an entire package of toffees just that afternoon.
Sebastian only jerked his hand more pointedly toward her, still holding the strawberries.
"You don't need to worry about me, Sebastian." She turned away and twirled her paintbrush in the murky water. She'd need to replace it to clean them properly.
He snorted like she'd said something funny.
She hadn't.
Even so, she stayed turned away from him, facing her Windsor Newton kit, and reached forward to dump the murky water and replace it with a quick, non-verbal aguamenti.
She still wasn't looking at him when she finally spoke again—focused as she was on swirling her brush into the liquid and watching the pigment bleed strands of muddied brown to saturate the crystal water before gently maneuvering her fingers over the soft bristles. Maybe it was easier that way. Simpler than facing those dark, impenetrable eyes that were so wholly unfamiliar.
"What did you think was going to happen when you came back? Did you just assume everything would go back to normal? That we'd all just forget what—"
"No! No, of course not. I just, when you wrote to me–"
Clara snapped her head up to look at him. He'd set the little bundle of strawberries between them. He must have noticed she'd turned to him because he gestured toward the protean charmed parchment still folded and tucked partway under her thigh.
"–I guess, I thought maybe..."
His voice trailed off, and Clara glanced at the corner of the folded page. She couldn't fully explain, even to herself, why her anger hadn't flared red hot as soon as he'd responded to her on that enchanted parchment. Maybe she'd been too relieved to finally hear from him. Perhaps writing simply hadn't tugged at the places where her hurt lived. Easier to trick her heart into believing she was still talking to that same sixteen-year-old boy who'd chased the fading traces of sunlight at the edge of his storm. But now, seeing how he'd changed and aged, seeing those dark walls behind his eyes, and then to learn he’d been in the country for months without telling her, it had thrown all of that to the wayside and sent her spiraling.
"You left us!" It didn't feel as hot as it had before. More a simmer than boil, though, it was enough for her anger to scorch against the syllables. "You left us alone to deal with the ramifications of your actions. What if something had happened? What if Anne had–"
"Do you honestly think I'd have left without having the means to keep notified of Anne's condition?" The words were colder than she'd expected from him. It did nothing to temper the heat still simmering behind her ribs.
"That doesn't change what you did!"
"I know that!" If the sigh he forced through his teeth wasn't evidence of his irritation, the way he shoved his hand through his hair was, and it pulled another glare from her. "I had to leave Clara. You know I did. I'd never have found a way to help Anne if I'd stayed here. It was the only choice I had left.
" You left me behind, Seb." She'd meant it to be cold and biting. A weapon forged from her hurt and wielded with the precise lash of her tongue. Instead, it just sounded vulnerable and small. She hated it. Hated how the words tightened to a tremble at the edge of her voice and threatened to shatter. "After everything we'd been through. You left me behind, and you didn't even say goodbye."
There was a moment when Sebatian's arms lifted. Jumped more like and reached out toward her, only to falter partway and sink back to the ground, and Clara wondered if he'd meant to hug her. The small part of her that hid behind the flares of her anger almost wished he would have.
Perhaps he'd thought she would push him away.
And maybe he would have been right.
The silence stretched minutes between them. Long enough for the tightness to loosen in the back of her throat, and by the time she glanced over to him again, Sebastian had looked away from her. He didn't look up when he spoke—just stared at where his hands wrung around each other.
"I don't blame you for being angry, Ara. I really don't. But I wasn't...none of it was ever to try and hurt you. I do want to make it up to you if you'll let me. So if you want to keep yelling at me or hit me or—"
"I'm not going to hit you, Sebastian." Though the thought of it wasn't entirely untempting.
"And just for the record," He continued. "I am sorry about earlier. I didn't mean to make you jump like that and ruin the painting." He gestured toward the still-open kit. "I'll get you more of that paper if it helps. It looks like you're running low anyway."
Clara sighed. "This isn't something you can just waltz into Tomes and Scrolls to buy. They don't even sell it in Hogsmeade or Diagon Alley. I've looked. And it isn't like regular parchment; it's–
"I know that," Sebastian interjected. "It's cold-pressed, 400 GSM, 100 percent cotton paper. You use the cold-pressed because it's thicker than the hot-pressed paper and doesn't warp as easily with the water. It also doesn't have as textured a surface as the rough-style paper which makes it preferable for fine details. Before you started at Hogwarts, you used to get it from that little art shop your Gran would take you to whenever you went into the city."
The information spilled from him so effortlessly that Clara almost didn't notice how her heart winced at the mention of Beatrice. She was sure they must have talked about it at some point. This was far from the first time Sebastian had watched her paint, but if she'd ever mentioned the specifics of her materials, it had been nothing more than information tossed to the air and blown away with the breeze.
She'd never have expected him to catch it between his fingers. Let alone remember it.
" How did you–"
Sebastian shrugged. "It seemed important to you." He'd gone back to staring at his hands. His fingers worked furiously against the edges of his sweater sleeves. "I don't remember the name of the shop, but if you tell me, I could send in a mail order."
"They don't take gold, Seb. It's muggle London, remember."
Clara wasn't sure he could have rolled his eyes harder. "I know how to use muggle money, Elmore. But if your Gran was willing, maybe she could pick some up and send it via owl post? It might be faster. There's an exchange bank in Hogsmeade. I could send her the money and—
Clara knew he'd not meant for it to hurt her. It wasn't as if he knew Beatrice was gone. Still, she wasn't prepared for how the words ripped into her chest and tore at the raw places the loss festered against her heart like a gaping wound.
It wasn't fair, not really, of her to be angry with him over that.
But the illusion of fair had abandoned her before her first glimpse of memory, and even the understanding of his naivety on the subject did nothing to quell the way the words spit vitriol from between her teeth.
"She's dead."
Whatever Sebastian was about to say faltered. She saw the way it slammed against his teeth and forced his lips shut. Clara waited for the pity to pull between his brows and for the sickly, simpering smile to creep across his face. The one mirrored by so many of the local ladies of their village. The same ones that had stepped in to arrange the funeral and loudly proclaimed Beatrice's passing to be a 'great loss for the community' whilst previously having hardly spoken to either of them other than to question the legitimacy of Clara's parentage or wonder as to why Clara had not immediately been sent to a Convent.
Her mother must have been a harlot and Clara, a bastard born out of wedlock if she'd abandoned her eight-year-old daughter to be cared for by the elderly woman.
It never came. Only the pull of the corner of his bottom lip between his teeth and the tug of his thick sweater around him in the heat of the summer night as though a chilled breeze had wafted around him.
"I'm sorry you had to go through that...I." He opened and closed his mouth several times before finally shoving a hand through his hair. "Fuck...You'd think of all people I'd know something better to say."
He had alluded to his parents and any mention of their deaths so infrequently it almost caught her by surprise. After all, it had been Ominis, in the end, who'd given her the vague details when Sebastian had grown tight-lipped over the situation. It had frustrated her at the time, seeing even then how it had dug its claws in him.
Now she thought she understood why.
"It's fine, Seb. It was over the summer. She was old. She had a heart attack. There wasn't anything anyone could do." She repeated it the same way the doctors had repeated it to her. The same way she repeated it to herself, 'there was nothing anyone could do' as if it would somehow alleviate the cruelty that reminded her otherwise.
In truth, she wasn't sure what she'd have wanted him to say. Every reminder of her grandmother, even the happy ones, only stabbed thick shards of ice into places she didn't realize she could still be hurt.
She didn't want to remind herself that the one person who'd cared for her as long as she could remember was nothing more than a fading memory tied with lavender and ribbon. She didn't want to think about the fact that now Beatrice's small cottage had been seized by the bank to pay for her funeral and outstanding debts. Clara would have nowhere to live once school finished. She didn't want to think about any of it. Let alone talk about it.
It was almost desperate how her mind cast around for anything else to change the subject. Dug into the darkest recesses of her brain and sifted through all the corners until it pounced upon the question she'd yet to pull from him. That thin needle of uncertainty that had poked at her as soon as Sebastian had offered his explanation on how he'd healed his sister.
It was something in the way he'd shifted against the door frame. In the betrayal of his fingers still worrying at the ends of his sweater sleeves, in the dark walls behind his eyes, and in that horrible nagging feeling that something about it felt off.
She might have questioned it before if not for how enraged she'd been with him. Now, the desperate animal inside her chest, wanting nothing more than to shirk any thought of her grandmother, lept at the bars of its cage and furiously clawed at the new subject.
"How did you actually cure Anne?"
Sebastian raised his eyebrows. Though, whether it was in response to the abrupt change in topic or to the boldness of her question, Clara wasn't confident.
"You can't tell me it was some random potions. That... that's too simple."
Sebastian blinked at her. The laugh that left him was almost incredulous with how it fell too sharply from his quirked lips. "It was a potion—"
Clara rolled her eyes. Now that she'd spoken it, she was almost certain of her hunch, as though saying the words aloud had cemented the possibility into reality: "Be serious, Sebastian."
She could see his tongue rolling against the inside of his cheek. His stubborn firmly planted in the set of his jaw, nearly as barnacle-like as hers, before he finally let out a slow breath.
"It's true what I told you all. It was a potion. A recipe I found, it's just—"
"You said a series of potions." Clara corrected.
"Yes, there were multiple, three to be exact. But that's not important." Sebastian waved his hand dismissively. "The other two weren't anything unique. Just a standard variation on a sleeping draught and an analgesic to help her sleep and mitigate the side effects while the curse was expelled. But the third potion, the one that actually healed her; the recipe was different, like nothing I'd ever seen." He sighed and rubbed at the back of his neck. "I already told you it was old, but I mean really old, Clara. Ancient. I had to take the recipe through about four different translations before I finally pieced it together. That's part of why it took me so long to come back. And then there was the process of brewing it. The recipe itself was written before certain magical practices were banned and–" He paused, back to chewing at the corner of his lip, eyes darting over her as though trying to decide how much to divulge. "–some of the ingredients aren't exactly ministry-approved, and there were things I had to do to obtain them that ...well... they definitely aren't things Anne or Ominis would have ever agreed with." The rest of his sentence fell away so quickly she almost had trouble making it out with that rushed way he sent it careening off the edge of the precipice.
It made too much sense, and Clara cursed herself for not seeing it sooner. He'd never been one to back away from it. Forged ahead with the idea that diving through the shadows would be worth it if he'd come out the other side with the ability to help his twin. "You used dark magic to heal her."
Sebastian shifted and stared at the patch of grass in front of him. " Not technically," he muttered, ripping a few blades from their earthen homes. "The Ancient Egyptian wizards wouldn't have necessarily considered any of it dark magic when the potion was invented, so–"
Clara shot him a withering glare.
"—But yes, with current regulations, it would be classified as dark magic. I figured it was best to try and keep Anne and Ominis vague on that particular detail."
" Merlin! You didn't give her unicorn blood or–"
It was almost comical the way his eyes bulged when he looked at her " Fucks sake, Elmore! No, it was nothing like that! It's nothing that's going to hurt her. I made sure of that."
"That's still dangerous, Seb."
"I'm aware."
"What exactly did you have to do?" She didn't like to think of the ramifications of it. Of whatever damage he'd carved into his soul to ensure his sister's health.
It was too long before he spoke again, and when the words finally came, he might have won an award for the way he avoided her eyes. "I can't...It's-" He sighed. "–Look, there are just things it's...better if you don't know."
It did nothing to comfort her or stop the irritation flaring against her tongue. " So we're back to you telling me nothing of consequence?" She jerked her hands up, if only to emphasize her frustration. "Will you at least tell me where you've been for the past year?"
Something glinted behind his iris. That same little spark the twins shared before the opposing corners of their mouths twitched up. " Oh, Merlin, Finally! I thought you'd never ask."
There was something in the melodic sing-song way he dragged out the words. In the little dancing waggle of his eyebrows.
He was teasing her.
After the multiple times she'd previously asked–practically begged–him to tell her where he'd gone.
Clara slapped him.
Hard.
Or rather, as hard as she could with the angle at which she was sitting. It didn't create nearly the sting she wanted in her palm.
Still, Sebastian at least had the decency to rub his cheek and look injured or, at the very least, shocked at her sudden penchant for physical violence. "Oi! I thought you said you weren't going to hit me?"
"I changed my mind." Clara grumbled, " You're an ass, Sallow."
Sebastian pulled his hand away, and Clara was only a little satisfied to see she'd left a bright red mark across his cheek. "Yeah, I know. I deserved that. Do you feel better now?"
" A bit," she muttered. "Might need a few more repetitions."
Sebastian grinned, threw his head back, and laughed to the star-strewn indigo. It might have been the first time she'd seen him fully, genuinely smile since he'd been back. He was a man who laughed with his entire face. His whole body, really. It ignited through the pull of lips, crackled around his eyes, and burst through him. A blazing inferno of fiery oranges, reds, and golds. He'd have laugh lines before he was thirty.
It was criminal how the soft moonlight wove silver threads through strands of his hair. It rippled across the surface of the waves like light on dark water and contrasted with the warmer tones. Unfair in how it brushed over his cheekbones and dipped along the sharpened curve of his jaw.
Attractive in a way, he had no business being, with how infuriating he was.
Clara picked up one of the strawberries and nibbled at the end of it—anything to distract from where the moonlight traced the exposed curve of his throat.
The lily of the valley he'd brought still lay in the space between them. Whether he'd left it there on purpose in hopes she'd take it or if it just happened to land there when he'd sat, she wasn't sure. Though knowing Sebastian, she'd suspect it was the former. There was too little he did without purpose.
Still, she made no move to take it, and the gradual quieting of his laughter and the soft lilt of his voice slowly drew her attention back to him.
"I was abroad mostly. Rome, The Ottoman Empire, Uganda, Kenya. Even Greece, for a while. But I spent most of my time in Egypt before eventually returning to England."
Clara blinked at him. "You were in Egypt?"
"Yes, Egypt. Cairo for a bit and then Alexandria." Sebastian grinned. "Did I ever tell you about the library there?"
Clara narrowed her eyes. The library at Alexandria wasn't exactly a secret. It wasn't even a wizarding institution. "Wasn't that destroyed ages ago? Burned by Julias Caesar or something?"
Sebastian shrugged. "That's one theory on how it happened. The muggle portion of the library is long gone, as you said, but there's a wizarding portion that's just as old. It's all underground. Protected by glamours and distraction spells and such, so the muggles never knew about it, did they? And anyway, it's all still there. Most of the ancient libraries are actually. Alexandria, Celcus, Pergemum–"
He rattled a whole list off in rapid succession as though Clara had any familiarity with any of the others.
" –But Alexandria, it's.....Merlin, Ara.... It's incredible." He gave a contented sigh and flopped back into the grass. The wide, lopsided grin still plastered across his face as he continued. "I'd read about it, of course, but it's like nothing I've ever seen. There are scrolls, and clay tablets, and artifacts all dating back thousands of years and..."
The words leapt faster and faster, bubbled through his lips, and spilled out, tripping over one another in his enthusiasm as he launched into stories on the history of the empire–how Rome's influence altered Egyptian magic and the nuances in the uses of Egyptian magic versus European.
Clara could only sit and listen to where his voice tipped up at the edges with more than a hint of his lilting accent–the subtle nod to his Scottish heritage. Usually, it was so faint that she almost had to strain to hear it, but she knew the places where it traced the edges of his words. Knew how it grew more noticeable when he was excited or, drunk, or very tired. Thickened and dripped over the syllables like warm syrup.
She knew the way it had stiffened and all but vanished whenever he'd been around Solomon.
Now, she listened for all the places his tongue tilted the letters—somewhat stronger than usual, given how animatedly he was speaking.
The lily of the valley still rested between them—tiny white drops like shimmering pearls against the expanse of verdant green.
They were said to have been formed from Eve's tears as she'd left the garden.
Clara made sure Sebastian wasn't looking when she retrieved her journal from her bag and pressed the sprig of little white flowers between the pages.