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You knew what that boggart was going to become while waiting in the queue professor Hecat had ordered all of you to get in. Even if you tried to let as many people before you as you could manage without it looking suspicious, it didn’t give you enough time to mentally prepare, really.
As soon as you stepped forward, the sickening entity started shifting, like a drop of ink left to sing in water. A hiss is the first thing that manages to make you step back. The shape became clearer, long and wriggling non stop, covered in giant black scales that shone individually, and never seemed to rest in the same place. The grip on your wand is so hard that you were starting to worry your handle would break. Then it opened its mouth, showing its very large and pointy set of teeth with a much more audible hiss and you had to clench your jaw to hold back a scream. Shivering uncontrollably you somehow managed to cast the Riddikulus spell,only being able to breathe again once the giant snake became a hose.
People did not seem to notice how deeply rooted your fear ran. Not until your eyes and Sebastian's meet. The purely evil smile he wore was for sure a forecast for the torment he was already planning. You just ignored him, trying to salvage as much dignity as you could, while hiding the utter embarrassment you were feeling.
The attempt of a quick escape after class was frustrated when Sebastian just appeared out of nowhere from behind you, held you close by putting his arm on your shoulders, and guided you to the Undercroft. Ominis followed close, sighing deeply.
“Sebastian.” His tone indicated this was a warning.
The metallic door to the room closed with an echo. The mess of stone walls, ceilings and floors, boxes and all other kinds of stuff scattered through the alcove was now as familiar to you as your own common room.
“What? I haven’t done anything!” He released you, and you took a moment to straighten your robes. Trying to look more offended than fearful.
“What is the matter Sebastian?” You did not think feigning ignorance would help you, but you were out of options. He just started to laugh. Loudly. “Hey!”
“Come on! Don’t tell me it’s not funny! You are afraid of snakes. SNAKES!” His laugh just got louder. “A quarter of the school wears them on their robes, not to talk about the hundreds or thousands of statues, murals and decorations all over the castle!” Sebastian was having trouble talking and laughing at the same time.
“Didn’t know you knew what a quarter meant.”
“Oh, no missy, you don’t get to change topics.” Fuck. “WE are in Slytherin. This one particularly.” He pointed to Ominis who was seemingly restless. Not able to stand still.“Can actually speak to snakes.”
“Sebastian, that’s enough.” He finally approached the two of you.
“It’s not that bad, really. I can endure drawings and sculptures, it’s mostly the movement tha-“ Something climbed onto your shoulder, long and slender. You tried to shake it off, screaming your head off, backing up into a pile of boxes that made you lose your balance.
Only once you were on the ground, heart still pounding in your ears and trembling uncontrollably, you realized Sebastian was pointing his wand to… a rope. You were sure that if he’d seen the look you just gave him he’d be at least half as scared as you, but unfortunately for you, he was too occupied cry-laughing.
“SEBASTIAN! It’s not funny! STOP.” You could feel your body going into overdrive. Adrenaline had kicked in and your trembles were not letting you stand up. You were really trying not to let the tears that started to pool your eyes fall. Breathing was hard, it hurt, it burned.
“Sebastian, stop.” Ominis grabbed him by the shoulder. Making him actually pay attention to you.
“Oh.” You could not see them clearly anymore, the tears making everything blurry. You were really trying to breathe, but your lungs seemed to not know how to expand. “Oh Merlin, I’m- Are you okay?”
With the little composure you were left with and a little help from the wall, you rose to your feet. Still feeling wobbly, you dried your tears, and tried to breath in and out slowly.
“Happy now?” Ominis walked to your side. His obvious doubt of how he could best help you made clear by the way his left hand did not know where to best approach you from, while his right one held his wand. Endearment made your own thought process a bit less frantic.
“I didn’t know it was this bad!” Sebastian also hurried up and came closer too, not as close as Ominis.
“You could have ASKED.” Your voice was hoarse. The scream from before probably had something to do with it. You located a wooden bench next to you, and as soon as you walked towards it, Ominis was next to you, offering himself as a support, you took his arm, while he guided you.
“You really chose the worst way to learn that information.” Once you were seated, he just stood next to you, his hand sometimes brushing against your shoulder.
“Well I can think of a couple of worse ways…” He looked at Ominis and then at you, but when neither seemed to entertain the thought he continued talking. “Like if Ominis had transformed into his animal form in any other situation! That would be worse! Right?”
What?
“What?”
“Sebastian.” Ominis did not raise his voice, he barely moved, and you could not see his expression because he was in front of you and he wasn’t even talking to you but you felt a sudden gust of freezing cold cut through you when he talked.
“Oh. Right.” It was weird seeing Sebastian so suddenly taken aback. It almost felt like Ominis had slapped him across his face. “You didn’t know.”
“Wait.” Information started to settle in. “Ominis, you are an animagi?”
He did not turn immediately. But he did eventually. Foggy eyes looking past you.
“It was the condition my family concocted to try and prevent me from going to Feldcroft with Anne and Sebastian last Christmas.” There was something in his expression beneath the obvious disdain for his family, but you couldn’t put your finger into it.
“They thought he would not be able to do it. But of course Ominis Gaunt would be. And, of course, Anne and I tried too, but I could not even keep my mandrake leaf in my mouth for a day, let alone a month. Anne understood she would rather not risk the possibility of being turned into a fruit fly or something like that not long after that.”
Every time Sebastian spoke about Anne his grin turned into a soft smile, it wasn’t easy to remain angry at him when he did that. You took a deep breath. Something was building in the depths of your gut. An icky feeling that started to expand.
“So… You can… Turn into a snake. At will.”
“…Yes.”
Something happened after that conversation. Your body started to betray you. Every time Ominis appeared without you being prepared you would jolt. A torrent of sudden fear going through you. Same thing when he came close. Like when he handed some ingredients in potions class, and you almost dropped them when your hands touched.
It was frustrating, and totally not voluntary. You tried to stop it, with no luck. Just a couple of weeks before that you’ve been delighted to see you’ve been paired up for potions. You would approach him any time you found him roaming through the castle, just to enjoy his company. You need to remind yourself that you should not look at him constantly and stop your hands from reaching for his hands, his hair, his hair, his lips…
Now the thought of doing that… only led to imagining you’d suddenly find a snake between your hands.
The worst thing? He knew. He never told you anything, but you felt him distance himself from you, and that thought was breaking your heart.
One sleepless night you decided it was enough.
You could not let an irrational fear take Ominis away from you.
Not like this.
He did not deserve to be treated that way, and you were intent on resolving that, starting the very next day.
You found him in one of his usual spots while Sebastian was researching something in the library, a bench near the stained glass near the defense against the dark arts classroom. Your heart started acting up. By this point knowing if it was because you liked him or you feared him was a mystery you could not find answers to.
“Ominis.”
It was quite rare to see him surprised.
“Yes?”
“May I talk to you? In the Undercroft.”
It took a moment for him to get up. He took his wand, but did not step forward.
“After you.” One thing you’ve learned after some time of knowing Ominis, was his softness. He took care of the ones who he cared for. And that, now includes you. But you needed to confront something, and it would not work by avoiding it forever.
“No, after you.” You barely moved. There was nowhere else to go, he needed to walk next to you to get to the stairs. This was your trial test, you’d decided.
“Are you sure?” The fact that he needed to ask for permission to just walk next to you almost made you cry. You missed what you had so much.
You were going to fix it.
“Yes.”
He slowly approached you. Your breath became shaky. Cold sweat made you almost take a step back.
You didn’t.
Ah, you missed his smell so much. Clean and expensive, but with a cozy twist that overpowered it. Your hands fidget together, searching for comfort, without taking your eyes from him. Concentrating on his smell, and the good memories linked to it, he got past you, and started walking up the stairs.
“Are you not coming?”
“Oh! Yes.” Walking next to him was still a bit difficult, but you managed going just behind him until the Undercroft.
The last time you’d been there was the one where you discovered he was an animagi, you realize. Your fear had been unconsciously making you go to the library, the common room and the room of requirement. The thought angers you. The fact that something had so much control of what you were doing without you noticing how bad it had become really messed with you.
“So, what did you want to talk about?” He was looking away from you. Just reaching the center of the room.
“I am afraid of you.” His footsteps stopped suddenly. “And I don’t want to be.”
“And how do you propose to fix that? Once you become an animagi there is no going back.” He put his wand away. Ominis did not need it there. He’d memorized the space, and where everything was located. That’s why even if the interior decorating was not of your taste, you would never say a thing.
“No! I would never ask something like that.” Breathe in, breathe out. You walked closer to him. “I have a phobia, I’m irrationally fearful of snakes.”
“Snakes can be dangerous. I don’t know if I would call that irrational.” His shoulders drooped and his voice was low, and soft.
“But you are not! I know you would never hurt me.” You took another step, and before you could be scared, you gripped one of the sleeves of his robe. “And I need your help to remind the irrational part of my body that. Please. I don’t want to lose you.” Your voice started to get quiet mid sentence, until the last part was barely a whisper. But you were sure he heard you, he always did.
“How may I help?” You let out the breath you were holding. There it was, the soft, sweet and doting Ominis you knew. Facing you directly. Even if the pang of fear was still there.
“I think… I think I need to see you as a snake.”
“Isn’t that too much?” His eyebrows furrowed.
“If I see… what for my fear would be the “worst case scenario” and understand that it is not that bad… I think It would help me. To be honest, Slytherin motives did unnerve me at first, but the more I saw them, I… got used to them. I think I need to do the same.” He did not seem convinced. “I’ll tell you if it is too much. I promise.”
“Are you sure about this?”
Your grip on his robes softened, slowly inching to his hand, and you grabbed one of his fingers. Maybe that was too much, because you were shaking again. You kept your hand there anyways.
“Yes. I will not be in any danger. It’s just you. In the Undercroft. I know that. And at the same time I need to learn that.”
You released your hold from him, and he finally completely faced you.
“Okay. How are we going to do this?”
He was standing in the middle of the room, while you sat down on the floor, back against the wall where the passageway to Isidoras house was. He would transform there, and come closer and closer once you’d ask for it.
“I hope you are as certain of this as you sound.”
“Oh, I’m terrified. And I want to run away. But I feel there is no other way…” You took several deep breaths. “Go ahead.”
It was quicker than what you expected where once Ominis stood, now something resembling a knot sat on the floor… but he moved, untangling himself. You tried to get back when you saw the head of a massive snake pop out between the rest of the body, but there was no way to go.
He did not mention he was not only a snake, but a MASSIVE one. Mostly creamy yellow, with light brown patches lined with dark brown. He rearranged his other body so his head was a bit higher than the rest and he was completely visible.
He was mostly still. You could think that he was one of the statues representing the Slytherin house.
“Okay, you can come closer.”
That was a bad idea. When he moved, he wasn’t a statue anymore. He moved like a snake, obviously. And that made your pulse skyrocket.
“Stop!”
Not only did he stop, but he froze in place.
“Sorry, sorry… Maybe moving directly towards me was too much for the start… Can you… move, but just there?” You hug yourself, trying to recover the heat your body seemed to have expelled.
His head rose again, and nodded. It was such a human gesture, it reminded you that that was, in fact, a wizard, capable of understanding what you were saying. Now that his body was extended you could see the length of it. It was certainly longer than you. Twice over. Maybe more. He started gathering it around himself.
“Are you… cold?” Maybe if you could see the human behind the snake it would calm you down.
He shook his head.
“What if you stayed like that for a long time? In here I mean.”
Nod.
“Okay… I’ll try and make it short…”
He shook his head, harder. That made you snicker.
“You are going to get dizzy. You know we can continue tomorrow, right? If you get cold just go back, I understand.”
He didn’t really move.
“I need a yes to continue. I’m not doing this if it’s bad for you.”
You could almost see the exasperation and reticence on the nod he gives you.
“Okay… Get closer… slower, please.”
His head lowers to the ground, and starts slithering towards you. The movement makes you uneasy again. But this time you can manage.
When he stops he is more or less a meter away from you. From this distance you find out that his head is more or less the size of your hand. But the thing that strikes you, is that his eyes are the same. Like smoky quartz with an underlying blue tone.
You didn’t think they would be different. But at the same time you weren’t expecting it. This was Ominis. Your Ominis. Sweet and soft Ominis, who would never hurt you.
Then you thought about something. You started to fear Ominis because he could turn into a snake. But this snake, could turn into Ominis.
“I… I want to try something.”
You scooted closer. He lowered his head. Maybe trying to seem smaller. Which was not really possible, especially at this distance. You sat just in front of him.
Extending the back of your hand to his… Neck? Body? you were not sure, but it was near enough from his head, you let one of your fingers softly grace him in a downward motion. He was surprisingly soft. At this distance, some of the dark brown scales that were not circling his brown spots seemed like beauty marks. More reminders that this was Ominis.
He leaned against your touch. Not too much.
“Come closer.”
After a bit of consideration, he did as you told him. Moving on top of your crossed legs, curling into them with part of his body. He was heavy. And obviously did not fit only there. So he started surrounding you, but stopped and looked at you from your lap.
“It’s okay, I’m doing okay. Get comfortable.”
And so he did. He surrounded your waist, and one of your legs with the rest of his body, while his head rested on your lap. You softly caressed the top of it with the back of your right hand, he accepted the touch.
You could not believe what you were doing.The image of Ominis resting on your lap while you run your fingers through his dark blonde hair was helping much more than you could ever have imagined.
But then you accidentally placed your left hand on his body.
You could feel the strong muscles needed to move and coil that enormous body. And the fear was back again. You could still control your breathing, but not for long. His scales shifted in a nauseating pattern while he moved. He was all around you, he could strangle you if he wanted to.
But he did not. In fact he… booped your hand, for lack of a better word, with his nose, and then looked in your direction. It was him, again. This was Ominis. You closed your eyes, imagining him. His voice, his hands, the way he fell asleep next to you in History of Magic, the way he reached out for your help when everything started to crumble around him. And then you opened them again.
“Thank you. I’m okay again.” With a last pet to his head, you took your hand away. “But I think I’m exhausted… Can we continue tomorrow?”
He nodded, and proceeded to untangle himself from you. It was a bit of an excuse. You were tired. But wanted to try something out. He got away from you, and you tried to get up with legs that seemed made out of jelly.
He was Ominis again when you looked up.
“Are you okay?” Oh, how much you had missed his voice. You got up and looked at him.
There was no fear. Not of him.
”Thank you, truly.” You approached him. Now it was easy.
“I was not the one having a hard time.”
“I did not think myself capable of half of that. But I did it, didn’t I?”
“You did.” You could not keep yourself from smiling. Pride giving you courage for going one step further.
“Can I ask you one last thing?”
“Go ahead.”
“Can I touch you?”
“Yes.” He did not hesitate. In fact, he responded so quickly and firmly that your felt warmth creep to your ears.
You step closer to him. And put your hands on his shoulders. Then you start to slowly descend, running them across his arms. He just lets you do, slightly tilting his head. When you reach his hands you raise them slightly, inspecting how his palm, knuckles and fingers feel. They are soft, bigger than yours.
Releasing them slowly, you move to his shoulders once again. This time raising up, cupping his face while you ran your thumbs through his cheeks. He closes his eyes with a content sigh and brings his own hands to cover yours.
“I think it worked.” You don’t really go back, why would you? You are perfectly content feeling his soft skin and looking at that handsome face he has.
Suddenly he moves. He embraces you, presses you against him, his face now resting on the crook of your neck. Your hands are trapped behind him, but when you feel his grip on your clothes getting desperate, wanting to bring you closer, but unable to, you hug his neck, letting one of your hands run through his hair.
“I was so scared…” His voice is shaky.
“I’m sorry…”
He pulls back just enough so you could see his expression. He does not seem to want to let go. Not yet at least.
“It wasn’t your fault!” You feel him take a deep breath. “It was nobody’s fault. And that was driving me mad. I didn’t know what I could do to prevent you from literally running away from me.”
“I’m sorry it took so long to come up with this.”
He shifts, taking your face in his hands. Eyes narrowing.
“Stop saying “I’m sorry” when you clearly did nothing wrong.”
“Oh, I’m-“
He kisses you before you can continue. A little to the left, but course-corrects himself while moving one of his hands to your waist. Keeping the other one where it was. He is soft, his lips are soft and his movements are soft.
Your heart picks its pace, but this time it’s not because of fear. It feels so good it almost hurts.
As fast as it starts it ends. His pale cheeks are dusted with pink.
“Stop. Or I’ll do it again.”
You smirk.Opportunities like that one are not to be wasted.
“Oh, then… I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” His smile is so warm. Probably yours. His thumb searches for your lips. “I’m sorry, I’m so-“
He kissed you again, with more confidence this time. You lean into him, and pull him towards you. You could just stay like that. He recoils a bit, but just does it again. And again. And again. Each time it gets better, and less calculated. More instinctual, experimental. He licks your lower lip, while his hand on your face moves towards the back of your neck. A sigh escapes you, and that seems to do something in him, you sense him shiver and try to pull you even closer, even if you are as close as you could be.
The gears of the door to the Undercroft started to spin, but did not immediately understand what it meant. Your head not really prepared to stop thinking about anything other than how warm his tongue was. Ominis did, he took a step back with a sigh, leaving ole last peck on your lips. Not getting away from you. Not wanting to conceal this information from his best friend.
“I believe I interrupted something here… didn’t I?”
You could feel the heat in your cheeks and ears. Sebastian just stood in front of the door.
“Whatever gave you that idea?” Ominis turns towards him, while taking your hand. He’s smiling in a way that makes you very aware of what you two were doing not even a couple of seconds ago.
“Don’t know, just a hunch.” Sebastian’s grin while looking at you with knowing eyes made you even more self conscious of the situation. Ah, you hated to be in such a vulnerable position. He was going to mess with you for a long time… “Oh, I completely forgot… something. I’ll be back in a bit.”
“Thank you, Sebastian.” Ominis’ tone is warm,
When his friend leaves, he turns to face you again. His thumb runs through the hand he is holding.
“I don’t believe such a strong fear can just be cured in barely half an hour. So, would you be a dear and tell me what I should prevent myself from doing to avoid scaring you?”
You think so too. But you were determined to make it work. You doubt you’ll ever lose your fear to real snakes, but if it was him, you felt it was possible. Slowly, you surround him with your arms, not wanting to be apart from him any more time after having been unintentionally avoiding him for such a long time.
“I think I’ll need more… training, to get used to your snake form. This went well, but If at any time you’ve opened your mouth or hissed I would have had a really hard time.” You try to hide your face on his shoulder. He can’t see your expression, but you can’ avoid feeling a bit embarrassed for asking for his help in such a difficult topic.
“So no romantic nothings whispered in parseltongue I assume?”
You jerk your head backwards, and look at him, alarmed.
“Ominis!” You’ve missed this mischievous side of him. But that did not mean he would get a free pass on picking on you.
His soft chuckle reverberates through your body and makes you feel like you are melting.
“Forgive me, it was very tempting.” He kisses your forehead. Yeah, he did get a free pass this time, since he was being so convincing. “May I guess that that means I can approach you while I’m in my human form then?”
“I hope you do.”
“That’s all I need to know.”
When he kisses you again, you feel warm, and safe.