#solomon sallow

[girl-named-matty]

And for a moment if you ever thought I stopped hating Solomon Sallow... No I didn't.

[yourpersonalsleepparalysisdemon]

[giselsann]

Solomon: What is this? ... This was your idea, not Sebastian?

Sebastian: and?

[ps-cactus]

[konstantin-mc-hl]

BANG BANG BANG meme🕺

After Sebastian's last quest.

MC: I hope you have regrets.

Sebs: I regret it every second 🕺.

Hope you like it ☺️

And the gif as a gift

[barnabyjr]

too sweet: sebastian x reader

word count: ~1,100 tags/warnings: seventh-year/post-hogwarts, not house-specific (hinted towards hufflepuff), they/them pronouns | slight angst, slight fluff, sunshine x grumpy, adult seb & mc summary: sebastian muses on his relationship with mc, ultimately believing that they are just too good for someone like him

Sebastian had never bothered with the hopeful ideals that cluttered his twin sister’s brain, always ignored the people who felt the need to chime in with their cliche aphorisms at any sign of trouble. What use were empty words when they did nothing to solve anything?

A sardonic point of view, perhaps, but a realistic one.

It was that cynical perspective that had dictated all of Sebastian’s actions; he’d never waited for the opportune moment or accepted the idea that every terrible thing that had happened to him was for a reason. Things just happened, he knew, and if you wanted anything- well, you just had to go and take it.

​

He’d lived like that for so long, throwing caution to the wind and acting on every single impulse. Sebastian wasn’t hedonistic, obviously, but Anne always had to remind him to think before acting. To the young Slytherin, there was no practical use for hope when your entire world could come crashing down at any moment.

​

You, however, had a different mindset.

​

To Sebastian, the folks in the Highlands who were constantly flagging you down to find their lost Kneazle or settle a dispute with their cousin were taking advantage of your generous nature. To you, time was never wasted on a good deed or a kind gesture.

​

You were the first to reach for a Wiggenweld potion at the sign of an injured classmate, always encouraging your friends and supporting them in their endeavors. The professors loved you- there was no better person to be called the Hero of Hogwarts than the one who so wholeheartedly devoted their attention to the well-being of others.

​

You were the bright sunshine that ceaselessly tried to peak through the shadowy trees of the Forbidden Forest, willing to spread light in even the darkest of places.

​

It was this sentiment that ate at him, your differing outlooks on life. He felt as if he were another dank cave for you to brighten up with a single utterance of Lumos.

​

You were just too good for such a pathetic man as him.

​

Tragedy had dictated Sebastian’s life; the accidental deaths of his parents, Anne’s incurable sickness from that awful ancient curse, and of course…

​

No, his unhealthy obsession with the Dark Arts could not be excused by anything that had happened to him in his past; there was no coming back from an Unforgivable Curse once you’d used it.

​

Those thoughts gnawed at him each night, the night terrors so vivid that he’d felt he was reliving each moment his choices hurt someone he loved.

​

It was bad enough that he had cast Crucio on you in the Scriptorium, though you constantly reminded him that it was either that or death. He knew deep down that you had to mean it for the spell to work, and the idea that he had wanted to hurt you--even for the sake of saving your life--destroyed him.

​

Sebastian wouldn’t have blamed you if you’d never spoken to him again, if you’d given up on helping him find a cure for his ailing sister. But no, you stood by him the entire time.

​

You’d watched Sebastian murder a man- you stood there helpless as he cast the Killing Curse at his uncle, Inferi surrounding and your powers drained. You couldn’t stop him at that moment; it had been too late for you to try to protect Sebastian from himself.

​

What made someone as good-natured as you forgive him after such a terrible act? Why were you still keeping this secret for him, keeping him away from the fate that awaited him in Azkaban?

​

Solomon had been dead for two years now, though Sebastian experienced his death--no, murder--on a nightly basis. With Anne safely hidden from him somewhere in England, and Ominis still keeping his former best friend at arm’s length, you were the only one willing to support Sebastian.

​

Not only that, you’d fallen in love with him.

​

A shell of a sixteen-year-old- a boy who only had an abandoned house in Feldcroft to his name, who would be hiding the true nature of his uncle’s untimely death for the rest of his life.

​

Sebastian was broken, but you’d helped put him back together.

​

Throughout the summer, you’d visited him there in his empty childhood home for weeks at a time, holding each other through sleepless nights as the nightmares took over. You’d ignored the whispers that swept the small hamlet, rumors of indelicacies and impropriety, and built a small garden to give Sebastian a distraction.

​

When you returned to Hogwarts together for your sixth-year, it was obvious to everyone that your friendship had been irrevocably changed.

​

Lines had been blurred in Feldcroft, though nothing indecent came from it, and platonic companionship turned to something more. His little crush on you had deepened, and it was no longer something he could ignore.

​

Sebastian was shocked that you agreed to his offer of courtship.

​

It had been a long time coming, especially considering how much time you’d spent alone together. Sebastian had blurted the question out as soon as the idea came to him, quickly adding that he wanted to be a gentleman and respect your decency.

​

He’d no idea yet how much you loved him, how you had longed for him to see your intimate friendship as a foundation to build a future on.

​

It was your optimistic attitude, your belief that there was something good inside of him, that clouded your judgment, Sebastian thought. The intensity of his feelings for you, strengthened by the forgiveness that you’d shown him, softened his own perceptions.

​

If someone like you could love him despite everything he’d done to prove himself unworthy of your trust, your protection, then maybe he wasn’t such a bad person.

​

At least, not anymore.

​

It mattered that he’d hurt those around him, you included, and it was important for him to make amends. He needed to leave behind the pessimism, the self-loathing. Of course he didn’t deserve you, he thought, but he could.

​

---

​

Sitting there in his garden, Sebastian watched as you delicately picked up a daffodil, the diamond on your engagement ring sparkling as you touched the flower’s white petals. The last rays of sunlight for the day made your figure glow, a golden halo shining behind you.

​

Sebastian stood, ignoring the dirt on his hands, and swept you into a fierce hug; he tightened the embrace as your arms slid around his waist, giving you a soft kiss on the crown of your head. You felt like home.

Maybe Sebastian didn’t deserve this beautiful life he now had, but that wouldn’t stop him from following in your footsteps and trying to be a better person every day.

[littlejony]

[libellule-ao3]

☕️ + your opinion on the “if not for me then for anne” line 👁️👁️

Hello, 🥰I love this question, and I may have got a little carried away with my answer! 😅 Which probably won’t surprise anyone who reads me regularly! 😂 I just hope it won’t come across as too confused. In any case, thank you for asking. (As usual, this is only my personal interpretation, and you’re completely free to have a different one.)

To me, the line “if not for me, then for Anne” is very powerful because it expresses so much in so few words.

It is, at the same time, pressure placed on MC, a way for Sebastian to escape the judgement being placed on him, and a form of self-effacement.

It is even rather unhealthy, because it turns love into leverage and blurs the line between asking, insisting, and guilt-tripping: if MC refuses, it can feel as though they are refusing to help a sick, doomed girl. That is a very hard thing to carry. 💔

But at the same time, I don’t feel that he does it in a cold or calculating way. I see it more as the words of a desperate teenager who no longer knows how to make his suffering heard otherwise.

Within his family, Sebastian doesn’t really seem to have any space where he can say: “I’ve already lost my parents, and I’m terrified of losing my sister too”, “I’m suffering”, “I can’t bear to just stand by and do nothing.” I also imagine he doesn’t want to burden Anne with his own distress when she is already suffering so much.

As for Solomon, with whom Sebastian has always had a conflicted relationship, he mostly responds with prohibition, discipline, resignation, and guilt. Solomon, whom I see as unfit to raise children because he has too many demons of his own to deal with, offers him no safe emotional framework. He does not even seem to recognise Sebastian’s distress as legitimate.

He never really shows empathy for his nephew, whom he does not see as a grieving orphan, but as “his father’s son” - the son of a man for whom he still feels animosity, even after his death. Solomon never has a single word of comfort for Sebastian. Instead, what does he tell him? That his efforts are useless, naïve, and even harmful.

And the Shrivelfig scene illustrates that perfectly, imo. To me, it was a naïve but rather sweet attempt to relieve Anne’s pain, even if only temporarily. Even if the remedy’s effectiveness was laughable, it was not dangerous. On the contrary, Anne seemed genuinely touched by the gesture, and Sebastian could, for a brief moment, feel useful in circumstances where he is mostly forced to face his own helplessness.

But Solomon completely destroys that dynamic by crushing the shrivelfig in front of them. In doing so, he does not merely destroy an ineffective remedy: he destroys a gesture of love and comfort between the twins. And their faces in that moment break my heart every time I rewatch the scene. 😭

Because of his uncle, and probably other adults to a lesser extent, Sebastian has internalised the idea that his own pain does not really have value. When he speaks on his own behalf, he is seen as impulsive, stubborn, insolent, or dangerous. So, with “if not for me”, he erases himself. It is almost as if he were saying: “Fine, don’t do it for me, if my suffering is not legitimate enough for you.”

Then, with “then for Anne”, he places his sister at the centre of everything, because Anne is the only reason others are supposed to accept. And by doing so, he also shifts the grounds of judgement: it is no longer only him, his relentlessness, his choices, or his methods being judged, but Anne’s suffering and the possibility of saving her. Any criticism of Sebastian can then be presented as a lack of compassion towards her.

I also think Anne represents everything he is in the process of losing: his family, his hope, his sense that he still has some control over things. If he fails, it is not only Anne who dies; he also has to accept his helplessness, his grief, his guilt, and probably the idea that he failed to save the last person who truly remains of his family.

And that is precisely why the dynamic with Solomon is so important. By refusing to support him emotionally through this ordeal, Solomon does not calm Sebastian down: he radicalises him. Sebastian ends up believing that if he follows the adults’ rules, Anne will die. From then on, every boundary becomes suspicious, including those drawn by Ominis, his best friend. Every prohibition, every refusal becomes proof of cowardice, ignorance, or abandonment, hence some of his bitterest and most cutting replies.

When Sebastian says that line, he is already caught in a dangerous mindset where intention justifies everything. “It’s for Anne” has become an answer to every objection, even the most justified ones. ⚠️

And that is part of what makes Sebastian so interesting to me: he is neither a monster nor an innocent victim. He is a sensitive, impulsive teenager, trapped in an unbearable situation, trying to get through it without any real support, making bad choices, and becoming increasingly unfair and guilt-tripping in the way he asks for help.