kacey 🌿

It all began in the first year itself. Professor Flitwick had been practically glowing after the first Charms lesson of the year. Standing atop his stack of books, he clapped his hands together with obvious delight as two feathers floated neatly across the classroom, one hovering above your desk and the other above the desk of the Gryffindor boy sitting a few rows away. It had taken most of the class several attempts just to make their feathers twitch, yet somehow the two of you had managed the Levitation Charm on your very first try.

He announced that Slytherin would be awarded ten points and Gryffindor five, since you were quicker than the boy.

The room went quiet before the whispering started. The eleven year olds were quite vicious without meaning to be, murmuring that of course the Slytherin girl got more points, some arguing that it was actually the boy who levitated the feather first.

Choi Seungcheol did not help. He turned to his friends with his chin tipped up, still frustrated about losing by such a small margin, although it was no competition, and said, loud enough for you to hear, "Must be nice. Wish my parents could buy me House Cup points too."

You turned to look at the arrogant boy. “Don’t be so bitter for losing. You’ll catch up to me,” You smiled sweetly at him, “in a year or two”. A few nearby students laughed and Seungcheol's ears turned bright red almost instantly.

The lesson ended before either of you said another word, but by lunchtime the two of you were already racing each other through the corridors toward Herbology because neither wanted to arrive second. That’s where your rivalry started.

For you, it became about proving that every mark, every compliment, every point beside Slytherin's hourglass had been earned. For Seungcheol, it became about refusing to let the infuriating Slytherin beat him without a fight.

By seventh year, your rivalry had become part of Hogwarts itself. Students expected arguments whenever your paths crossed. Professors instinctively called on someone else whenever both of your hands went up at once. First-years who had never witnessed how it started still knew not to seat the two of you together.

Nobody remembered that it had begun with five House points, one careless accusation, and an equally childish comeback from two stubborn eleven-year-olds who had been far too competitive for their own good.

❈ ── 🍃 ── ❈

By seventh year, both you and Seungcheol had earned prefect badges, much to the surprise of absolutely no one. There had never been a shortage of academic excellence, rule-following, or painfully stubborn determination between the two of you, Unfortunately, the prefect rota cared very little about personal grudges and every few weeks, your names inevitably appeared on the same patrol schedule, assigned to the same stretch of castle for the evening.

Both of you had an unspoken rule of never acknowledging the other during patrols.

That night was no different.

You had already finished checking the eastern staircase on the fourth floor when you rounded the corner and spotted another pool of wandlight moving steadily toward you. Seungcheol emerged a moment later, one hand tucked into the pocket of his robes while the other lazily held his wand at his side. His shoulders visibly sagged the instant he recognized you, accompanied by an exaggerated sigh that was entirely unnecessary and, excessively irritating for you.

"Brilliant," he muttered under his breath, slowing his pace just enough to fall beside you instead of walking ahead. "Of all the prefects they could've paired me with tonight..."

You didn't bother looking at him as you continued down the corridor, your own wand casting long shadows across the stone walls.

"I was about to say the same thing."

Silence lasted exactly half a corridor before the argument started over something so insignificant that, later, neither of you could remember who had actually begun it.

"Ten points was generous," Seungcheol said, hand cutting through the air before he landed a point he considered unanswerable. "That cauldron fire was entirely Jeonghan's fault."

"You weren't even watching," you shot back.

"I'm saying your House gets away with far more than mine ever does," Seungcheol argued, turning enough to face you properly now instead of watching where he was walking. His eyebrows drew together, and every sentence came accompanied by another emphatic gesture of his free hand. "McGonagall would've deducted twice the points if one of my housemates had done half the things your lot gets away with."

You came to an abrupt stop, forcing him to halt a step later when he realized you were no longer walking beside him.

"You can't honestly expect professors to reward Gryffindors for setting things on fire every other lesson and for being obnoxiously loud" you replied, folding your arms across your chest.

"Name one instance where we set something on fire" He let out a disbelieving laugh.

"Oh I can name more than one, how about that day when your team was being showoffs and...”

Neither of you noticed the hurried footsteps approaching from around the corner.

Two third-year students rounded the bend so quickly they nearly collided with both of you. They froze the moment your wandlight illuminated their faces, every ounce of guilty panic written plainly across their expressions. One still clutched a box of Honeydukes sweets beneath his robes while the other looked as though she was already calculating how many House points she was about to lose.

You instinctively reached for your wand.

Seungcheol had already opened his mouth to ask why they were out after curfew.

Before you could get a word out, the boy panicked and flung a badly aimed Confundus Charm to buy himself time to run. It should have missed you both completely. Instead it caught the corner where you and Seungcheol stood close together mid argument, wands raised, both your defensive instincts flaring at the same instant.

Two defensive charms collided with the already unstable spell.

Magic ricocheted violently through the narrow corridor.

For a second, white light bounced between stone walls and polished wand tips until it became too bright to distinguish where one spell ended and another began.

Something pulled sharply behind your ribs, the corridor lurched beneath your feet and then everything disappeared.

You woke on your knees on cold stone, and the first wrong thing you noticed was your own hands. They were too big. The knuckles were broader, and there was a thin scar across one that you had never had in your life. You turned them over slowly in the wandlight, and when you finally opened your mouth to ask what had happened, the voice that came out was not yours. It was lower, rougher and unmistakably Choi Seungcheol's.

Across the corridor, another figure had reached exactly the same realization.

Your own face stared back at you, impossibly pale beneath the flickering torchlight. Seungcheol—wearing your body—lifted trembling hands to his face before abruptly grabbing at his own sleeves, then his hair, then his jaw, as though touching enough familiar features would somehow force everything back into place.

"What did you do?" he demanded.

You jerked upright so quickly you nearly lost your balance.

"What did I do?" The disbelief that surged through you almost drowned out the unfamiliar sound of his voice coming from your own throat. "You were the one waving your wand around like an idiot."

"My defensive spell was perfectly controlled."

"You call that controlled?"

"It would've been if yours hadn't gotten in the way."

You took a step toward him.

He immediately stepped forward as well.

The two of you stood almost chest to chest, each wearing the other's face while glaring with exactly the same stubborn determination.

"Fix it."

"You fix it."

"I didn't cause it."

"Neither did I."

The younger students had vanished long ago, saving themselves from detention, oblivious to the catastrophe they caused and left behind.

The corridor filled instead with overlapping accusations, increasingly ridiculous theories, and several failed attempts to convince yourselves this would be fine. You cast revealing spells on one another.

It wasn't until nearly twenty minutes later, when every spell either failed or confirmed the impossible, that the arguments finally began to lose momentum.

The silence settled heavily between you and now you both couldn’t unfortunately deny it anymore.

"Tell me this isn't happening," Seungcheol said, in your voice, sounding faintly sick.

"I wish I could," you said back, in his.

You were standing inside Choi Seungcheol's body.

And he was standing inside yours.

❈ ── 🍃 ── ❈

You moved to an empty third floor classroom because neither of you could stomach the thought of walking into the hospital wing like this. The shame of the truth felt worse than the swap itself.

"If anyone finds out," you said, arms folded across a chest that wasn't yours, "my entire reputation is finished, Seungcheol. Gone."

"You think I want people knowing this either?" he said, pacing in your body with none of your usual composure. "I'm the Gryffindor Captain. I can't be the bloke who got soul swapped with you because we were bickering after curfew."

You shudder inwardly. "Then we tell no one. We fix it ourselves."

He stopped pacing and looked at you, weighing it. "Every evening. Third floor classroom. We trade whatever the other needs to know to survive being us for a day."

"Fine."

"Fine."

He stuck his hand out to shake on it, oddly formal for someone who lived his life informally, and you looked down at your borrowed hand and shook it, telling yourself this would be over within the week.

Spoiler, it was not over within the week.

❈ ── 🍃 ── ❈

Living inside Choi Seungcheol's life turned out to be nothing like you had imagined it, and you had imagined it plenty, in the resentful corner of your mind. You had to sit through a Quidditch strategy meeting that ran forty five minutes long, because the captain was expected to walk the team through three formations for the match against Slytherin, and you had to bluff your way through it with fragments of Quidditch knowledge you had absorbed as an unwilling bystander over the years.

You noticed things you had never let yourself notice. Seungcheol's roommate, a broad shouldered Chaser named Mingyu, came to find him after dinner with a folded letter from home clutched too tight in his hand.

"It's about my grandma," Mingyu admitted, sitting heavily on the edge of a bed that wasn now yours temporarily. "The Healers still don't know what's wrong."

You didn't know what Seungcheol usually said in moments like this. You said the only thing that felt honest. "Do you want to talk about it, or do you want me to distract you until practice?"

Mingyu blinked at you, his shoulders sagging with relief. "Distraction. Definitely distraction."

Later, alone, you found a battered notebook in Seungcheol's trunk with every player's birthday written in cramped handwriting, little reminders beside each one. Chan, nervous flying in rain, check on him before matches. Soonyoung, keep away from firewhiskey. You sat on his bed for a long time with it open on your knees.

Seungcheol, meanwhile, discovered your life and admitted, begrudgingly, during one of your evening meetings at the Etiquette Club, that it was way too exhausting.

❈ ── 🍃 ── ❈

"You finished three second years' essays with them tonight," he said, dropping into the chair across from you, in the third floor classroom. "Then you did your own. It's past midnight."

"That's Tuesday for you," you said simply shrugging.

"Does anyone ever ask if you're tired?" he said, abruptly

You looked up at him, startled, and said nothing at all. You picked at a loose thread on your sleeve until he let the silence swallow the question back down.

❈ ── 🍃 ── ❈

The Yule Ball rehearsals turned into a disaster almost immediately. You had been the seventh-year dance instructor for weeks before the swap, a position earned through years in the Ballroom and Etiquette Club, and trapped in Seungcheol's body you still had to run them. Which meant you had to rely on Seungcheol to demonstrate steps with his dance skills, or lack thereof, in front of the entire seventh year.

The true catastrophe was Seungcheol, wearing your body, attempting to dance. He trod on your partner's feet twice in one turn. He counted the beats under his breath in a way you never would. His partner, Junhui, who had been your friend since third year, kept glancing at your borrowed face with growing confusion, unable to reconcile the girl he knew, precise in everything, with whoever kept stepping on his shoes.

You dragged Seungcheol aside the second rehearsal ended.

"You are destroying seven years of reputation in one afternoon," you hissed at him.

"I'm doing my best," he hissed back, looking like his pride was wounded rather than sorry. "Dancing was never exactly my area of expertise, if you hadn't noticed."

"Clearly."

You stood there a moment, both furious, both cornered, until the solution landed on you out of pure desperation. "We dance with each other instead. I lead, since apparently my muscle memory came with me. You just follow closely enough that no one notices."

He stared at you like you'd suggested something far worse than it was. Even if neither of you wanted this, it’s not like you had a choice either.

❈ ── 🍃 ── ❈

The rehearsals that followed took up more of your patience than either of you had to spare. You corrected the position of Seungcheol's hands, adjusted the distance between your bodies, told him to lower his shoulders.

"Stop muttering the count," you said, for what felt like the tenth time. "It throws off the rhythm for both of us."

"My feet ache," he complained. "You've had me bent into shapes no human spine was designed for."

"Then stop arguing and hold the position."

"You're impossibly particular, you know that?"

"Particular is the only reason either of us survives this without becoming laughing stock."

It became its own kind of routine, the same rhythm your rivalry always had, except now it put you close enough to feel warmth radiating off borrowed skin.

❈ ── 🍃 ── ❈

The Quidditch match against Slytherin arrived inevitably. You had spent the week before it inventing excuses, a headache, a sudden allergy, praying it rained hard enough, because the truth was one you had hidden from almost everyone you knew. You were terrified of heights.

"You've got this," Seungcheol told you, the night before, with a false certainty. It just made your stomach twist.

You wanted, badly, to tell him the truth right then but your throat closed around it. Your pride didn’t allow you to say that. "Right," you said instead. "Of course."

The match itself was the worst hour of your life. The moment the broom left the ground your vision narrowed and your chest locked up, your hands white knuckled on the handle, your breath coming in short useless pulls you prayed nobody below could see. You forced yourself to stay in the air anyway, teeth clenched against a fear that felt like drowning.

Gryffindor still lost, badly, and your stomach dropped the moment the final whistle blew.

Seungcheol found you in the corridor outside the changing rooms afterward, his hands fists at his sides. "You cost us that match," he said. "Do you understand what today meant?"

"I tried," you said, eyes stinging, voice cracking on the word. "You have no idea what you're asking of me."

"Then explain it to me."

You couldn't. Neither of you listened to the other, and you parted with the unresolved fury hanging between you, and did not speak again for two days.

❈ ── 🍃 ── ❈

It was Jun who unraveled everything, without meaning to. Seungcheol, still wearing your body, asked to meet him near the Astronomy Tower to finalise the dance partners list and get it over with.

Jun blinked at him. "Why there? You've always hated heights. You nearly fainted on the Tower stairs in third year, remember?"

The words landed on Seungcheol like a slap. His stomach dropped, and the pieces of the last two days slid into place at once, your excuses, your locked shoulders on the broom, the shake in your hands during the match. "Right," Seungcheol managed. "Forgot about that."

"Are you all right?" Jun asked, slowing when he noticed the unusual tension in your shoulders. Before you could answer, he seemed to remember something else and gestured vaguely toward the staircase. "Oh—and Seungcheol was looking for you earlier. I saw him heading toward Professor McGonagall's office. "

Seungcheol's chest went cold at the thought of what that might mean.

For a brief moment, he wondered whether you had somehow discovered a way to reverse the swap without telling him. The thought barely lasted a second before another possibility settled heavily in his chest.

You were going to tell someone.

By the time he reached the corridor outside Professor McGonagall's office, the door had already been left slightly ajar. He stopped just short of the doorway, his footsteps instinctively quiet against the stone floor.

Inside the office, you sat opposite Professor McGonagall, still wearing his face.

Gone was the composed certainty you usually carried through the corridors of Hogwarts. Your shoulders had lost their usual rigid posture, your hands resting tightly clasped together in your lap as though you were afraid they might begin shaking if you let them move. You carefully recounted everything from the beginning: the patrol assignment, the collision of defensive spells, and the impossible moment the two of you had awakened inside one another's bodies.

Professor McGonagall listened without interruption. She did not speak once.

She merely folded her hands together atop her desk, her expression growing steadily more severe as every passing minute confirmed that two seventh-year prefects had concealed an unstable magical accident from the faculty for weeks.

Only when you finally fell silent did she rise from her chair.

She walked slowly around the desk before stopping directly in front of you, her gaze unwavering beneath the brim of her pointed hat.

"I have watched the two of you spend years attempting to outdo one another," she said. "I expected competitiveness. I did not expect recklessness."

The silence stretched.

When she spoke again, her voice softened almost imperceptibly.

"Tell me.. why did neither of you come sooner?"

Your fingers tightened together until your knuckles paled beneath Seungcheol’s skin.

Then, without looking up, you answered quietly.

"Because I thought we could fix it ourselves." You drew in a slow, uneven breath. "...And because I didn't want anyone thinking we'd been alone together after curfew for any reason other than patrol."

A faint, almost exasperated sigh escaped the professor.

"You two truly are young fools."

The smallest corner of your mouth twitched despite yourself before disappearing just as quickly.

After another moment, your composure finally cracked.

"I also..." Your voice faltered for the first time all evening. "I made things worse."

Professor McGonagall remained silent, giving you the space to continue.

"I played the Quidditch match in his place."

You swallowed hard.

"I could barely breathe the moment the broom left the ground. Every time I looked down, I thought I was going to fall. I wanted to quit before the match even started." Your gaze stayed fixed on the floor. "But I knew how much Quidditch means to him. I knew what that team expected from their captain. I couldn't let everyone down before the whistle had even blown."

Your hands trembled faintly.

"I still let them down."

His hand remained suspended beside the doorframe, fingers curling slowly against the cold stone as every piece of the previous week's argument rearranged itself inside his mind.

Guilt settled heavily in his chest. He wanted to step through the doorway. He wanted to apologize.

Professor McGonagall notices him linger near the door, “Mr. Choi, how lovely of you to join us”

He walks in, still looking like you, and stands beside you, ready for anything that she might say to you both now.

Professor McGonagall regarded the two of you for a long, measured moment. "I am less concerned," she began, her voice calm enough to be unsettling, "with how this happened than I am with what you chose to do afterward."

You lowered your head.

"You are both prefects. Students whom this school trusted to exercise sound judgment." She paused, allowing the weight of her words to settle over the room before continuing. "Instead, the two of you decided that your pride was more important than informing a professor about exceptionally dangerous, poorly understood magic. Had this curse worsened? Had either of you sustained permanent magical damage? Had one of you become trapped? You would have had no one to blame but yourselves."

Every sentence landed heavier than the last.

She sighed quietly, some of the sharpness leaving her expression.

"I believe the worst lesson has already been learned," she said at last, folding her hands neatly before her. "Though I sincerely hope that should either of you find yourselves involved in impossible magic again, your first instinct will be to seek help from a professor instead of allowing your pride to dictate your judgment."

Neither of you argued. There was very little left to say.

After a brief silence, she reached for a parchment on her desk and made a neat note with a flourish of her quill.

"As Head of Gryffindor and Deputy Headmistress, I cannot simply overlook your astonishing lapse in judgment. Consider yourselves both assigned to detention this Saturday evening."

You and Seungcheol exchanged the briefest glance before instinctively looking away again.

Professor McGonagall noticed.

"Together," she added without looking up from her parchment. "Professor Hagrid has requested assistance gathering medicinal plants from the edge of the Forbidden Forest. Since the two of you seem determined to solve your problems without adult supervision, perhaps an evening completing unpleasant work under proper supervision will remind you why rules exist in the first place."

The faintest trace of embarrassment settled across both your faces.

"Yes, Professor," you both answered almost simultaneously.

Only then did Professor McGonagall rise from behind her desk.

"Now," she said, retrieving her wand, "let us remedy the problem that should have been brought to me weeks ago."

Within the hour, she led both of you back to the corridor where the accident had begun. The stone floor felt strangely familiar beneath your knees as you and Seungcheol faced one another once more, neither quite able to hold the other's gaze for more than a heartbeat. Professor McGonagall's wand moved in slow, deliberate arcs through the air. Ancient incantations echoed softly around the empty room as thin strands of silver light unfurled from the tip of her wand, wrapping around each of you before gradually weaving together into a single glowing thread.

The sensation arrived almost immediately. A sharp pull somewhere behind your ribs and a wave of dizziness that made the hallway tilt for only a fraction of a second.

Then, just as suddenly, everything settled.

When you opened your eyes again, your own hands rested against your knees.

You flexed your fingers once, then again, relief quietly spreading through your chest as familiar muscles responded exactly as they should.

Across from you, he mirrored the movement almost unconsciously before running a hand over his own face, as though reassuring himself that every feature belonged where it was supposed to.

The body swap was over.

The silence that followed, however, was far more difficult to undo.

You were looking up at Seungcheol through your own eyes again, and he was looking back at you through his, and everything you now knew about each other sat between you like a third person in the room

❈ ── 🍃 ── ❈

Saturday evening, Professor McGonagall’s punishment arrived far sooner than either of you would have liked.

You both made your way down the sloping path from the castle toward the edge of the Forbidden Forest, where Hagrid was already waiting beside an overflowing wooden cart. The gamekeeper greeted you with his usual warmth, though the look he gave the pair of you carried just enough amusement to suggest Professor McGonagall had been very clear about why two seventh-year prefects had found themselves serving detention together.

"Moondew an' Moonlace don't collect themselves," Hagrid said cheerfully, thrusting a woven basket into Seungcheol's hands before passing another to you. "Stick close, keep yer lanterns high, an' don't wander off. Most creatures'll leave yeh alone if yeh've got the sense not ter bother 'em first."

You exchanged a brief glance with Seungcheol. After everything the two of you had already survived together, gathering magical plants almost sounded... peaceful.

The forest was quieter than you had expected. Damp earth softened your footsteps beneath thick roots and fallen leaves. Hagrid moved steadily several paces ahead, his lantern swinging gently from one enormous hand as he occasionally called back instructions about which plants to avoid disturbing.

You and Seungcheol settled into an easy rhythm. He reached higher branches before they struck your face as the path narrowed. Every so often your baskets bumped together when both of you reached for the same plant, earning nothing more than a brief glance before one of you wordlessly stepped aside.

It was... strangely comfortable.

Then, inevitably, you spotted a cluster of silver blossoms growing just beyond the edge of the path.

"They're right there," you murmured, already stepping over a thick tree root before either Hagrid or Seungcheol had the chance to object.

You had barely taken two careful steps into the undergrowth when something darted through the bushes several feet to your left and the sound was sudden enough to make you aware.

Branches shook violently and leaves scattered.

Your foot came down awkwardly on a patch of loose moss hidden beneath the fallen leaves as the ground disappeared beneath you. A sharp twist shot through your ankle before you had time to catch yourself.

"Seungcheol—"

The word had barely left your mouth before he was moving. He covered the distance almost instantly.

One arm wrapped firmly around your waist before your back could hit the ground while his other hand caught your wrist, steadying both of you with enough force that the momentum carried you several steps backward. His grip tightened instinctively as he turned, positioning himself between you and whatever had moved through the trees, your body pressed securely against his chest while his wand lifted in one smooth motion.

For one suspended heartbeat, neither of you breathed.

The bushes rustled again. Then...

A plump brown rabbit bounded lazily out from beneath the undergrowth, paused, twitched its nose at the two of you, and disappeared into the trees without the slightest concern.

Both remained stunned in place, holding onto each other, more from instinct than intention. His breathing was slightly uneven, the rise and fall of his chest impossible to ignore from where you stood pressed against him.

Somewhere behind you, Hagrid let out an amused chuckle. "Jus' a rabbit," he called without looking up from the herbs he was collecting. "Scared the pair o' yeh good, did it?" he said before returning to his work, evidently deciding the pair of you required no rescuing after all.

Neither of you answered. Your eyes met for one unbearably long moment, and the forest seemed to disappear entirely.

His gaze flickered briefly to your face before darting away again, the tips of his ears colouring almost instantly. He cleared his throat, taking a careful step backward as though sudden movements might somehow make the moment more awkward than it already was. The hand at your waist loosened reluctantly, though it lingered just long enough to ensure you had found your footing before letting go altogether.

"I..." He exhaled quietly, rubbing the back of his neck with a faintly sheepish expression. "I may have overreacted." He dropped his hand back by his side and you notice something dark on it.

"Wait." You reached for his wrist before you decided to. He frowned in confusion as you turned his hand over, revealing a thin cut across two swollen knuckles, blood already beading where he had clearly caught the rough bark of a branch when he lunged for you.

"When did this happen?"

Seungcheol glanced down as though seeing the injury for the first time.

"Oh." His answer was maddeningly unconcerned.

"It’s nothing” He gave a careless shrug

"It's bleeding, Seungcheol." You caught his wrist before he could wave you off and turned his hand over gently in the lantern light, digging in your bag for the small tin of dittany you carried out of habit.

He sighed but stopped resisting, letting his fingers relax in your grip while you dabbed the dittany carefully over the scrape. He barely flinched, though you caught the way his jaw tightened and then slowly eased again as the sting faded, and neither of you said anything for a while, your focus fixed entirely on his hand.

His focus however, was fixed entirely on you.

"You know," he said after a long moment, his voice noticeably quieter than before, "you really don't have to fuss over me."

“How could I let go of the opportunity of holding this favour over you?” you said as you keep gently cleaning his wound.

He shakes his head in amusement.

You bottled the dittany and put it back into your bag before getting up. Then you shifted your own weight again, forgetting for a moment which foot you weren't supposed to be standing on, and the same sharp pain shot up your ankle, pulling a hiss through your teeth before you could stop it.

His gaze dropped immediately to your foot, his expression changing so quickly it was almost impossible to follow. Lingering amusement vanished first. It was replaced by concern. A heartbeat later, concern disappeared beneath familiar irritation.

"You twisted your ankle, didn’t you?" he said, his voice quieter than before, though no less firm.

"I’m fine."

"Yeah right” He didn't wait for you to argue further. He crouched, testing your ankle with careful fingers, and when he straightened up he simply lifted you off your feet entirely, one arm under your knees and the other braced firm behind your back.

"What are you doing! Put me down." You exclaim. "I can walk."

"Can’t let you hold something over me” he said, and you could hear the grin in it even without looking up to confirm it, “Consider this as your favour repaid”

You looped an arm around his neck for balance only, you told yourself firmly, and let him carry you back toward the castle.

"Don’t you dare make me fall," you said, trying to look anywhere but at his impossibly close face.

“I just might” He finally set you down only after Madam Pomfrey's door came into view.

❈ ── 🍃 ── ❈

You had expected returning to your own bodies would restore everything to the way it had always been.

Another spoiler, it did not.

For several days, neither of you seemed capable of behaving normally around the other. Seven years of effortless rivalry had suddenly become awkward. Every encounter carried an unfamiliar hesitation, as though both of you had forgotten the roles you had spent years playing.

When your paths crossed in the corridors, your first instinct was still to reach for some familiar remark, yet the words often stalled before they reached your tongue. If your eyes met across the Great Hall, one of you always looked away first, only for the other to do the same a heartbeat later, both pretending to have found something infinitely more interesting elsewhere.

The body swap had ended, but it had left behind far more than either of you had bargained for. You knew the quiet burdens Seungcheol carried beneath his easy confidence, the responsibilities he accepted without complaint, and the countless kindnesses he performed when nobody thought to look.

He knew the impossible expectations you placed upon yourself, the exhaustion hidden beneath your composure, and the fears you had guarded so fiercely for years. Those pieces of each other lingered stubbornly between every conversation, making it impossible to return to the comfortable certainty of simply being rivals.

Seungcheol resumed his habit of appearing beside you at every opportunity, though his teasing had changed. He no longer cared nearly as much about House points or exam scores. Instead, he found endless amusement in pointing out habits only he knew you had, making observations that would have sounded ordinary to anyone else but left you uncomfortably aware of the weeks he had spent living your life. Every comment earned him an exasperated look, every grin another reluctant retort, yet somehow the conversations lasted longer than they needed to.

You told yourself he was simply impossible to ignore, an arrogant git.

Yet you had begun noticing that arrogant git too.

Your gaze searched for him before Quidditch matches without conscious thought. When prefect duties were assigned, you found yourself checking the rota for his name before folding the parchment away. If he wandered into the library while you were studying, you invariably looked up from your book, only to look away the moment your eyes met. Whenever he fell into step beside you in the corridors, you complained out of habit, yet your pace unconsciously slowed just enough that he never had to catch up.

Truth being said, you both were being idiots who were now arguing simply to have a reason to keep talking.

❈ ── 🍃 ── ❈

The Great Hall had been transformed so completely that it hardly resembled the room where you had spent seven years eating hurried breakfasts before class or quietly finishing essays beneath enchanted candles. Hundreds of floating lanterns drifted lazily beneath the bewitched ceiling, their warm light reflecting across polished marble and the gleaming floor that had been cleared for dancing. Music from the small orchestra gathered near the staff table floated effortlessly through the hall, wrapping itself around conversations and laughter until the entire evening seemed to move to the same gentle rhythm.

The Yule ball had finally arrived. You had spent months preparing this night.

You had organised rehearsal schedules, corrected footwork, adjusted postures, paired partners, and repeated the same instructions until your voice had become hoarse. Every carefully planned detail now unfolded exactly as you had imagined.

And yet the moment your eyes found Seungcheol standing near the entrance, every other part of the evening was irrelevant.

His formal robes were tailored neatly across his broad shoulders, replacing the perpetually rumpled uniform you had grown so accustomed to criticising. His usually unruly hair had been brushed back from his forehead, exposing his sharp features. Even the familiar confidence in the way he carried himself seemed more refined tonight.

You realised, with no small amount of annoyance, that you were staring at him.

As though sensing your attention, Seungcheol glanced toward the entrance and whatever he had been saying to Mingyu died halfway out of his mouth. His eyes moved over you, and he couldn’t help but settle his gaze on you. The hem of your dress pooled elegant and unfamiliar around you, your hair swept back from your face making you look prettier than you always looked.

He appeared almost caught off guard by his own inability to look elsewhere. His shoulders, which had been relaxed only moments earlier, straightened almost unconsciously.

You continued walking toward him, each measured step feeling strangely louder than the music surrounding you.

For the first time since meeting him, Seungcheol seemed to struggle for words.

When you finally stopped before him, he drew a quiet breath that sounded suspiciously like someone trying to steady themselves.

"You clean up well," he said, when you finally reached him, aiming for careless and missing it by a wide margin.

"So do you," you said, and heard how it came out, quieter than you meant it.

Neither of you managed anything cleverer than that. When the orchestra announced the beginning of the opening waltz, Seungcheol extended his hand toward you, and you took it.

You braced yourself for the same clumsy partner from rehearsals. Instead, when the music started and his hand found yours, his grip was sure and his posture was correct, every adjustment you had ever given him folded into instinct.

"You've been practicing," you said quietly, surprise softening your voice.

"Don't sound so shocked," he murmured back, though the corner of his mouth pulled up, pleased despite himself.

He led you through the opening steps without a single misplaced beat.

The difference should have been insignificant.

You had stood this close to him dozens of times already.

You had corrected this exact hand placement yourself.

You had physically moved his arm into position more than once.

But those memories belonged to borrowed bodies.

This...this was the first time it was truly him. And truly you.

His palm stayed warm against the small of your back, and your eyes kept finding his and holding there far longer than any formal dance required. Your cheeks went warm under his gaze. You looked away first, and when you glanced back he was still watching you, something soft caught at the corner of his mouth, and for once none of you reached for an argument.

❈ ── 🍃 ── ❈

Several nights after the ball, you were back on ordinary prefect patrol, back in the same corridors where all of this had started, and to no one’s surprise, paired with Seungcheol.

It should have been an uneventful patrol. Instead, Seungcheol had spent the last ten minutes finding increasingly ridiculous ways to irritate you.

You ignored the first few comments.

Experience had taught you that acknowledging him only encouraged him.

Unfortunately, Seungcheol had also learned that lesson.

"I've been thinking," he said after another stretch of silence, sounding far too pleased with himself already. "I really wasted a remarkable opportunity during our body swap."

You continued walking. "I'm choosing not to ask."

"I probably should've walked into the Great Hall one morning," he continued anyway, "stood on the Gryffindor table, and announced—in your body, no less—that I'd been hopelessly in love with Choi Seungcheol since first year."

Your steps stopped so abruptly that the hem of your robes swished around your ankles.

Slowly and wordlessly, you turned to look at him.

He was grinning. "I think it would've been convincing."

You let out a slow breath through your nose, pressing two fingers briefly against your temple before beginning to walk again.

"I genuinely cannot decide," you muttered, "whether surviving the body swap made you a better person or an infinitely more irritating one."

"I was hoping for 'more charming.'"

"You truly are an arrogant git"

He laughed quietly to himself before falling into step beside you again, entirely unbothered by the insult.

"I mean," he continued after another few moments, "that would have explained why you keep staring at me so much.”

You spun toward him, your cheeks warm enough that you didn't need a mirror to know exactly what they looked like.

"Would you please stop talking?"

The words came out sharper than intended, though they lacked any real anger.

Seungcheol noticed immediately. His smile changed, and turned far more satisfied.

He took one unhurried step closer, close enough that you instinctively leaned back before realising there was nowhere to go. Your shoulders met the cool stone wall behind you, and before you had the chance to move again, he lifted one hand to brace himself lightly against the wall beside your head.

His eyes searched your face for a long moment before settling on the unmistakable warmth still colouring your cheeks.

"I see you’re not refusing it" he murmured, unable to hide the amusement tugging at the corner of his mouth.

Your heart gave one sharp, thoroughly inconvenient beat.

"...Shut up, Seungcheol."

This time, your voice came out much quieter than either of you expected.

"Make me" His eyes dropped to your mouth, lingered there a beat, and lifted back to your eyes

You leaned in before you could think better of it.

The decision was so sudden that for the smallest fraction of a second, Seungcheol simply stared at you. Whatever teasing remark had been sitting on the tip of his tongue disappeared entirely, replaced by an expression of genuine surprise.

He closed the distance anyway.

His hand found your jaw almost instinctively, fingers warm against your skin as though he needed to convince himself this was finally happening. Your own hand caught in the front of his robes without thinking, gathering the fabric as the distance between you disappeared entirely. The hand resting beside your head slid from the wall to your waist, drawing you closer until there was no space left between you. For a long moment there was nothing else, no rivalry, no seven years of pride, just the quiet drag of his mouth against yours and the wall solid at your back and his heartbeat thrumming close enough that you could feel it.

When you finally pulled back, both of you a little breathless, he rested his forehead against yours and let out a disbelieving laugh against your temple.

"Unbelievable things keep happening whenever we patrol together at night," he murmured.

"Maybe you should stop patrolling with me, then," you said, though you made no move to step back from his embrace.

"Not a chance," he said, and leaned in again, slower this time, and kissed you like he meant to keep doing it for a long while.

End.

📖 Before you leave Owl's Library, consider returning this record to the shelves with a reblog so other readers may find it.

You were standing outside the Charms corridor with your arms full of books, wishing you had asked Yunjin to carry half of them, when you almost crash into Rosalind, a pureblood Slytherin with a personal grudge against you because of your blood status. Great, out of everyone you could’ve bumped into, it just had to be her.

”Out of the way, Mudblood”, She says it quietly, under her breath, just loud enough that you hear it and quiet enough that no professor passing by would catch it.

You have had the word directed towards you several times before and by now you roughly knew how your body would respond to it: the small drop in your stomach, the heat that climbed up the back of your neck, and the practiced effort of keeping your face still so nobody gets the satisfaction of watching it land. You were already gathering yourself to take your books and keep walking when a voice, almost bored, comes from somewhere behind you.

"Didn't realize we were still doing that outdated shit."

You turn and so does Rosalind.

It was a boy from your year. You knew his name, though you had never really spoken to him beyond a passing greeting in the library. Vernon. He was simply standing there with his hands in his pockets, looking at Rosalind with a straight face.

Rosalind starts to say something about mixed company muddying the crowd. Vernon does not raise his voice. He only tilts his head slightly, eyebrow raised and says, "Funny. I was about to say the same about you."

Then he turns and walks away.

He does not glance back at her. He simply bends down to help you gather your books “Here you go”. You look at him with gratitude and your mouth opening and closing without any words coming out. “Oh..um, thanks..” He nods and walks down the corridor with the same unbothered pace he'd arrived in, his bag slung over one shoulder, and rounds the corner without a backward look.

You stand there for a long moment, too surprised and flustered, the books slipping slightly in your arms, feeling strangely undone. Not by the insult, you were already used to that. You were undone, instead, by the plainness of what he did. He didn't make a scene of it, nor tried to make himself the hero of the corridor. He just refused to let something ugly go unanswered.

That evening, you head to the library like you always do, intending to lose yourself in a Transfiguration essay and forget about the unpleasantness in the corridor. However, it does not work.

Every time your quill pauses, your thoughts drift back to him and you catch yourself searching the room before you even realize you're doing it.

He is there, seated near the window with a Herbology textbook open across his lap, entirely absorbed in whatever he is reading. The firelight catches against the side of his face as he turns a page, unaware that anyone is looking at him.

You find yourself watching for a moment longer than you probably should.

There is nothing especially different about him today. He is only sitting there, reading in comfortable silence.

...Was he always this cute?

The thought lands so suddenly that you nearly drop your quill.

"Absolutely not," you mutter under your breath, giving your own cheek a light smack before forcing your eyes back onto your essay. "We're not doing that."

Your face feels suspiciously warm anyway.

❈ ── 🍃 ── ❈

If someone asked you to name the exact day you and Vernon became friends, you would not be able to answer them. There is no single afternoon you can point to. It happened before you could realise.

It began, you think, with a seat.

You came down to the library carrying more parchment than you could comfortably hold, tired because of a double Potions lesson, and there is a seat near the window that seems to have been left empty despite the room being otherwise full. You sit without thinking much of it. It is only the following evening, when the same seat is empty again, that you glance up and catch Vernon sitting opposite to you, looking away too quickly, as though he had been watching the seat to see whether you would take it.

"Were you saving that for someone?" you ask.

"No, you can sit here" he says. Then, after a pause, he adds, "You always sit there anyway."

"I do?"

"You do."

“Oh, thanks Vernon”. You do not examine this too closely. You only sit down, and he goes back to his book with a nod in reply, and by the end of the week it has become, without either of you ever deciding it, the place where the two of you sat.

❈ ── 🍃 ── ❈

From there, things multiply slowly. He begins falling into step beside you on the walk to Herbology, without a word of greeting, as though the two of you had always walked together. In return, you begin saving him a place at the library table nearest the window.

You spend long stretches of time in silence together, and to your quiet surprise, you find that you do not mind it at all. He has a way of simply existing beside you that makes the quiet feel less like the absence of conversation and more like a kind of company all its own.

Neither of you ever calls any of this friendship out loud. It does not seem to need saying. It is simply what your days are shaped around now.

❈ ── 🍃 ── ❈

It is well into autumn before you catch yourself thinking something you immediately try to talk yourself out of.

You are in the library, having to sit at a table with a single same worn copy of a Transfiguration text owing to the upcoming exams. Without much options, the two of you squeeze into the table that was clearly meant for one person. Your shoulders brushing every time either of you turns a page. Beneath the table, your knees end up pressed together.

Neither of you shifts away. You are meant to be conjugating a difficult incantation, but for several long minutes you are far more aware of the warmth where his knee meets yours than you are of any of the words on the page in front of you.

You tell yourself this means nothing. Friends sit close together. It is a small table. There is nowhere else to put your legs.

"You don’t have to memorise the text, you know right?" His voice is quiet.

You blink, realizing you've been staring at the same paragraph for nearly a minute. "Y-yes I know."

"Wake me up when you’re done reading this page, Miss Sloth"

You nudge his shoulder with yours. "You're insufferable."

"So I've been told."

You find yourself chuckling despite yourself. At that sound, he looks up at you from the book. "Hold still."

Before you can ask why, his hand reaches across the narrow space between you, and his fingers brush lightly against your temple. He tucks a loose strand of hair behind your ear, eyes locked with yours as he does it. His thumb lingers for the briefest second against your cheek before he pulls away.

"There."

You stare at him, your breath catching slightly. What just happened

"What?"

"You had ink on your face."

"...That doesn't explain the hair,” you say under your breath.

"It was in the way." he says and simply returns to reading.

Meanwhile you spend the next several minutes pretending to study while your heartbeat refuses to settle. Do friends do that? Surely they do....don't they?

❈ ── 🍃 ── ❈

Vernon is running late after helping Professor Sprout with something in the greenhouses, leaving you alone long enough for Yunjin to slide into the seat across from you. She tears a piece off her toast before looking at you over the rim of her teacup.

"So," she says, far too casually, "how long have you and Vernon been together?"

You nearly inhale your pumpkin juice and a coughing fit takes over before you can answer.

"What?" you manage between coughs. "We aren't..." You shake your head, still trying to catch your breath. "We're just friends."

Yunjin opens her mouth to reply but instead, her eyes drift over your shoulder. You turn just as Vernon arrives, setting his bag beside him before sitting down next to you.

"You alright?" he asks, already reaching into his pocket and without waiting for an answer, he unfolds a neatly pressed handkerchief and places it in your hand. Then he pulls your empty goblet closer, fills it with water from the pitcher in the middle of the table, and nudges it gently toward you. "Here," he says quietly. "Drink slowly."

You mumble a small thank you, cheeks warming as you take the glass.

Only after you've stopped coughing does he begin serving himself breakfast as though nothing unusual had happened.

When Vernon looks away to butter his toast, Yunjin meets your eyes. One eyebrow lifts.

The expression is enough to let you know her exact thoughts. Sure. Just friends.

You look away first, having nothing to defend yourself anyway.

A few days later, you're leaving the library alone after returning a stack of books while Vernon waits outside for you.

As you're signing the register, Madam Pince glances over her spectacles. "Tell your boyfriend that if he's going to keep borrowing books on advanced Transfiguration, he ought to remember to return them on time."

You blink."My... boyfriend?"

"Mr. Chwe." She says matter-of-factly and stamps another return slip. "The two of you practically live in my library."

Heat crawls up your neck. "Oh... we're actually just friends."

Madam Pince pauses for exactly one second. "Hm." The noise is polite yet entirely unconvinced and she goes back to shelving books.

Outside, Vernon looks up the moment the library doors open. "There you are."

You leave feeling strangely embarrassed, just hoping that he doesn’t notice your blushing cheeks.

Later that week, you're waiting outside Charms while Vernon stays behind to ask Professor Flitwick a question.

Joshua happens to pass by. He slows when he notices you standing alone. "Waiting for Vernon?"

“Oh hello Joshua! Yes, he'll only be another minute."

Joshua smiles to himself. He adjusts the strap of his bag before adding, almost as an afterthought,

"I think it's kinda sweet"

"...What is?"

"The way you always wait for each other."

Your heart stumbles. "We're only friends Shua."

Joshua studies your face for a moment. Then, very gently, he asks, "Has he actually told you that?"

The question catches you completely off guard. Before you can ask what he means, Vernon steps out of the classroom.

Joshua's expression changes immediately. "Anyway," he says with an easy smile, "I'll see you both at dinner."

He walks away before you can stop him.

You spend the entire journey to the Great Hall thinking about those six words.

Has he actually told you that?

Told you what?

The strangest part isn't that people assume you're together. It's how naturally Vernon seems to fit into those assumptions without ever knowing they're happening. You begin to wonder, quietly, whether you are the only person at Hogwarts who is confused about what this actually is.

❈ ── 🍃 ── ❈

When Madam Pince finally announces the library is closing for lunch, Vernon gathers both of your books without asking and waits while you shove loose parchment into your bag. The corridors are crowded with all the students rushing towards the Great Hall. Without thinking, your fingers curl around the sleeve of his robe so you don't lose him in the sea of students. The moment you realize what you're doing, embarrassment floods your face and you let go. Before you could think much about it, his hand reaches your wrist to gently guide you through the crowd.

"Careful," he says as a group of third years barrels around the corner.

His fingers are warm on your wrist and you think he doesn't seem to notice what he’s doing. You are reading way too much into it…you notice far too much...

His hand stays there until the hallway opens into the courtyard. By the time he lets go, your skin still remembers his and you are beginning to think your heart has become deeply unreasonable.

Outside, the air has a sharp bite to it. You rub your hands together as the wind slips beneath your robes.

Without a word, Vernon unwinds the scarf from around his own neck and before you can protest, he loops it around your neck. His fingers brush beneath your chin as he straightens the ends. For one impossible moment, he is standing so close that all you can see is him. As he’s done with securing the scarf around your neck, his eyes lift to yours, offering you a small smile and suddenly you forget how to breathe.

Then he steps back as though nothing unusual has happened.

"I was fine," you manage to mumble out as you both continue walking. You spend the walk to the Great Hall trying to hide your smile into the scarf.

After lunch, the two of you drift back to the Ravenclaw common room to finish the assignment you had barely started. Claiming the sofa nearest the fire, you get comfortable on it trying to warm yourself up. Vernon walks behind you, removing his jumper and throws it casually on the armrest. You quickly lean over and grab it from the armrest, pulling it over your uniform. It hangs well past your fingertips.

He glances up once. "You've stolen another one."

"I’m just borrowing it. Please I think there’s a draft in here" you hug yourself, rubbing your hands on your arms.

"You said that about the last one too."

"I returned that."

"Yeah yeah, you did… only three weeks later."

You look away, unable to hide your grin. "It was too comfortable to return."

“Keep it” He only returns to his notes, completely unbothered, while you try to not look at him too much as you spend your time pretending to understand Ancient Runes.

❈ ── 🍃 ── ❈

Several hours pass as you both work on writing your assignments in silence. You stretch your arms up, fingers flexing as you let out a small yawn. “Finally...I managed to write a bit. Do you want to read it?”

“Hmm let me see” He shifts closer to read your essay over your shoulder and you become acutely aware of how close he is. Close enough to see the faint scar marking his eyebrow. Close enough to notice the way his lips part ever so slightly as he reads out your essay to himself.

“This looks like a good start” He looks at you.

His gaze is fixed on you and you wonder, absurdly, what would happen if neither of you looked away, what would happen if either of you leaned in just a bit closer. Your pulse pounds loudly against your throat as you struggle to get your head straight, unable to look away from the boy sitting beside you.

Your thoughts remain thoughts as Seungkwan enters with pumpkin tarts and the moment breaks. “Tarts for all!” He walks towards you both, and you shift slightly away from Vernon, clearing your throat. “Don’t forget to eat between your obnoxiously long study sessions” he says, offering you one.

Vernon reaches for another piece of tart on the plate, as though nothing had happened. Well nothing had, technically.

Poor you, now you will have to spend the rest of the evening wondering if you imagined the entire thing or not.

Thankfully, the portrait swings open before your thoughts can spiral any further, and Joshua walks in, balancing a stack of books against his hip.

"There you are," he says, walking towards the both of you.

“Didn’t I tell you we’d find them here” Seungkwan joins and takes a few books from Joshua, setting them on the table. "We checked the library, the courtyard, and even the Owlery.  We were actually beginning to think you had disappeared."

Joshua's gaze lands on you, then on the oversized jumper and then finally on Vernon. The corners of his mouth lift knowingly. "So this is where you've been hiding."

You hurriedly begin stacking your notes. "I should probably leave you three alone. You haven't seen each other all day."

Before you can stand properly, warm fingers wrap gently around your hand. Vernon looks at you with quiet confusion.

"Why would you leave? We were in the middle of something."

"I just thought you'd want to catch up with them."

His thumb shifts absentmindedly against your knuckles as he gives your hand a gentle tug. "Sit back down. We've still got half an essay left."

The gesture is so casual that it almost makes it worse. You sink back onto the sofa, hoping the warmth creeping into your cheeks isn't too obvious.

Across the room, Seungkwan watches the entire exchange before slowly turning to Joshua. "I'm not saying anything," he murmurs.

Joshua smiles to himself. "I wasn't going to, either."

They both take the armchairs opposite you and the conversation slips easily from homework to Quidditch to Seungkwan's latest complaint about Professor Binns. You find yourself laughing far more than you contribute.

Seungkwan glances around before lowering his voice. "Apparently Mingyu rejected someone today." Joshua looks up in surprise. "Really?" "Not intentionally though," Seungkwan corrects with a sigh. "A girl asked if he wanted to go to Hogsmeade with her this weekend and he just smiled and said, 'Sure. Who else is coming?'" Joshua groans, dropping his head into one hand. "No..." "By the time someone explained it to him, she was already halfway back to her common room."

Vernon lets out a quiet laugh, shaking his head. "Poor Mingyu." His smile is small, the corners of his eyes crinkling. You look away before he can catch you staring, but it doesn't really help. The warm feeling lingers deep inside your chest. Friends aren't supposed to make your heart race just by smiling. At least, you don't think they are.. Or I have been doing friendship wrong for years?

You do not say any of this to him. You are not entirely sure your voice would survive it anyways.

❈ ── 🍃 ── ❈

Finally the gruelling exam is over and you were on your way to find Vernon after your last class of the day, a habit so worn into the shape of your afternoons now that your feet carry you toward the usual courtyard without your having to think about it, when you hear his voice drifting from around the corner. He was talking to someone you did not recognize, his tone easy and unhurried like it always was.

You slow without meaning to. It’s not like you were trying to eavesdrop. You simply catch, as you pass, a question you do not quite hear the whole of, and then Vernon's answer, plain and unmistakable.

"Yeah. I've got a girlfriend."

You stop walking. Whatever comes after that sentence, if anything comes after it at all, never reaches you, because your ears have gone strange and rushing, and your feet were already carrying you backward before you have consciously chosen to move.

A girlfriend.

Not you. It cannot be you, because you have spent months insisting, to anyone who would listen, that the two of you were only friends, and he must have believed you, and so he must have found someone else in all this time, someone you know nothing about, someone he speaks of so easily and so plainly that it must have been true for a while now.

You do not stop to reason any of this through properly. You only turn and walk the other way, the scarf, his scarf, wound tight around your throat as though it might hold in whatever sound is trying to climb up out of your chest, and you do not look back to see whether he noticed you were ever there at all.

❈ ── 🍃 ── ❈

You begin finding reasons not to be where he expects you.

You take your meals early or late, timed carefully around whatever hour you know he will be elsewhere. You study in an empty classroom near the greenhouses instead of your usual table by the library window, and when Madam Pince notices the table sitting empty for the first time in months, she says nothing to you directly, though you catch her frowning at it once, as though the silence itself has become suspicious to her.

You give Vernon short, clipped answers whenever he catches you in a corridor. Busy. Sorry. Can't, essay's due. You do not look at him properly when you say these things, afraid of what your face might give away if you do.

He does not chase you down, not at first. He has never been the sort to make a scene, and some distant, grateful part of you is glad of that even as another part of you, unreasonably, wishes he would corner you and demand to know what is wrong, so that you would not have to be the one to say it first.

Instead, he only grows quieter. You catch him watching you sometimes from across the Great Hall, an expression on his face you have never seen there before. Not hurt, exactly, but something close to it.

Yunjin finds you in your dormitory a week into it, arms folded, entirely unimpressed with your excuses. "What happened?" she asks, "Don't tell me nothing happened because I'm not buying that for a second."

"Nothing happened," you say, which is nearly true, since nothing happened to you directly. You only overheard something you were never meant to hear, and it happened to break something in your chest that you had not realized could break so easily.

Yunjin sighs and sits down on the edge of your bed. "He asked me where you were after Charms yesterday," she says, gentler now. "Then this morning he wanted to know if you'd skipped breakfast because he hadn't seen you in the Great Hall. I don't think he has the faintest idea what's going on."

You do not answer that. You pull your knees up to your chest and stare at the wall, thinking miserably that of course he does not know, since the thing that is wrong is a girlfriend you are not supposed to know about at all. A whole life he apparently has that has nothing to do with you.

You keep the scarf anyway. You tell yourself you will return it eventually. You do not take off the hoodie either, and you find yourself crying quietly into the sleeve of it more than once, which is exactly the sort of thing you had promised yourself you would not become.

You avoid him for eleven days, but god does it feel a good deal longer than that.

❈ ── 🍃 ── ❈

Vernon doesn't go looking for you immediately. For the first few days, he assumes you are simply busy. But by the end of the week, he isn't so sure.

Joshua looks up from his book when Vernon drops onto the sofa opposite him in the Ravenclaw common room. He watches him for a moment before quietly closing the book over a finger to keep his place.

"You've been unusually quiet all evening," he says. "You haven't turned that page in the last ten minutes."

Vernon glances down at the open textbook resting forgotten in his lap before letting out a slow breath. "I don't think she's very happy with me."

Joshua studies him carefully. "What makes you say that?"

"She's been leaving before I can catch up after class. She doesn't come to the library anymore, and every time I ask if she wants to study together, she already has somewhere else to be." He pauses, his brow drawing together slightly. "She even tried to give my scarf back."

Joshua's expression softens. "Did something happen between you two? Did you argue about anything?"

Vernon shakes his head. "Not that I know of. I've been trying to think if I said something that upset her, but... I can't remember anything."

Joshua leans back against the sofa. "Have you actually asked her what's wrong?"

"I asked if she'd been sleeping enough," Vernon replies earnestly. "Then I asked whether she'd skipped lunch because she hadn't been in the Great Hall. Yesterday I asked if she was coming down with a cold."

Joshua waits for him to continue. When nothing else comes, he can't help smiling.

"Vernon... those aren't really the questions I meant. They're thoughtful questions, just not the important ones."

A small crease appears between Vernon's brows, before he can reply, the portrait swings open.

Seungkwan steps into the common room carrying two oversized mugs of hot chocolate. He takes one look at Joshua's amused expression and Vernon's troubled one before raising an eyebrow. "...Why do I feel like I walked into something?"

Joshua gestures toward Vernon. "Him."

Seungkwan crosses the room, hands one mug to Vernon, and drops into the armchair opposite them. "Alright," he says. "Start from the beginning."

Vernon recounts the past week with the same straightforward honesty he applies to everything else.

Seungkwan's teasing smile slowly disappears and the room falls quiet. Joshua and Seungkwan exchange a glance. Neither of them seems particularly convinced by anything they've just heard.

Finally, Seungkwan lets out a small sigh. "I think she's trying to tell you something."

Vernon looks between the two of them. "What?"

Joshua gives him an apologetic smile. "I honestly don't know."

"And neither do you," Seungkwan adds. "You've been trying to figure it out by yourself all week."

Vernon lowers his eyes to the untouched mug warming his hands. "So... what am I supposed to do?"

Joshua answers first. "You stop guessing."

Seungkwan nods. "And you stop asking whether she's eaten lunch."

Joshua smiles too before leaning forward. "Just find her. Sit down with her, and ask what's been bothering her. Then actually listen to the answer."

Vernon is quiet for a long moment, turning the advice over in his mind. Finally, he nods.

"...Alright." He sets the mug down on the table beside him and rises to his feet. "I'll go talk to her."

❈ ── 🍃 ── ❈

He finds you, eventually, in the courtyard beneath the beech tree, the same place you used to meet every morning before all of this fell apart. You are sitting with your knees drawn up, your face turned toward the lake so that he will not immediately see you have been crying.

He does not say anything at first. He simply lowers himself down beside you, close but not quite touching, and waits patiently, just as he waits for most things.

You break the silence before he does. "I'm sorry," you say, your voice trembling from the very first word. "I know I've been avoiding you. I know that wasn't fair to you. I should've just talked to you instead of disappearing like that."

He watches you quietly. "Okay," he says after a moment, his voice careful, almost cautious. "Can you tell me why you were avoiding me?"

A watery laugh escapes you. "I didn’t mean to eavesdrop, but I heard you. A couple of weeks ago, in the corridor. You were talking to that Ravenclaw boy."

He nods slowly, trying to remember.

"You said you've got a girlfriend."

Something shifts across his face, surprise perhaps. Whatever it was, you could not quite tell.

"And I didn't hear anything after that," you continue before you lose your nerve. "I didn't need to."

Your voice catches slightly, as you try to get the words out before breaking into another sob. Well, here it goes "I've been in love with you for months, Vernon. I don't even know when it happened exactly. It just... did. Somewhere between spending time together, it stopped feeling like friendship to me."

You laugh weakly through your tears. "I thought maybe you felt something too... I thought maybe it meant something to you as it did to me."

"And then I heard you say that." You shake your head.

The words come more quietly now. "So I figured I just had imagined everything. I thought I'd built an entire relationship in my head while you already had someone else."

"I kept thinking maybe if I stayed away long enough..." You wipe hurriedly at your face "...eventually it would stop hurting."

You let out a shaky breath. “But it didn't."

"I just wanted you to know why I've been avoiding you. I know you have a girlfriend, and I won't make things awkward anymore. I'll stop borrowing your things. I'll stop following you around after class." You manage a small, miserable smile. "I'll leave you alone."

Vernon has gone very still. He looks at you for several seconds, his brow slowly drawing together. "Wait." His voice is quiet.

"I'm trying to understand."

You look up at him, sniffling as you keep wiping your cheeks.

"You heard me say I have a girlfriend”

"...Yes."

"That's why you've been avoiding me."

"Vernon, I don't think that's the important part."

"No," he says gently. "I think it is." He lets out a slow breath, almost sounding relieved. "We've been talking about two completely different things."

You stare at him. "What are you talking about?"

"When I said I've got a girlfriend..." He says it with certainty, walking closer to you, "I meant you."

For a long moment, neither of you says anything at all.

"What," you croak out, "are you talking about?"

He looks at you with genuine confusion now. It wasn’t the look of bewilderment of someone who has no idea what's happening but more like that of confusion of someone realizing an assumption he had quietly lived with for months had never been shared.

He glances down at his hands before looking back at you.

"I gave you my scarf because I hated seeing you shiver. I left my jumpers with you because you always looked prettier wearing them."

A small, almost embarrassed smile tugs at the corner of his mouth.

"I walked you back to your dorm every night because I wanted to know you got there safely. I waited for you after class because I liked being the first person you looked for when the lesson ended. I made your tea every morning because I remembered how you liked it, and I saved you a seat because I couldn't really imagine sitting there without you."

"None of that means we were dating Vernon."

"What does it mean, then."

"It means we're friends," you say, though even to your own ears the word sounds thinner than it used to, worn down under the weight of everything he has just listed out. "Friends do all of that."

"Do they." He looks at you with genuine, earnest confusion, his brow furrowed as though you just told him the most absurd thing ever "I've never done any of that with a friend before."

"Vernon, you never asked me. None of it was ever official."

"I didn't think I needed to ask," he says quietly. "When people called you my girlfriend...I never corrected them because I thought you had already become that."

The silence between you stretches only for a moment. Then he smiles, small and sheepish. "I just didn't realize that I never actually told you."

You stare at him and your heart feels impossibly full.

"You are," you say, shaking your head through a laugh through the tears, "the biggest idiot I have ever met."

"I've been told that before."

"No," you murmur, stepping closer until there's barely any space left between you. "For someone so smart," you whisper, "you can be unbelievably stupid."

"So I've heard."

"Vernon."

"Hm?"

"Please...just shut up and kiss me already."

His answering smile is so warm it almost steals your breath before he ever touches you. He closes the distance slowly, giving you every chance to change your mind, and when his mouth finally meets yours it is not hurried at all. It is careful, almost searching at first, as though he wants to memorize the exact shape of the moment before he lets himself sink into it. One of his hands stays cradled against your jaw, his thumb moving in a slow, absent stroke along your cheekbone. The other slides to your waist, drawing you closer without any urgency behind it, only warmth. You feel the small, involuntary breath he takes when your fingers curl into his hair, feel him smile faintly against your mouth before he kisses you again, slower this time, like you had all the time in the world.

When you finally part, just barely, your foreheads still resting together, neither of you move to pull away. His breath is unsteady like you have never heard from him before, and you find that undoes you more than the kiss itself did.

When he pulls away, his forehead rests lightly against yours. “Will you officially be my girlfriend?”

You look at him properly then, the way you have not quite let yourself in eleven days, “I think this question was long overdue.”

He laughs then, properly this time, soft and warm, and something about hearing that sound after eleven miserable days makes your eyes sting all over again.

“Yes, I would love to be your girlfriend” You close your eyes, burrowing your face into his chest. For the first time in eleven long days, everything feels uncomplicated again.

The lake ripples quietly beyond the beech tree, and the last of the afternoon sunlight spills gold across the grass around you.

You stay there together until the air begins to cool, holding each other as though nothing had changed. Perhaps because, in Vernon's mind, nothing really had.

The only difference was that now, at last, the two of you understood the same story.

❈ ── 🍃 ── ❈

You come down to breakfast the next morning still half convinced you have dreamed the whole thing, until you spot Vernon already seated at the Hufflepuff table, saving you your usual place beside him like he always has, and your cheeks warm all over again at the sight of him.

You sit down. He does not look up from his toast right away, and then, without any ceremony at all, he slides half of it onto your plate, exactly the way he has done a hundred mornings before, and lays a peck on your cheek, "Morning, girlfriend."

You very nearly choke on your pumpkin juice for the second time this term. He glances up at last, and there it is again, that small, fond, faintly smug curve at the corner of his mouth.

Yunjin, across the table, does not even glance up from her eggs. "Finally," she says, to no one in particular, and returns to her breakfast as though nothing at all has changed, because as far as she and everyone else at Hogwarts are concerned, nothing has.

End.

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