𝐈𝐍 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐒𝐇𝐀𝐃𝐎𝐖 𝐎𝐅 𝐌𝐀𝐆𝐈𝐂 || 𝐒𝐄𝐁𝐀𝐒𝐓𝐈𝐀𝐍 𝐒𝐀𝐋𝐋𝐎𝐖

Chapter Twenty-Four: On our own

Chapter Twenty-Four

After Sebastian and Anne had reconciled, Esme, Ominis, and Matty returned to the Undercroft. Matty managed to convince Sebastian that it was time for him to go to the Hospital wing and get treated for his injury by Nurse Blainey. Splinching was no joke and the injuries caused by it could be fatal if not treated properly. That is if you got lucky enough to only splinched off a bit of your body.

Esme and Ominis made sure Anne got the food they had swiped from the tables while Matty accompanied Sebastian up to the hospital wing.

Nurse Blainey was shocked to see Sebastian's injury. Immediately, she knew that it was an apparition accident and asked them what on earth had happened to Sebastian that made him get splinched. She knew Sebastian learned apparition long before his seventh year when they actually taught it in school and he had never come into the hospital wing for an injury for it before.

Sebastian had to come up with a dumb excuse as a cover-up by saying it was just an accidental apparition too soon. Nurse Blainey didn't buy it, but she didn't press any further with more questions.

Sebastian left with quite a few stitches and a stern talking to from Nurse Blainey to be more careful when it came to apparition. Matty and Sebastian quickly agreed so that they could get out of there.

Now the use of where they could keep Anne needed to be solved. They couldn't just keep her in the Undercroft but they also couldn't let her roam the school. The entire reason she was down here in the first place was because it would cause a ruckus if she was seen around. After much discussion of it, it was decided that she'd stay at the house in Feldcroft and they would put a protection charm up around the house to prevent anything like this from happening again. And since Anne still needed to be cared for, her being closer made it much easier.

"I left my wand at Mrs. Aves's house... And everything else." Anne said with a sigh.

Well, it wasn't like she had much of a choice, anyway. One minute she was peacefully resting upstairs and the next thing she knew, poachers had broken in, killed Mrs. Aves, and taken her away from the home, putting her in a filthy cell. It wasn't like she had any time to grab her belongings.

"I know, I went to the house with Ominis," Sebastian replied. "I'm going back there to take care of things and to inform Mrs. Aves's family of the news."

Anne frowned a bit. Mrs. Aves had been so kind to her and now that she was dead, it hurt. The kindest people always suffered the worst deaths. That fact had also been made obvious to Matty as of late. Why were the innocent treated so poorly? She had no idea. People were just entirely too cruel, she supposed.

But all of this came down to an even bigger problem. Rookwood's poachers were back under a new handler, they were kidnapping and enslaving goblins and were definitely targeting someone between Sebastian, Ominis, Esme, and Matty. That was made clear when Anne was kidnapped. She had little to no close association with anyone else outside of that group. And there was still the matter of the writing on the note about bringing a girl in exchange for Anne's freedom. It was still a mystery.

Matty was trying to draw conclusions to anything she could think of but nonetheless, nothing came to her mind. She didn't know of the storm that was brewing and moving in on them.

To take advantage of the little time they had, they were split up into two groups to tackle the issues they had. Sebastian and Esme were going to stay back and take Anne to the house in Feldcroft and Ominis and Matty were going to go to the Ministry and report about what had happened out in the forest. The Ministry definitely needed to hear about that.