Chapter Text
Warm, comfortable, sleepy, content. When was the last time Johanna had felt this way? Not for weeks, months even. The last time she felt like this was that one morning in the boys bedroom.
Just like that one time, she found herself once again waking up to Ominis by her side.
However this time he didn’t look completely content, well rested, like his best friend was just in the kitchen bribing house elves for food again. No, this time he looked worried, very worried.
He was slumped over in his chair, hair messy, and face in his hands, and he seemed asleep.
It looked like he’d been there for days, dark circles under his eyes, and a half finished book on his lap. An empty teacup sat on the bedside table, a fly buzzing around it, loud in the silence.
Yet when she shifted he immediately bolted upright. “Johanna, you’re awake, how are you feeling?”
“I feel like this has been far too many times I’ve been in the hospital with you by my bedside.”
Ominis laughed bitterly, relief seeming to spread through him that her sass was still intact.
“I have to agree, let us not make this a regular occurrence please. I only have so many nerves.”
“You frightened me, you know?” The look on his face felt worse than the physical pain.
“I frighten a lot of people.”
Johanna groaned, shifting slightly, her body sore and bruised still. Yet she managed to sit up by herself despite Ominis’s insistence to help her. He hovered, hands moving as if he itched to do something. He ended up settling with smoothing away the wrinkles on the corner of the blanket.
“Ominis, I’m fine. Besides, why are you still here? I thought you were staying away from me.”
Ominis frowned, his brows twitching. “I was, but I have decided that you were right. It’s not good for us to be a part. You are clearly not taking care of yourself like you should, and I? I miss you.”
“You-you miss me?” She asked incredulously. It was almost laughable with how he had treated her, all the work he had put in to say he was protecting her, that he would be fine without her.
But to be fair he had good reason. Word in the Wizarding World was that the Gaunts were not to be messed with and she had really put herself on their radar with how she had acted at the trial.
It would be more believable that he missed Sebastian, his best friend. Not the girl who ruined both of their lives by just coming into their lives. If it wasn’t for her none of this would have happened.
However right now Johannna did not care. She was depressed, angry, and hungry.
“Yes I miss you.” Ominis snapped. “You are my only friend, and while I thought pushing you away would keep you safe it has only been proven wrong. I cannot keep you safe from yourself if I am nowhere near you now can I?”
“I do not need you to keep me safe Ominis. I can keep myself safe.”
“Oh, like almost dying in that blasted hall you got stuck in for seven hours?” He replied swiftly.
Her jaw twitched.
Of course he had to pull that up, the smart, infuriating-
“I had it handled, Ominis. I would have gotten out eventually.”
Ominis sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose with his fingers as he tried to keep his temper.
“I have no doubt in your abilities Johanna. What I doubt is the current value for your life you have. I may be blind but I’m not unaware. You’ve been putting yourself in harm's way, trying to forget.” He reached out and took her hand. “I won’t have that. Because I told you, no matter what we face it together. We made that decision together, so together we bear the pain.”
Johanna’s breath caught, and she tried to force down the tears that rose to the surface at his words but she couldn’t. Because she’d always been alone, always been on her own. And right when she thought she’d had someone they had pushed her away.That day she had given up all hope. But today, on the dawn of a new day with its light highlighting his golden hair, shining in those sky blue eyes full of earnestness her hope had returned in overwhelming force.
She willed herself not to tremble, but magic danced traitorously on her shaky fingers anyway.
The more she tried to force it down the more it rose, until he gently squeezed, calming it.
“Ominis, you can’t- you can’t say things like that.” her voice shook as she fought to remain in control, even as tears leaked down her cheeks. “Despite how much I hated your distance, it was safer for you that way. I’m unstable, a liability. People want me dead just because I exist.”
Ominis’s grip tightened, eyes widening slightly at the revelation. “What do you mean?”
She sighs, looking down at where his thumb subconsciously rubs the back of her hand. “You know about my magic. That's more powerful than any else. But do you really know what the cost of having ancient magic is?”
“No, tell me.” He said, leaning in to listen and she almost wanted to share her every secret because at least with him she knew they wouldn’t be used as a weapon against her later.
“It means I’m a keeper.”
His brows furrowed but he didn’t cut her off, a quality Sebastian had severely lacked.
“I guard what’s left of the most powerful thing in existence. Something everyone wants. Rookwood hated me because I had what was his birthright. The goblins hate me because I bear what they never could. And the world hates what they don’t understand.”
Ominis nodded slowly. “So that’s why Sebastian felt left out. We both have a legacy, he didn’t.”
“Yes, but in the end even the greatest power couldn’t do what he wanted.”
Johanna tried to pull her hand away, but his grip tightened as he heard her breath catch.
Tears flowed freely now, her breathing unsteady as she confessed her deepest fear. “You at least could escape this legacy if you wanted, I can’t. I will always be ruinous, I will always put people in danger for wanting to be near me. As a muggle, as a Ancient magic bearer, as-”
“Johanna, stop it right now.” His voice was sharp but gentle, cutting straight through her spiraling. He took a deep breath, as if trying to control his own swelling emotions. “You are not ruin. You are restraint. You think about others, you control yourself as best as you can. You care. People that are ruinous do not care about the destruction they leave behind.”
“But-”
“Shhh,” he reached out, brushing a tear from her cheek, his pale thumb cool and soothing.
“I mean it,” he said firmly, in a tone that allowed no argument.
“ I don’t want to hear another word about it, because that is just lies. It’s not true and I will not have you believing horrible things about yourself. Things I’d hex other people for saying.”
Her heart skipped traitorously, and a blush rose to her cheeks where his hand still rested. If he felt the heat there he didn’t say so but his own ears reddened as he pulled away swiftly.
He cleared his throat. “Now, take a deep breath alright? In…”
Johanna closed her eyes, inhaling as deep as she could.
In.
“And out…”
His voice guided her like the sun across the waves leading a wandering turtle home, the buzzing in her ears and body of nervous energy, of prickly persistent magic, calmed to nothing.
“Newman?” Her eyes drifted back open, calm, drowsy, and warm, focusing on his face.
Ominis looked at her as if he was clinging on every word that would come out of her lips.
“Promise me you will not disappear? That you will come to me when you are breaking?”
She hesitated. Johanna wasn’t used to relying on others when she was low. But perhaps it would be okay this time. Perhaps someone wouldn’t leave when she became too much.
“Okay. Be patient with me? I’m afraid of losing you too. If we grow close…your parents…and I might scare you off. No one has ever stayed. What if I’m not able to protect you? Like Fig?”
A weak smile graced his thin lips, the sight bittersweet. “I pushed you away because of them, yes. To protect you. But knowing them, they’ll come for you anyway. The Gaunts crave power more than anything. Besides, Johanna Newman, I fear losing you more than I fear them.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
He pressed a kiss to her fingers before pulling away just as Professor Weasley entered.
It was quick, as if he had touched fire, and his fingers wrung his hand nervously in response.
Johanna was left with a confusing lingering warmth that crawled up her arm and settled in her chest, in an aching sort of longing she did not understand. Why did she want it to last longer?
Ominis’s ears burned so brightly she wondered if they were hot to the touch. Even more so she was wondering why she was thinking of touching his adorably red ears.
Professor Weasley did not seem to notice the tension in this small section of the hospital wing.
She just seemed delighted to see Johanna up, coming over and pressing a hand to her forehead. “It seems your fever has gone away, praise Merlin! I expect you to continue to rest here for a few more days to make sure you are properly eating and sleeping but then you will return to classes. Your first year exams are coming up in a few months, so study well.”
Johanna nodded politely, smiling back at the kind woman. She owed Mrs Weasley a lot. If it wasn’t for her, her family would still be in danger, the ministry would be interrogating her, and she would have been more behind on her studies, if not for the Room of Requirement.
“I will Professor, do not worry. I am sure Ominis will be hounding me enough to assure that.”
Ominis.
He made her magic steady. It didn’t withdraw, but focused in a way that made her breath catch. However, whether it was more Ominis or her magic she was not sure. Even now as her magic responded to her spiraling emotions his head tilted in her direction, as if sensing something else could.
The same faint prickle rose on her skin, soft enough to normally ignore, like bouncing your knee, or fidgeting with your hands. But it was there, the nerves about all that was to come.
The lack of control she hated.
Professor Weasley kept going on about how at some point she would have to talk to the ministry, unaware that Johanna was not really listening anymore but was in her own mind.
Ominis’s fingers found her wrist again, where her pulse throbbed, light and gentle. Careful, testing his boundaries as she jolted at his touch.
“Steady,” he murmured softly, just for her to hear.
It wasn’t a command, or even comfort but Johanna still found herself taking a shaky breath, exhaling slowly to match the rhythm he had set for her a few moments before.
She did not pull away, neither did he, even as the flicker faded, and the nerves quieted.
Ominis’s hand stayed on her wrist, thumb subconsciously resting on her pulse to assure she was there, that she was okay, and alive by his side, not lost to him forever.
Somewhere in the distance something shifted, too faint to identify, tickling the back of their minds. Movement outside the window, the sound of something that made Ominis stiffen.
Yet he didn’t let go, just held on a little tighter.
All that mattered was that they were together even though so many things remained unresolved.