Ten years after I began at Hogwarts, Sebastian Sallow is back. And he's Professor Sallow now. He disappeared after the fall of Ranrok and Rookwood, after I lost Professor Fig, and after Ominis and I couldn't keep him from losing himself. But I never...
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My eyes dart around wildly to confirm my reality. I instinctively bounce my knees to feel my feet press against the floor and my calves strapped tightly into my knee-high boots. Like some kind of sick bonus, the action makes the splinched gashes along my body shoot pain up into my spine and confirms that indeed, this couldn't be more real.
I am really here.
And the student in the doorway is really Sebastian.
I can't believe this.
It is, quite literally, Sebastian Sallow the student. From where I'm standing, maybe fifty feet from him at a slight diagonal angle, he appears exactly as I remember him, from each whisp of hair to every freckle on his face.
He hasn't aged a day.
What in the actual hell?
Before I can think through what must be very, very wrong my voice betrays my presence.
"Sebastian?"
His head turns towards me slowly and my stomach drops as I see that within his youthful face his eyes are glowing green, exactly as I saw them in my dream mere hours before, and almost ten years ago before he made one of the worst mistakes of his life.
My lungs are gasping for air as desperately as my hand is grasping for a wand that isn't there.
Dear god.
Heart pounding, I take a step back but am stopped by a wall against my back as a fifteen-year-old Sebastian Sallow, full of rage, takes a purposeful step towards me, and then another.
Without saying a word, he begins to advance but as he does so his face begins to seamlessly morph with his movement. Horrifically, it appears as though his skin is sagging, almost peeling from him when suddenly his entire body dissolves. The dust of him collapses onto – no, into – the floor.
The sight of it makes me feel like I've been run over by a train. Nausea wells in my gut. All the breath escapes my body. My legs buckle.I sink to the floor against the wall behind me, feeling the fresh pain of losing him again. Suffocating.
I can't process what is happening when, from the heap of his clothing and robes, emerges a decaying arm, and then another as if crawling out of some invisible hole, lifting up to expose a decaying head upon a decaying body.
An inferius.
The sound is deafening to me in its unfamiliarity. A screeching, breathy cry fills the hall. There is no sound worse. I sink deeper into the floor, paralyzed by the sickening terror of the situation and the pain in my side that is somehow now amplified. Tears well in the bottom of my wide, frightened eyes at the sight of this mutated Sebastian monster approaching me, and my mind provides nothing by way of solutions.
I haven't had to face an inferius in ages and thank god for it. My rare encounters in the past few years have only ever been on assignment with Thiago or another partner at the ministry who knows of my complicated phobia. I don't remember what to do. I can't remember what to do. I reach once again for my wand and the air is once again sucked from my body as I once again realize I'm wandless.
Ancient magic is my only hope.
As the inferius and its ragged screeching draws ever nearer, closing the space between me and its rotten form, I lift my hands in front of me, summoning power from a deep and frightening reservoir in my bones that creates a swirling ball of blinding blue light between my palms. Like a puppet master, I transform the ball of light with kneading, swirling gestures into the form of a small but fearsome dragon about the size of two quaffles. I will it to turn towards the inferius and breathe a large gust of pure blue, searing hot fire.
The inferius lets out a scream and my focus is obliterated by the sharp sound, along with both the dragon form and blue light. As I look into its gruesome, writhing face my peripheral vision catches a glimpse of movement in the doorway of the classroom.
A low, calm voice commands "RIDDIKULUS" and the inferius is suddenly extinguished and immobilized. Simultaneously, a giant red bow appears on its head and its bones begin to fold themselves into some kind of abominable version of a gift box, like a putrid Christmas present.
The voice commands again, "ACCIO!" as the world's worst package zips through the classroom doorway and I hear the sound of a cabinet slam shut from inside the room.
The silence of the hallway is almost as deafening as the inferius was. Or rather, the boggart.
I feel foolish and empty as stillness settles around me. I sit, unmoving. Expressionless. Emotionless. My mind doesn't even try to make sense of the last thirty seconds. A single tear streams down my cheek but no more fall behind it as if the tears themselves know their efforts as a balm would be futile.
There is no jest at the ready. No comment I can sarcastically narrate to myself to break out of this.
I blankly stare into the space in front of me where Sebastian just stood, died, attacked, and then disappeared as the sound of footsteps approaches me. I can't bring myself, nor my eyes to move, the pain of desolating, lonely anguish so fresh once again in my deeply fractured heart.
"Did it hurt you?" says a voice from above me.
I feel a subtle shutter in my core as I shake my head 'no.'
"You're bleeding."
My eyes slowly look down to my side, past my silk, centauride top that is clinging to my skin, wet with new, fresh blood. They're right.
I shake my head 'no' again, resigned, as I gather up my crumpled robe from the floor. I swallow back lightning bolts of pain from registering on my face so whoever this is, responsible for whatever this was, doesn't see any hint of my turmoil.
I need to get the Sorting Ceremony, anyway. I'll deal with the emotional fallout from this later.
As I awkwardly hold my torn clothes and skin together, my legs beneath me attempt to come to a stand when a chivalrous, strong hand and muscular forearm sporting a casually rolled-up dress sleeve descend naturally into my line of sight, an offering to aid my instability.
