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Beyond the shimmering silver light of the full moon lies a sight unlike anything that Helaine Blackmoore has ever seen before. She stands at the edge of the Black Lake. her blue eyes glistening with the luminescence of the water rippling mere feet away. Her hands clutch at the sleeves of her thick, woolen sweater, digging into the fabric to hang on to the small bit of sanity that she has left. The parts of her that haven’t already been ripped away by destruction and despair seem to now drift away, leaving her with the shifting tide.
She swallows against the tightness that builds in her throat. Her eyes blink, lashes batting away any sign of wetness that threatens to form. She knows that she can’t give in, can’t let herself come apart now, because she doesn’t have the strength to come back from it. After all, her adventure has come to an end, and no one dared to tell her what comes once the swords have been sheathed, the armor put away, and the bodies put to rest.
With a long, tired breath, Helaine lowers herself down onto the bank. She sits with her back to the grand castle that is Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Her crossed arms rest on top of her knees. She bows her head, hanging it low, letting the waves of her ashen hair fall like a curtain around her face.
She dares not to let her mind stray too far from her surroundings. The deeper her thoughts claw their way into her head, the harder her heart pounds against her ribcage.
Flashes of familiar faces run before her eyes. She closes them tight, squeezes them until the edges of her lashes bite at her cheeks. Still, the faces remain. Long, pointed ears, and a wrinkled smile that reaches round, kind eyes. She sees a cheshire grin, a tilted top hat and pure malice bleeding through every small twitch of the lips. She has lost so many friends, and she has defeated so many enemies. If only it were hard to keep count, but Helaine finds herself remembering every detail of their beings.
Victor Rookwood. Lodgok. Professor Fig.
Most memories are easy to forget with time. She can wish them away with thoughts of a better future, or breathe a sigh of relief knowing that the worst has already come to pass. Yet, the one memory that she cannot shake, no matter the time or the effort, is the memory of Sebastian Sallow. The young man who not only became one of her greatest friends, but who grew to be the object of her greatest fears.
As warm freckles cross her mind, and chestnut curls seem to brush against her fingertips, Helaine jerks herself upright. She slaps her hands over her face with an audible smack , the sound reverberating too loudly in the still of the night.
The feeling of her palms stinging her flesh sends a cathartic release pulsing through her body. Before she can stop herself, she is bringing them down hard against her flesh once again. She draws her hands back, her flesh still hot and angry from the last impact. With her jaw gritting tight, teeth clipping the edge of her tongue, she brings her hands down even harder, praying that it will fight off any thought that dares to plague her.
Her wrists come to a dead stop in mid-air, a tight strand of golden, slithering light binding them in place. It tightens until it tangles her hands together, pulling them down forcefully until they rest on top of her lap. The force of them thudding against her legs pushes her knees down with them, and Helaine finds herself sprawled against the damp grass, her long skirt the only protection between the skin of her legs and the ground.
She looks up wildly, searching the dark for any sign of the witch or wizard responsible.
It doesn’t take long for her desperate gaze to land on a figure. With his wand outstretched and beaming at the tip, two milky, swirling eyes staring in her general direction, Ominis Gaunt takes an unsteady step towards her.
“You have positively lost your mind,” the young man insists, gawking at her as though she were made of glass. “I suppose it isn’t terrible enough for me that I’ve lost my dearest friend this year. Now, I have to worry that you’re going to beat yourself into a padded cell in St. Mungo’s.”
Helaine’s body melts into relief. Her shoulders drop, both eyes following the pale blonde hair atop Ominis’ head as he strides closer to her. She lets her gaze rake across his figure, familiarizing herself. She notes the light moles scattered across his cheeks, the faded scars kissing his neck and arms. He has mostly undressed from the day, now in just his uniform button-up and slacks. He has both sleeves rolled up to his elbows, revealing his pale skin that practically mirrors the soft light of the moon above them.
“What are you doing out here?” is the only thing Helaine can think to say.
The young man scoffs, incredulous, twisting his wand in irritation. It forces the binds on her wrists to tighten, worming up the length of her forearms and curling around her fingers. “What do you think I’m doing out here?” he questions. “You don’t show up for dinner, no one has seen you when I get back to the Common Room. Did you expect me to just tuck myself into bed and happily sleep the night away?”
Helaine can feel her eyes softening. The corners of her lips relax, tugging into a weak grin. “No… I suppose not.”
Judging by the way his posture unwinds, her words seem to disarm Ominis. He presses his lips into a thin line, his brows furrowing so tightly that they nearly touch. Without another word, he crosses the distance between them, lowering himself down onto the grass at her side. Although the quiet, mourning glance he gives her betrays that he is no longer upset, the way his hand trembles on the base of his wand states otherwise.
“Ominis,” Helaine murmurs. She wriggles her trapped fingers beneath the glittering light entrapping her limbs. “Would you mind releasing me? I can promise you that your point has been made.”
The young man’s eyes—pale, and endless, as if filled with a million tattered cobwebs—draw up to the direction of her voice. His knuckles grow white on the dark, ebony base of his wand, strengthening his binding spell until it begins to cinch her flesh. Only when a quiet hiss spills from her lips does Ominis ease up a touch, but he does not break away. He keeps that swirling, golden light tied tightly around her.
“Maybe you have forgotten, but I am a Gaunt,” he whispers. “We can be rather cruel.”
The breathy scoff that leaves her lips does so in a puff of hot air. She tilts her head towards him, giving him a disbelieving shake of her head. “There are many things that you might be, Ominis, but cruel isn’t one of them.”
“I wasn’t. I mean- I didn’t want to be,” he insists. His gaze seems to darken, lingering over her face possessively. “I was never any good at saying no, but look where that has gotten me now.” His teeth grit, a pair of familiar, sharp canines flashing beneath his lips. “I’m going to make it a habit to start being cruller, both for my own good, and for yours.”
Helaine wants to argue against his words, to remind him that there isn’t a cruel bone in his body. Yet, her lips remain sealed, and her heart refuses to find the strength to meet him with kindness or humor. She stares down at the twinkling lights slithering along her fingers, rolling around her wrists like jeweled snakes. As she stares at them, the silence grows between them. It fills the air, dark and heavy, until it drowns her completely.
Then, Ominis sighs. His whitened knuckles relax, releasing his wand to the ground. As it falls to the grass between them, the spell disperses into a cloud of shimmering dust. Particles flutter to the ground, disappearing long before they touch.
“Not a single time,” he murmurs, “Not even once did either of you consider how all of this might make me feel. Never did you wonder if I lie awake at night, pulling at my hair, wondering if tomorrow would be the day that I lose you.” Those eyes, solid white and unseeing, shimmering like polished opal, hauntingly beautiful and filled with an otherworldly grace, now brim with unshed tears. “The day finally came that I lost Sebastian. The day will come when I will lose you too.”
“Ominis, I-” Helaine is cut down by a vicious warning from the young man at her side. His teeth bare like a wounded dog, grimacing at the very sound of her voice. It shuts her up faster than anything has before. It leaves her utterly speechless.
“It’s too late, Helaine,” Ominis tells her, and the words feel like acid in her heart. “I have resigned myself to the fact that you will always be two steps ahead. While I sit in class, reading my boring books on alchemy, you will be on the wings of a hippogriff saving the world.” He reaches down to grab her hand lightly, giving it a reassuring squeeze. “I am so sorry, but I can’t spend every night of my life waiting for you to come back to me.”
Helaine sits frozen in place, the weight of Ominis's words settling in like a stone in her chest. His apology, though gentle, feels like a bitter betrayal of all the unspoken promises she has made to him, ones she hadn’t even realized she’d already broken until now. She can feel the gulf between them, wide and deep, as though their friendship has been fraying at the edges for some time, and she has only noticed now… Now, when it is already too late. She has always been so focused on the next adventure, the next quest, the next challenge, the next person who needs saving.
She has never stopped to consider the quiet, constant presence that Ominis has been in her life. He has always been there, steadfast and reliable, and she has been too blind to see it. She has let herself get swept away in her own world of danger and heroism, never thinking about how it tore at him, waiting in the shadows, always second to whatever or whoever needed her most.
Now, as his words echo in her mind, she realizes the painful truth: she has taken him for granted. Ominis is right. She has never let him be anything more than a backdrop to her whirlwind life, a background character while she plays the lead role. And now, in the aftermath of her selfishness, she hangs on the precipice of losing him forever.
The tears well up in her eyes, not only from the sting of his departure, but from the overwhelming sense of guilt that tightens around her heart. She has ruined something beautiful, something that might have lasted if only she had been present, if only she had paused long enough to listen.
It’s as she sits quietly, the warmth of Ominis’ fingers gripping her own, that she is struck by the realization that not a day in her life has been worth losing him.
As the young man at her side begins to pull his palm away, she tightens her grip. Helaine thrusts her hand down to the wand sticking out of her long, wool sock. She points it to their hands, mumbling the words of some small charm she hasn’t used since learning it for the first time in her third year at Hogwarts.
A sharp surge of energy bursts from the tip of the wand, and in an instant, thick, emerald vines shoot forth with a life of their own. They snake forward, curling and twisting with a quiet urgency. The first vine wraps around their hands, constricting just enough to send a tingle of raw magic through their skin, before branching upwards. The vines climb swiftly, encircling their wrists with a gentle yet unyielding pressure, tightening ever so slightly, as though urging them to stay bound.
The vines continue their journey, creeping up their forearms, across their shoulders, and down their spines. With each twist, the tendrils grow tighter, their rough, living texture brushing against their skin, leaving a faint trail of warmth in their wake. Helaine feels the magic pulse in the air around them, a subtle hum, until the vines converge around their bodies. They coil together, drawing them closer, until Helaine finds herself pressed chest to chest with the young man at her side.
Their breath mingles in the space between them, soft and quick, as they sit on the ground, tangled up with no hopes of escape. Helaine’s pulse races, the sensation of being trapped, yet held, sending an unexpected thrill through her. The vines continue their silent grip, unrelenting in their pull, until they are perfectly in sync, their fates tied together by the tendrils of magic she has cast.
Ominis wriggles against his bindings to no avail. With a defeated huff, he drops his head against her shoulder, letting himself be drawn into her fully. “You have to let me go, Helaine,” he whispers. “We both know that the life I have isn’t the life you need.”
With shaking hands, Helaine drops her own head down against Ominis’ throat. She turns her lips towards his flesh, placing a light kiss across the hollow beneath his chin. “I won’t let you go,” she insists. “I don’t care what it takes, but I won’t let you go.”
Ominis remains still for a moment, his breath unsteady, the words hanging between them like a fragile thread. The warmth of Helaine’s lips against his skin sends a shock of something tender and electric through him, but the weight of her words is heavier than any spell. Helaine can see that he knows the depth of her feelings, the fire in her heart that burns bright enough to consume everything in its path. But she can also see that there is a part of him that still believes he isn’t the one she needs, that his life of shadows and solitude will only weigh her down.
“I don’t know if I can take it, Helaine,” he whispers, voice low and hoarse. “You deserve someone who can walk beside you, not someone who will always be left behind.”
Helaine's heart clenches. Her grip on him tightens, the vines around them pulsing, as if in time with her emotions. She pulls back slightly, enough to look him in the eye, and in that instant, the world outside fades away. There’s only Ominis and the quiet truth of the moment.
“I’m not asking you to follow me, Ominis,” she says softly, her voice steady. “I’m asking you to be with me. Here. Now. I don’t need you to be anyone else. Because without you, none of this means anything.”
A flicker of something changes in Ominis’ expression, uncertainty mixed with something else. A vulnerability that, until now, he’s kept buried deep inside. His breath catches, his chest rising and falling with a slow, almost reluctant understanding.
“I don’t know how to be that for you,” he admits, but the words are no longer as resolute, no longer as sure.
Helaine smiles, a faint, sad curve of her lips, as she leans in to rest her forehead against his. “Then we’ll learn together,” she says softly, her voice a gentle promise. “We’ll figure it out. Step by step.”
The vines, their silent grip, seem to soften around them as if responding to the sincerity in her words. The magic is no longer a force that binds them in a frantic rush, but something more grounded, more tender.
For the first time in a long while, Ominis seems to get a glimmer of hope in his milky eyes. He shifts slightly, moving closer, allowing himself to breathe in the quiet warmth of her presence. “Together,” he echoes, the word tasting different on his tongue, as though the possibility of it is finally sinking in.
And in that moment, surrounded by the green tendrils that had once pulled them together with urgency, there is only stillness. Only the quiet connection between them. Helaine knows, deep in her bones, that they still have so much to face, but for now, in this fragile, fleeting moment, it’s enough.
She won’t let him go. Not now, not ever. And somehow, for the first time in a long time, she feels that she’s being completely honest with herself.