To know when to stop
I'm writing a fic set post-hogwarts legacy on ao3, here's a snippet of the first chapter ;)
Summary : A decade has passed, and despite all her efforts, there were memories Agnes could not just forget about. Perhaps the key was to remember, to be whole again. Even if it meant remembering him.
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It spread and a pensieve came out of it. Above, there were phials, identical. In a way, they were the same: just as precious and painful, they all had that common element she tried to forget for a decade, hopelessly, uselessly. With caution, she opened one.
She poured the content in the pensieve, slowly. The curls and clouds forming inside seemed harmonious and strangely familiar, they called for her. Had she really no other choice? She was already in so much pain, would she be able to endure more? She forgot for a reason. But as of now, she could not keep going as she did. She was weak, but she had to be strong, for Anne, for Ominis, for their child. She had to be. How could she help them if she was weak and incomplete? Too bad for her if she was hurting, she had to bear it. With an inhale of oxygen filled with fear, she dived into it, already feeling tears forming in her eyes.
“When you said you could help me with care for magical creatures class, I expected we would go outside, you know, with the magical creatures that is? Shah is strangely made to resist the cold night, but still, that is a bit much to say she is a creature, even for me …”
“Are you finished?”, Agnes laughed.
“Never, I would even say that is part of my charming personality”.
She rolled her eyes and smiled at the same time. She would never say it to his face, but Sebastian was absolutely right. She just knew that if she looked at him, she would see that mischief she loved dancing in his eyes, that cocky smile of his and raised eyebrows as the sign he is damn proud of himself. She would not give him the satisfaction to know how much he was right. Instead, she just kept walking until she was in that familiar place. She stopped and started to pace in front of the empty wall. Sebastian looked at her, confused.
“Are you feeling alright?”, he asked, “Did someone cursed you or something?”
“Wait and see”.
The door appeared as expected in front of them. She took a certain pleasure in seeing her friend dumbstruck and she opened the door with a ceremonious teasing gesture, inviting him to go inside with a caricatural “after you dear sir” and a bow just as exaggerated.
“How did you find this place?”, he asked.
Inside, he saw the giant hippogriff statue in the middle of the room and the – too many? – numerous pots where she grew variety of plants she would use in potions during her potion classes or her many adventures and explorations. She saw him look at her never-ending libraries, full of books, with a certain want. His eyes then went to the vivarium in front of him, then on the others. A sudden crack startle Sebastian and he looked curiously at the house-elf that appeared in the room.
“Hello Deek”, she greeted.
“Do we have a special guest today?”, he simply asked after bending his head as a greeting.
“Sebastian is a friend”, she explained, “he needs help for our care for magical creatures class, I thought we could show him the one we saved and that it wouldn’t bother professor Weasley”.
“Deek thinks it is a good idea”, the creatures answered, way to happy to show to someone the good work they did with all those creatures.
“Come”, she said to Sebastian, way to surprised by everything to say or do anything really.
She took the stairs to her right and went up. Sebastian hurried to be by her side and leaned towards her.
“You’ve got a house-elf?”, he shouted-whispered, “What in Merlin’s name is this room?”.
“The Room of Requirement, and you haven’t seen half of it yet”.
Once they reached the vivarium she wanted to show him, she stopped and Sebastian seemed strangely focused.
“When we are inside, stay by my side. They don’t know you, but if you stay close to me, they should understand you are a friend”, she explained.
“They should?”, he repeated, uncertainty in his voice. “Wait, who is “they”?”.
She simply smiled and entered the vivarium. The light, which was so different inside, blinded her for a second to the point where she felt like the world turned completely white all the sudden. The air and the sea-spray tickled her nose, and she could not help but feel instantly relaxed. She heard Sebastian cursed again behind her.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?”, she laughed, “Look! Highwing is coming to say hi!”
The hippogriff landed and trotted in her direction happily, hoping to be petted, probably for a treat if possible as well, as the little curious glutton she was.
“It’s … incredible”, Sebastian gasped.
“Professor Weasley showed me this room, so that I can work and catch up with the other students”, Agnes explained.
“The Undercroft is pale in comparison …”
“I like the Undercroft! Besides, I don’t learn the same things in both rooms. You should bow, hippogriffs are proud, you need to show them you respect them. Don’t straighten up until I say so”.
Clumsily, she saw Sebastian do exactly that. Highwing tilted her head several times, came closer to sniff him and eventually, she bowed in front of the Slytherin boy. She accepted him.
“See?”, she said enthusiastically, “She likes you already, you are doing great”.
“If you say so … Kneazles are yowling every time I get to close to their taste, even puffskeins go avay when they see me”, he grumbled.
“Let’s say you may be too … direct?”
“Direct? What do you mean?”
“Well, maybe a bit rough or brutish. You are too impatient with creatures. You need to be softer with them”.
“I can be soft!”
She laughed while taking Highwing’s head in her hands to place a noisy kiss at the base of her beak. She shook her head at the gesture, but she then proceeded to rub her head on her little human, to show her own affection.
“You can touch her, if you want to”, she offered.
“I want to keep both my hands”, he simply replied.
“Highwing is adorable!”
“Until you’re missing your nose. Even professor Howin would tell you so”.
“Professor Howin is not here and she doesn’t know what we went through together. Some ordeals just bound beings”.
“Like a troll attack, for example?”
She giggled when he brought that memory back. If that troll attack was not that terrifying and ravaging, she would gladly relive that first day in Hogwarts.
“We still had a great time in the Three Broomsticks”, she countered.
“Before or after Rockwood and Harlow threats?”, he grinned.
“Fine, fine, but how did you say it again? I would say that is part of my charming personality”.
“Alright, you win this one”.
With a flick of her wand, she made a brush appeared. Knowing full well the object, Highwing turned a bit so that she could be brushed exactly to the spots she enjoyed most.
“We decided to save creatures with Deek”, she started. “There are a lot of poachers around and we don’t really know what they are doing to creatures after they caught them. But we figured it couldn’t be good, not according to Deek’s experience, and he was previously owned by a poacher before working at Hogwarts. We just want to help”.
Sebastian said nothing and she didn’t know what to expect. Would he be on her side? Would he say she is mental to go after poachers? Would he understand her quest to help just animals?Highwing peeped happily under the strokes of the brush.
“Look at her, isn’t she amazing?”, she said, full of admiration for the creature in front of her.
“Amazing indeed …”
She turned her head to look at the Slytherin boy. He too had a look of admiration in his eyes, only he was staring at her. She chose to focus on the hippogriff to conceal her blushing cheeks. In the sky, she heard Caligo called for his partner, followed by the fwooper couple Filipine’s and Fernand’s chirping.
“Are you going to keep them here?”, Sebastian asked then.
“Where do you want me to keep them otherwise?”
Highwing kept peeping under the petting she was receiving, rubbing her head again and again against Agnes’s robe. Clearly it was not black anymore, spots of dust and slobber of different creatures. A small price to pay if you asked her, to received gesture of affection from equally impetuous and adorable creatures.
“Outside?”, he suggested.
“What about poachers?”, she said, mortified. “They know Highwing and Caligo. Charlotte was terrified because she was locked in a cage, in the middle of the Forbidden Forrest. Jack was going to be killed because he was stealing treasures in Irondale”.
Just to think of her little nifflers and their doom if she hadn’t been there and hadn’t rescued them in time brought tears into her eyes.
“You realise you can’t save them all?”, he asked.
He was worried for her, she understood. Clearly, he did not care as much as her about her creatures, but he did care about her. He did care about how it would affect her. She sighed, sadly. She knew he was right.
“I know”, she admitted. “Not all of them, but at least, for some, I can try to give them a home. A home feels nice when you are scared and alone”.
He did not say a thing for a while. Highwing started to run after Caligo and both hippogriffs flew away, majestic. How she loved those creatures, she found them being so proud, so beautiful, so free. The speed of their gallop, the exhilaration of their flight … Sometimes, she envied them, wished to be similar. She sat in the sand, simply enjoying the view, the breeze. She felt Sebastian doing the same next to her.
“You never speak of it, I can help but wonder”, Sebastian started cautiously, “How is your home? I never heard you say a thing about your family while I harp on about mine”.
“Nothing to say about it, really”, she shrugged.
“I won’t insist if you don’t want to talk about it, I was just curious”.
“I … grew up in an orphanage, near London”.
She looked at the boy next to her. She was waiting for a quick remark, a reaction, something, just to cut the tension that was building. But he said nothing, instead, he just offered a understanding look and encouraged her to carry on with her story.
“I was adopted once”, she revealed. “They took me back because they couldn't handle me. I told them I saw fairies and that I liked when the nice lady from next door came to play with me in my room. They just could take it anymore”.
“Why? It was only words from a child, it was a bit extreme”.
“The nice lady from next door was dead long before I arrived, there was only her husband in the house. I think I saw her ghost, but since they were Muggles, they couldn’t see her. As for fairies, I think I only saw small lights, similar to what I see with ancient magic. But I insisted so much they couldn’t bear it anymore. I didn’t correspond to their idea of the perfect family”.
“Still, they brought you back like an old used cauldron …”
He wasn’t wrong, of course, still, it hurt to hear it. Typical Sebastian: sympathising while hurting, or the other way around. He was always double-edged, but she was still so certain he possessed a good heart. He just never thought before talking or acting.
“I eventually understood that I had to be more discreet to be accepted”, she went on. “So I blended. It worked, but too well I suppose. I was never adopted again, and now I’m too old”.
“What do you mean?”
“It’s … like pets? There are more chances to be adopted as a child. A child is cute, adorable. Nobody wants a troubled teenager. It also means I have to find a job quickly because when I turn sixteen, I’m not able to live in the orphanage anymore, and I will be in the street, alone, homeless and poor”.
She hugged her knees to have a semblance of reassurance. She was able to forget about all of that, with Professor Fig’s arrival in her room, their private lesson in the professor’s house, the goblin rebellion, ancient magic and so on. It was a heavy burden to bear, but she could just forget about her life for a moment, forget about her problem, forget about her.
“You won’t be alone. The professors know about this, right? And even if they can’t do anything, we don’t need them, we’ll figure something out”.
She smiled, a sad smile, before looking at him. In his eyes, she could see that determined spark, bright in his brown tender eyes. Who was she to take that away from him?
“You don’t believe me”, he stated, a bit disappointed.
“It’s not that”, she sighed. “I just know how it always ends. Every friend I could have and who were adopted all swore we wouldn’t become stranger. I never heard of them after that. I get it: they want to live their orphan life behind them, build something new. Once, former orphan came back, asking for a job. He went away without one. But before he went away, he told us that once we are out, we were alone”.
“In your Muggle world, maybe. But in our world, it’s different, better. We are better. I will help you, I swear. I just need to think of a way to do it, but it still easier than curing Anne. You’ll see, I’ll help you both, I won’t break my promise”.
Equally impetuous and adorable. Sebastian was not that different from her darling hippogriffs: proud, not always when he should be, loyal, sometimes to a terrifying point. She laughed, maybe it was her nerves breaking, maybe it was the immense overwhelming gratitude she was feeling. What did she do to deserve such a friend? She felt without realising she was crying tears on her cheeks. It was probably the nerves then.
Hesitantly, Sebastian came closer to her, put his arm around her shoulders and hugged her awkwardly. She nestled against him, crying without restrain.
“Maybe I should not promise anything”, he joked. “Not if I get this type of reaction”.
She laughed. Of course she laughed while crying when she was in his arms. Only him could do that. She pulled away from him, wiping off her tears and smiled at him.
“There, much better”, he said. “With a smile that pretty, it would be a shame if I couldn’t see it more.”
“What a charmer”.
“Tell me it’s not working!”
“Thanks”, she said more seriously. “I never spoke about it, to anyone”.
“Well then, that would be another one of our secrets. Only ours”.
She took her head out of the pensieve, her cheeks were wet, soaked. The liquid in pensieve never left a trace, nor was it damp. She put the memory in its phials hastily, closed it, locked the cabinet, and ran away [...].
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