Of Fear and Thorns
Saturday, 1st October, 1892
It wasn't often Clara rose to meet the pre-dawn stillness. That early morning hush, still washed with the fading traces of midnight and blushing with the first hints of pink, but that Saturday morning saw her reach for the Windsor Newton box stashed under her bed and climb once again to her favorite spot overlooking the lake.
The heat of Summer's dying breaths still clung to midday, but its hold had weakened in the early mornings. As though the turn of the months had signaled the advance of the seasons, and Autumn's crisp chill had taken no hesitation in charging forward to claim victory over its opponent.
Clara tugged her cloak further around her and perched at the edge of the outcropping, clicking the familiar brass latches open to arrange the palettes and soft sable brushes and finally clip one of the thick textured pages to the inside of the lid.
She'd already selected her image by the time she began wetting the page. A dense clump of conifers near the lake's edges. Sentinels in deep veridian, jutting skyward through soft trails of mist and interspersed with various deciduous greenery. Quivering leaves still held in tender shades of green and tipped only at the edges with a glimpse of the fire that would consume them, and all reflected in the mirrored surface of the water below.
Time was an abstract concept. And never had this been truer than the moments her brush connected to the page and she lost herself to the concentration of it—peace, or whatever semblance of it she could scrounge. By now, her fingers worked through instinct, brushing the lighter washes over the page and layering into the darker blues and greens. Time might have declared she'd stayed there for hours or mere moments, and it would have made no difference.
"You really do need another hiding spot, Elmore."
She should have known he would find her. Sebastian always did. Even when she didn't think she wanted him to.
She didn't jump at his approach as she had the last time. Just added another thin layer of sage to the wetted paper and tipped her head up at where he stood next to her. "How did you know?"
Sebastian shrugged and dug the toe of his boot into the dirt. "You weren't at breakfast, and Anne said you were gone when she woke up. This—"he gestured around vaguely. "It's where you would always come when things got to be too much."
Clara didn't bother to deny it, and he didn't bother to ask before he sat beside her and withdrew another small cloth bundle from his magically extended bag.
The strawberries wrapped inside shouldn't have surprised her. She'd skipped breakfast, and he knew all too well that she'd have a harder time saying no to the tempting red berries. The little self-satisfied smirk at the corner of his mouth told her as much in any case as she pilfered one of them away and popped it into her mouth.
That little hint of a smile might have been one of the first she'd seen on him in the past week.
He'd been distant since Repository, now that she thought about it. It wasn't like him. Too content to hover around her edges in recent days. It was so much in the way he looked at her. The tension behind his eyes, as though he was still waiting for her to scream at him again. It confused her more than anything, though maybe she'd been too enveloped in her own anxieties to fully appreciate it. She realized only now, as he sat next to her, how drawn and pale he looked—the beginnings of plum dark circles blossoming under his eyes, and for the first time, she wondered if she might not have been the only one struggling to find rest throughout the night.
She wasn't sure why the idea of it made her more willing to voice her anxiety to him. Maybe there was a sort of camaraderie in it. As though his own lack of sleep might somehow speak to a deeper understanding of her own.
She didn't turn to Sebastian as she spoke softly of what Niamh had told her in the Headmaster's office but focused instead on the deepening shades of the soft watercolors, all dark grays and indigos, and greens. Too quietly at times to fully know if he was listening, and it was only near the end when the gently tilted edges of his voice were carried by the breeze to settle next to her ears, it was confirmed he had been.
"So, this Keeper, Niamh–" He added when she finally turned to him, "–she wants you to follow after this? After whatever Isadora may actually have left."
It had been an argument too many times in Fifth year not to taste the bitter hint that lingered behind his voice.
Clara shrugged. "We got interrupted."
The former Headmistress had only just gotten the chance to suggest Isadora may indeed have left something in the ruined Feldcroft home before the office door had swung open, and Clara had barely made it down the steps to the lower level before Professor Weasley and Nurse Blainey had fully stepped into the room.
Professor Weasley had gestured to the straight-backed chair in front of the Headmaster's desk and made the usual run of excuses for Professor Black's absence–some incident or another that had called him away—but Clara had grown too used to the list of petty excuses to give much attention to it.
She'd not paid much attention to the meeting at all if he were honest about it. Her mind locked as it was in the loft above them. In that possibility for answers, laid in front of her by the former Headmistress or buried, rather, beneath the ruins of Isadora's home. Tantalizing in its perceived simplicity, but though left unspoken, still so seemingly tinted with that same obligation that had surrounded her Fifth year.
Expectation veiled in an illusion of choice.
Still, Clara had managed to smile and nod at appropriate times as Professor Weasley and Nurse Blainey had reviewed her course schedule and emphasized the importance of keeping up with her school work. Assisting the Hospital Wing would not stand as an excuse for bad marks.
Every Wednesday afternoon and various weekends. That had been the agreed-upon arrangement, and her once "free class period" was now given over to that pale green room with the arched windows, cracked stone floor, and shelves of medical texts and diagrams.
Clara had barely noticed when Nurse Blainey twisted her wand in that too-familiar motion. Only when colorful glowing orbs had flashed around her head had she realized the Nurse was already settling into her examination before the monthly supply of Dreamless Sleep Draught was refilled.
The whole process had been strangely disconcerting beneath the watchful gazes of both women. A discussion usually met with only Nurse Blainey had suddenly felt claustrophobic with the presence of the Deputy Headmistress looming over the whole proceeding. Her brow furrowed too close to concern as her gaze had traveled over the mottled purples and blues where Clara's fingers still twisted against her damaged skin.
She had rattled off the expected list of requirements half in a haze, grateful for the near muscle memory of the answers that powered her voice through the list and muttered her responses to the list of questions.
Yes, she still knew the risks.
Yes, she would adhere to the expected protocols.
Yes, she still had the nightmares,
No, they'd not gotten any better . Worse, really, if she thought about it. Though Clara had not told the Nurse that before impatience gripped at her strings, snatched that box of newly filled vials from the desk, and tucked it safely into her robes.
"Well, what do you want to do?"
It was the familiarity in Sebastian's voice that shook her back to the outcropping they both occupied. Still, even the simplicity of the question lost her full comprehension.
"What?"
Sebastian tilted his head, arms still wrapped around his knees, "What do you, Clara Elmore, want to do? About what that Keeper said."
Want? Clara nearly laughed at the idea of it. There was so little of her life given over to choice without expectation, and no matter how she'd strung it around in her thoughts, the answer had always come back to that unspoken obligation left to her. "Do I really have a choice? I have to go, don't I."
She could too clearly hear the irritation in the snort that pressed between his teeth. "You don't have to do anything ." It was enough to shoot her eyebrows up to her hairline, but he'd batted it away before she could interject. "You've been lied to and manipulated by enough people, Clara. If you get anything here, it's a choice as to how you want to proceed."
Perhaps it was the mention of manipulation that flared against her anger. That last thorny barb that dug into the truth of the hurt that still lay between them and festered in the places she'd tried to heal it.
It wasn't as though he'd ever been very subtle about it. His motivations had never been a secret, and Clara couldn't even entirely blame him for using whatever resources he had at his disposal to save the last of his family.
But true healing couldn't happen until the source of the infection was removed.
Perhaps it was time to rip it out.
"Are you including yourself in that?" She'd not looked at him as she'd spoken. She didn't need to, to feel how he flinched beside her. Maybe a part of her had meant for it to hurt him. To lash at the place, it was raw and make him feel some of the injury he'd carved into her.
"Yes "
She wasn't prepared for how small he sounded.
It did nothing to make the reality of his admission hurt any less.
Was that what she'd been expecting? For him to admit he's manipulated her and for her anger to dissolve alongside his confession. If it was, she'd been sorely mistaken. If anything, it only dug in harder.
Clara turned just enough to glimpse him from the corner of her eye. "Why, Sebastian?"
He didn't look at her. Just stared at the tops of his knees like he might find coded secrets threaded within the weave pattern of his trousers. "Anne needed me. I never meant to hurt you."
"That doesn't change the fact that you did! "
"Clara, I–"
She spun to him fully then, all pretenses of painting and strawberries lost to the hurt ripping its way up her ribs to cry out past the fear that trembled beneath it. "Is that all I was to you then? A means to an end, and when I wasn't of use to you anymore, you left! Is that it?"
She hated how his hands shook. "Is that really what you think?"
It had barely been a breath from his lips. Too soft and tilted at the edges to truly be mistaken for a directed challenge, and still, her fear snapped her anger up like a shield. "I don't know what to think anymore!"
There was still so much held in that fear she'd buried behind her hurt and refused to give a name to, even after Sebastian left. When the days had stretched to weeks and then months and then to a year, and there'd still been no word from him. And that fear had barnacled itself in the deepest parts of her. Cemented within her walls and layered itself behind her hurt and, anger, and resentment. Because it was so much easier to throw her fury at him than face the vulnerability that puppeted it.
That Sebastian had never seen her as anything more than a convenient resource. Something easy to hone and manipulate and abandon when she no longer served a purpose.
"No, Ara. That was never–"
"Then why, Sebastian!?"
Sebastian always spoke quickly. Even more so when he was excited, it bled out through his exuberance as though he could never move the words out of the way fast enough to make room for the next thought catapulting itself against his tongue.
It held nothing to how rapidly he spoke now.
"I needed to get to the answers in that scriptorium, so I manipulated you and Ominis into helping me. Then I knew if I got that Relic, it could cure her. So convinced you to help me get it because I knew Ominis wouldn't—"
And then she'd manipulated Ominis into letting them leave with the Relic. It wasn't a memory she liked to think back on.
"–And then, that day in the Undercroft when we saw Isadora's memory, or what we thought was her memory, I…I told myself—"
"You knew ."
It wasn't a question, and suddenly, those tilted pieces shifted into place. How pale and still he'd gone that day in Charms. The reason he'd been keeping his distance. Why he'd spent the past week looking at her like he'd been waiting for her to scream at him.
He'd put it together before her and had been waiting for the fallout.
"I didn't know everything then." He still didn't look at her as he spoke. "I just knew Isadora's memory looked different from what I'd seen before."
Clara made to ask when he'd seen another memory, but he must have already anticipated her question because it came before she'd even had a chance to form the words. "Mum and Dad had a pensieve. Anne and I were always curious, so they let us use it once."
He swallowed hard, and when he continued, his voice had tightened again. Strained too close to the edge of fragility. As though if he didn't hold it delicately enough, it would shatter in his hands.
"When we saw Isadora's memory, I told myself…I told myself you knew. You'd said you had seen other memories before, and I told myself you must have already known something was off about that one." One of his fingers had found a loose thread on the outer seam of his trousers. He pulled it tight around his index finger. Wound it around and around until the skin was bunched and purple with pooled blood. "I told myself that that was part of the reason you were so reluctant to ask them. You were already so hesitant, and I was afraid if I brought too much attention to it, you… you wouldn't ask about healing her at all and– " The thread snapped against his skin, and he dug his fingers against his leg hard enough to bruise. " And Anne was dying, and I was running out of options, and I didn't…I didn't know what to do–"
His voice had faltered to the verge of a whisper.
"I never wanted you to get hurt. And then you did, and it's all my fault."
His voice broke then. Toppled from the precipice and, he buried his face in his hands. It did little to distract from the way he shook beside her.
It dissolved her anger in an instant. As though, someone had hit her with a clever evanesco. It wasn't perfect. Not vanished completely, but as much as her fear had wanted to tear at him, she'd never considered how much he'd already hurt himself over it.
Was this why he'd not been sleeping? Was she the reason for the dark circles bruised under his eyes?
"You should hate me." It was so soft. Barley a trembled whisper behind his hands.
"I don't." Viritisirum couldn't have pulled the truth faster from her. Like, whatever piece of anger remained had found a tentative balance with the part of her that just wanted to comfort him. "I have never hated you, Seb."
She reached up then and tugged his hand away from his face. His fingers shifted against hers, and for a moment, she thought he meant to pull away until he flipped her hand and brushed his thumbs across her skin.
"I'm so fucking sorry, Ara." His voice still shook. Fingers pressed against her palms like he could imprint the words into the lines there. "I'm so sorry for all of it."
"That wasn't your fault." It wasn't. Not entirely. Even as much as he wanted to blame himself for it.
"Don't do that." His gaze never left her hands. The heat of his fingers still wrapped around hers and pressed against her palm. " Don't excuse it like that. I don't deserve that. I should have told you about that memory."
"I wish you had." She said flatly
She did, but even if he had, the magic contained in that Repository had still been dangerous, if Niamh was to be believed. Maybe it was more to justify it to herself than anything. That, if nothing else, there'd been some need for her action against Ranrock in that cavern beyond the half-truths that led her there.
Sebastian's eyes slammed shut, but he made no move to pull away from her.
"But Ranrock still attacked the school. So I'd probably still have ended up there and—"
"That goblin should never have been your responsibility to deal with!" His gaze snapped to hers then. Wide and bright--chesnutt flared with fragments of honeyed embers.
"And finding a cure for Anne should never have been yours!"
It shouldn't have been, for either of them, yet there they were. Locked together beneath the demands of a world that had already asked too much from them.
They hung there for a moment, blue eyes locked with brown. Close enough, she could see the glistening tears still clung to his lashes. Another pooled up and broke over his lash line, and she fought the urge to reach up and brush it away with her thumb.
He slapped it away with his other hand. "I still should have been there with you, at least."
Clara frowned. He'd killed Solomon less than twenty-four hours before. Ripped wounds she'd never wanted him to carry across his soul and watched every hope he'd clung to crumble in his hands. He had hardly been in any state to accompany her to that cavern, but still, he sat there, working his bottom lip between his teeth, like he'd somehow wronged her by not shouldering another burden that should never have been his.
But she decided against bringing up that particular subject.
"It doesn't matter." She flicked the hand he wasn't holding up to brush his statement away. "The professors were all there. They'd hardly have let you down there with me."
Sebastian made a noise, something between a laugh and a sob. "Please, Elmore. I'd have found a way."
She supposed he would have.
><><><><
Clara didn't know how long the silence stretched before either of them spoke again. She lost count of the number of times Sebastian traced the lines across her palms, and she pretended like sparks didn't flicker across her skin with every brush of his.
He had different callouses now, she realized. Not the marks he'd worn into his palms after years of quidditch, but small divets etched into his fingertips. Maybe one day, she'd ask what made them. She could still see the shiny pink patches of newly healed skin across his palms. The places he'd been hurt trying to pull her back from the edge of consciousness.
Clara swallowed past the burning at the back of her throat.
Whatever Sebastian's faults, he'd cared enough to run after her. Held her through fire, if only to make sure she was okay.
"I want to go back to Feldcroft."
She hadn't realized how true it was until she spoke it aloud, but maybe a part of her had known it since Niamh had presented the possibility to her. Not because of whatever external expectation the former Headmistress might hold but because something within her needed to see whatever this was to the end.
"Then we'll go," Sebastian said simply.
'We.'
Like whatever this was, he'd made it his problem, too.
Clara opened her mouth to argue it.
"Don't even try it, Elmore. Where you go, I go."
It snapped her lips closed.
Even so, it took only moments of consideration for another problem to make itself known.
Sebastian must have seen how she deflated because his head tipped in a question. "What is it?
"We can't leave Hogwarts without permission." Clara sighed. "Every Floo in or out of the grounds and Hogsmeade are monitored, and the wards will activate if we try to cross the boundary."
It left very few options that would not alert the staff to their truancy.
It left no options if she thought about it.
Sebastian frowned. "You were permitted to leave in Fifth year; maybe we could--"
But Clara batted it away. "The other professors barely tolerated my leaving when Fig was here. There's no chance they're doing it again. Not for something like this."
Sebastian said nothing. He'd pulled the corner of his lip between his teeth in that way he did when he was concentrating, and Cara could almost see the thoughts racing behind his eyes. The same scenarios, possibilities, and conclusions she had already combed through. She waited for him to sigh, for his shoulders to slump, and for him to tell her it was no use.
He was still tracing his thumb over the lines in her palm when he spoke.
"I might know a way."