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Between the two of them it should be required for at least one of them to take up healing. Jungkook is looking to get into pro quidditch and Namjoon an auror, neither of which typically require one to be well endeavored in the healing portion of magic. Yet, despite this, the two of them are sat in the medical wing scratched and bruised nearly head to toe; Jungkook had taken a dive on his broom a little too sharply and had a prompt meeting between his face and the pitch much to his captains chagrin (“For fucks sake. At this rate you will have broken every bone in your body and I’ll be carted away for abuse of a minor.” Yoongi may have looked pissed off but everyone knew he was a complete softy for the younger students bless his cold, heartless Slytherin soul- or at least the one that students from other houses swore he had. Jungkook knew the older boy had a heart of gold, he just prefered to do his good deeds in ways that wouldn’t garner any ridiculous attention) and Namjoon, being Namjoon, had caused multiple heart attacks when he took a tumble down a section of the moving staircase.At any rate, they had been present so often that as they arrived at their own respective times Madam Pomfrey had merely waved them off in the direction of the tidily lined up beds and with a flick of her wand had catered to the materials needed for their rather minor injuries. Jungkook may or may not have cackled a little when a gauze roll thwacked into his boyfriend’s head, but was forced to stop at the sudden jab of pain in his side that spoke of a broken rib. “You’re one to laugh, you got hit in the head with dirt.” A cocked eyebrow is his only reply, had become more prevalent a reaction as his younger lover matured and grew out of his adorable shyness. He’d been so small his first year, so boyish and young and so painfully innocent. He’d been a Ravenclaw hopeful, already having befriended Namjoon (at the time a third year Ravenclaw) and had nearly shed tears when the sorting hat yelled out a resounding Slytherin before it had even been placed over his head. He wasn’t your typical Slytherin, not until his later years at least- Taehyung and Jimin, both Hufflepuff’s, had been a horrendous influence prank-wise and had taken the Slytherin quidditch teams golden boy under their wings to inflict unprecedented horrors upon the student body via the use of spells and charms they had come across in their “unofficial” digging through the infamous Weasley twins genius past in Hogwarts. They had brought out a lot of characteristics, ones that not even Namjoon had been able to unearth, and the most prevalent proved to be his sense of cunning resourcefulness. The fact that it had been brought out in him by finding different ways to get itching powder into one of the nastier Slytherin boys’ robes was still an interesting subject to think about.“How did you get hurt….is there an ass to be kicked or was it just you being you again.” Namjoon should be offended greatly by this statement but instead finds himself snorting at the soft look in his boyfriends eyes when he leans in close to inspect the growing welt on Namjoon’s forehead. “Merlin’s beard, Hyung….That looks downright painful.” It hadn’t been until a finger gingerly poked at it. “I swear I’m going to have to wrap you in bubblewrap one of these days.” Despite the difference of being Muggle born and Pureblood, they had made their relationship work. The definition of a ‘bubblewrap’ whatever the hell that is, was not going to force their feelings to dissipate and Jungkook put the thought into actions when his face crinkled with laughter, lips puckering cutely to press against Namjoon’s unscathed cheek. “It’s something you wrap up fragile things in so they won’t break. You are a fragile thing, Namjoon.”If it had been said with anything other than the pure, innocent love that Jungkook had spoken it with Namjoon would have backhanded him upside the head. Or not because he was whipped and Jungkook was precious to his heart.Maybe he’d just settle for sneaking some itching powder into his robes the next time he decided to sneak into the Ravenclaw Tower.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Yoongi has a faint trail of freckles over the bridge of his nose, an appendectomy scar on his abdomen, a beauty mark just behind his left ear. He’s soft in the morning, like his mind and body don’t feel like keeping up the usual cold front that quite literally terrifies most first and second year students. Seokjin knows a lot about Yoongi, things that he prides himself for knowing when nobody else does- or possibly ever will.Yoongi is an animagus, pure blooded as well, and has a habit of getting black and tan fur all over Seokjin’s prefect robes when he sneaks up into the Gryffindor dormitories, not apologetic about it one single bit when he saunters out in the morning with a smug little grin on his face and a huff that speaks volumes of just how much he enjoys getting a rise out of his perfectionist boyfriend.Seokjin is absolutely smitten.He’s also absolutely fucking exasperated on a near daily basis, watching from the Gryffindor section of the stands as his lovely little ball-of-terror of a boyfriend performs death defying maneuvers on the quidditch pitch, playing seeker for the slytherin house. He’s an agile, lithe little thing and it pays in his favor as he has become infamous for being one of the most promising seeker’s that Hogwarts has seen since Harry Potter himself. He’s ridiculously fearless and sharp sensed- and neither do anything for Seokjin’s weak heart as he’s witnessed one too many quidditch related injuries over the years. And just to add fuel to the fire Yoongi enjoys perching himself precariously in the highest places he can find, atoning it to his inner feline, and snickers when Seokjin is left to talk him down. Or rather bribe him down.Seokjin’s familiar, a jet black cat with sharp golden eyes, has a hatred seeded so deeply for Yoongi that he honestly thinks that they may have been enemies in a previous life. Yoongi has quelled, or at least tried to quell, those beliefs with flippant remarks of friendly animal rivalry; “you know, alpha males and all that jazz.” or, “he just hates that I’m bigger than he is.” usually spoken with a ridiculously comical puffy chest and proud little lifted chin. Most times the two of them spit and growl and hackles are raised and before Seokjin has a chance to stop any stupid shenanigans from taking place, he’s got a clouded leopard and a black streak of fur darting around his prefect appointed dorm room. He might enjoy the little grumbly noises Yoongi makes after they settle down, proud that the little shit of a cat hadn’t managed to get a good swipe at him, but he doesn’t vocalize it in fear that his stubborn boyfriend will start to filter the noises he instinctively makes. Even in his human form there is still a silent glare aimed his way, golden feline eyes filled to the brim with what Seokjin swears is pure loathing.
There’s never a dull moment to say the least despite the fact that he should know after years of being together that Yoongi was a bit of a wildcard.It isn’t often that Seokjin finds himself learning something new about Yoongi, as they had quite literally been as open with each other as they possibly could have been over the years that they have been together. Nonetheless he finds himself in that exact situation in their last year of Hogwarts students; Yoongi has this look on his face, completely flippant, as he sits in the Great Hall with dozens of eyes fixed on him. Some are horrified, a few shine with pity, and a select few seem oddly smug. There is a howler hovering right in front of his face, a man’s voice booming through the paper mouth with such authority that it makes Seokjin want to curl into himself from where he’d just entered the room. “-your scholarship. Not to fly around and chase after things like a right brute! You are to stop this nonsense immediately and I mean it, Min Yoongi. Last year was a warning, this is an order.”
It’s all he manages to catch before the howler promptly tears itself to shreds in one of the more violent ways he’d seen. Yoongi, still deceptively calm where he’s sat in front of his plate of roast chicken and potatoes that has more than likely gone cold, does nothing more than brush away the pile of paper with the side of his hand in a lazy manor in favor of placing a newly poured cup of pumpkin juice where it once had been.Everyone, Seokjin included, is ignored for the entirety of dinner that night. But Yoongi can’t escape him, not when Seokjin has been granted the title of Head Boy (and in turn gets all the nice, wildly envied, benefits that come along with it). He may have been too much of a goody two shoes to take advantage during the school’s open hours but this is different, he thinks to himself with a firm nod, this is about Yoongi.
So after dinner he’s bypassing the painting that leads to Gryffindor’s common room and finds his way down to the Slytherin dungeons where he is no longer given odd looks or sneers- after all the rivalry still ran rampant between the two houses and it had taken plenty of getting used to when he had first started to spend time with Yoongi in their second year. The prefect, a sixth year who may or may not have been notorious for her crush on Yoongi, is terrible at hiding her emotions and practically screams through her expression that she does not condone Seokjin wandering around her dormitories after curfew- Head Boy or not. He ignores her, much as he had for the years she had made her dislike for him publicly known, and meanders his way straight into Yoongi’s dorm room without knocking on the door like he usually would have.His boyfriend is nowhere to be seen, bed empty and room quiet other than the few boys scattered here and there that had been readying themselves for bed before he barged into the privacy of their room. Before he even has to open his mouth to inquire about the whereabouts of one Min Yoongi, a fifth year by the name of Jungkook is jabbing a thumb towards the foot of Yoongi’s bed with a roll of his eyes- and as if he could sense the action, an irritable whuff sounded from beneath the empty bed. Seokjin would have laughed if he weren’t genuinely worried for his boyfriend’s emotional state. Instead he finds himself laying flat on the wooden floor eye to eye with a clouded leopard who looks exceptionally angry at the world. It is undeniably terrifying.Yoongi has his ears pressed flat against his skull, eyes narrow and sharp and all kinds of eery in the darkness created by the mattress overhead. He looks predatory in the way his chin is resting over his front paws but Seokjin knows better, knows that his boyfriend is anything but a predator in his current state. So he shimmies his way under the bed, awkwardly curling into a sleek, furred side where he can pretend that they aren’t in the presence of any other students.
He presses his face into Yoongi’s shoulder with a sigh, fingers thoughtlessly carding through the short fur where his ribs shift and move with his breathing. It’s oddly calming, laying in the quiet darkness with Yoongi like that; he can feel the faint purr his boyfriend gives off under the palm of his hand, can hear him breathing slow and even. But calm never lasts long in a place like Hogwarts and before he knows it, Seokjin is being hauled out from under the bed by his ankles. He’s met with the exceedingly unamused glower of Slytherin’s notoriously annoying up-and-coming potential Head Boy (yet another person their prefect dislikes). “We are trying to sleep, you should head back to your own dormitories mister Kim.” The kid is prim and proper in every sense but Seokjin thinks he needs to work on hiding his irritation a little better. He is looking down at Seokjin like he is nothing more than dirt under his shoe- or, well, slipper in this case, and it may or may not make Seokjin want to get up and scream in his smug little face. This does not happen often for him, he is well able to handle situations that tend to flare emotions but seeing someone like Yoongi look so dejected...it made his heart hurt, for his boyfriend, and that was a no go for mister stick-up-the-ass. Yoongi thinks so too if the angry hiss and snarl he gives is anything to go by, and the sheer amount of satisfaction he feels when the young man before him jolts in fear is almost overwhelming. He’s tempted to reach under the bed and pet Yoongi’s head with a coo of, “Good boy.”
Yoongi would probably bite his hand off.He settles instead for sitting up, folding his arms over his chest and cocking an eyebrow. Before he can open his mouth to complain there is the telltale sound of Yoongi shifting, bones cracking into place, and then a severely angry, “You can sit on it and rotate you little fucker. Leave Seokjin alone before I actually attack you.” that is decidedly not very Yoongi-like at all. Sure he enjoyed intimidating but to be genuinely asshole with someone was rare. He liked to be soft and sweet with those that he trusted with his life. He enjoyed the small things in life and prefered that he be left to enjoy them in peace which usually caused many younger Slytherin’s to be confused when they ‘magically’ received the quill set they needed a few days back, or ‘mysteriously’ found a new pair of quidditch gloves in their bag. Jungkook in particular found himself the focus of this mysterious quidditch gear giving phantom and Yoongi, through pink cheeks and a scowl, would tell Seokjin that they had cost a damn fortune and he would never buy the little shit anything ever again. But the second he saw Jungkook light up like a christmas tree because of something he had newly found? Yeah Seokjin knew all too well that Yoongi would be spending a good portion of his allowance from home on a certain Slytherin Keeper. It was a part of his lover than Seokjin loved so completely that sometimes seeing Yoongi smile because of someone else’s happiness made his heart fill to the brim so much it hurt.And while his younger prefect was a tad obnoxious at times he was still subject to Yoongi sliding him extra food at breakfast, still managed to curl up in a soft spot Yoongi had. The remark spoke volumes of his displeasure and in this case even possible hurt. It made Seokjin, and surprisingly enough the other Slytherin boys, divert their eyes worriedly to where Yoongi was shimmying his way out from under his bed very much in his human form.
He was wearing his flannel pajamas that were, well….Seokjin’s actually, and despite his small frame nearly drowning in the too large ensemble, fluffy hair sticking up in the cutest of bedhead ways, he looked downright terrifying. His eyes were so sharp they could cut glass and his jaw clenched so hard Seokjin was kind of worried for his teeth.Which was stupid because when he opened his mouth to snarl those teeth were very much still sharp and deadly. He was in no mood to please others and Seokjin would have been freaked out that he had to physically hold his smaller boyfriend back when a comment about his apparent disrespect was made, but he knew all too well that behind Yoongi’s very apparent anger there was hurt. That was enough for him to wrap his growling lover up in his comforter and haul him out to the Slytherin common room.“Hey, what the fuck I was gonna give that little fuckwad what he deserved-” You would think that after years of being subject to Yoongi’s foul language he would have given up on any and all attempts to quell it- yet Seokjin still finds himself tossing a careless, “Language babe, language.” his boyfriends way as he drags them both out and onto one of Slytherin’s common rooms’ couches. It gains a huffy little grumble and a mocking of his voice that never fails to make him snort in amusement. It sounds nothing like him.Yoongi is a feisty little thing, something Seokjin appreciates ninety percent of the time, and he shows it by shifting and giving Seokjin a lapful of angry clouded leopard. “Hey- No don’t even think about-” He’s quick to dart off the couch and scramble around the corner back into the dorm rooms, he is most definitely cursing the way his claws slip and slide across the floor as his flank smacks off the doorway- There’s a screech followed by loud, raucous laughter and Seokjin wonders vaguely just how in the hell he had ended up with such a snarky animagus for a lover. There was never a dull moment with Min Yoongi around, that’s for sure.Said animagus lover returns to him moments later with head held high and gait leisure. He looks far too proud of himself. “What did he do?” Yoongi gives him a dirty look at the exasperation apparent in his tone and gracefully leaps back into his spot on Seokjin’s lap, powerful jaw resting over his thigh with what could be described as an attempt at looking innocent. He knows Yoongi far too well however, and he can see the pride shining bright behind golden eyes.
“He bit me! He fucking bit me that little-” A loud snarl from Yoongi quickly puts the complaint to a halt, although it does nothing for the other boys who seemed to have started laughing harder. “Correction; Yoongi bit him in the ass. I’m calling karma.” Jungkook is not helping the situation.Just as he thought Yoongi looks up at him through sharp, gorgeously feline eyes and gives him an animalistic grin full of nothing but self pride. “Oh? You proud that you sunk your teeth into another persons behind? How’d it taste.” Eyes narrow into slits and ears flick back in irritation. For all intent and purpose Yoongi’s once prideful expression turns sour, shifting to give Seokjin a lapful of clouded leopard ass instead of cute little feline features. His tail twitches just so that it thwacks against the older boys face. “Oh come off it you big baby.”A loud snuffle is his only answer, tail still intently smacking against his cheek and neck in a show of Yoongi’s supposed irritation with him; he can totally see that little curl of upper lip that speaks of just how much his boyfriend is trying to hold back a distinctly animalistic grin. He settles for slotting his fingers through winter thickened fur, scratching just how he knows Yoongi likes, and leans back in the couch to get comfortable. He hadn’t forgotten the reason he’d come down to the Slytherin Dungeons. While he did see a bit more of the usual spunk Yoongi tended to hold, he could still very much sense the cloud of darkness hanging over his head. “So….about what happened during supper.” He expects Yoongi to react a tad aggressively, has seen the way his father tends to rile him up and knock him down all in one fell swoop. The man is someone who Seokjin has grown to respect, in a sense, but he has also been exposed to the mans less than gentle way of interacting with his youngest son. To his surprise Yoongi merely shrugs his large, powerful feline shoulders. Nothing more. It’s strangely unlike him to not have a tirade of choice words for his father and it serves to do nothing but further worry Seokjin.
“It was about quidditch again wasn’t it?” This earns a sharp, quick nod before a pause- and then Yoongi is curling into the comforter with very human appendages. “Yeah, he said I need to focus more on transfiguration.” Yoongi’s tone of voice sets off alarm bells in Seokjin’s head, the way his shoulders slump and his eyes stay downturned to focus on where his fingers pick at loose threads. Next year will be their seventh and last year, most students having already slotted themselves into preferred career paths, yet Yoongi is stuck. He has a deep seeded passion for quidditch, so much so that he has been scouted on multiple occasions- yet his father the ‘voice of reason’ has denied his son any and all opportunities under the guise that he should do something “useful” with his life. He is either blind or heartless, not caring or not seeing how much it tears his son apart to be caught between his own needs and his fathers wants.Seokjin has respect for the auror, the head of a family, the man who has built his reputation as a great animagus and wizard from the ground up. However, he has absolutely no respect for the man who pushes his beliefs and ways on his own children. And after six years of awareness to these happenings Seokjin is growing vastly tired of it. “Your father is a right asshole.” He is getting angry the more he observes Yoongi hurting and confused and altogether miserable because of a letter from his father stating that his passion is nothing more than a brutes sport. Is tired of the way Yoongi disappears after a scolding to be alone and drown in his thoughts and feelings and quickly breaking dreams.Seokjin was born and raised a muggle until he had gotten his letter from Hogwarts, never knew the social stigmas of the wizarding world or the pressures of being a pureblood anything. His heart aches and his chest tightens and the mere thought of his parents doing to him what Yoongi’s are doing to him….it makes his stomach drop like a stone. “He does nothing more than drop you and then kick you when you’re already down and I am sick of it.” For once Yoongi does not jump to defend his father’s actions, blaming it on his generation, on his bringing up, on his struggles in life. He simply looks up at Seokjin with defeat in his eyes.His mind is made up in the second it takes for Yoongi to deflate altogether and he vaguely registers that it’s not his best idea ever yet he is already thinking up ways to put his feelings into words; he is going to give the man a taste of his own medicine.Seokjin has to sneak into one of the empty classrooms during a weekend he knows most students will be heading to Hogsmeade, Yoongi included although it had been kind of hard to not give in and join their small group of friends. He’s sat at an empty desk with a piece of red enchanted stationary, quill in hand and shoulders set with determination. He has never sent a howler before, has received one once from his aunt after he had forgotten to tell her about his newly appointed position as Headboy. But it is entirely different when he is sending one to a grown, highly respected wizard. The thought of it almost makes him chicken out but he is quick to remember the way Yoongi had sniffled himself to sleep on the couch that night, small trails of tears he denied ever being present on his cheeks. It isn’t fair, he thinks, it just isn’t fair.
So he gets to work. It is, once again, in the Great Hall that a howler is opened and a loud booming voice is heard. Yoongi is sat beside him with eyes so wide he would be afraid they’d pop out of his skull but he is a tad busy trying not to downright cackle. The paper is a rich, emerald green with golden embroidery along the edges. It carries the seal of The Ministry of Magic. Yoongi feels sick at the sight.
“Kim Seokjin, I must say you have some gal sending a howler to The Ministry of Magic.” He can see Yoongi’s jaw drop beside him, eyes still wide as saucers.
“However I do not appreciate the contents of said howler. My son is mine to raise and nurture in respect to what the future holds. Your...beliefs, are very far fetched young man and I think it inappropriate to state-” Seokjin nabs the floating letter before his face with quick hands and promptly tears it clean in half. He’s smiling so widely he swears he can feel his cheeks begin to ache but Yoongi is far less amused. He looks ashen, as if he is about ready to keel over and pass out. “You-...You sent my father a howler.” Hell yes he did, he boasts mentally.“Yup. And you know what I said?” Yoongi does not look like he particularly wants the answer to that question. “I told him that your future is yours. It’s not him who has to sit behind a desk in a stuffy old office when all it does it eat away at your soul and happiness. He’s a right nutter that one, thinking he owns your life like this.” To his surprise he gets a few mumbles of agreement from other Slytherin students sat at their table, giving Yoongi a good mixture of both pitying and reassuring looks. Namjoon, a seventh year Ravenclaw who has been stuck to Jungkook like a leech as of late with far too much wisdom for his years, speaks up first. “He isn’t wrong you know...It’s your happiness on the line, not your fathers. He will learn to live with the fact that one of his sons did not want to follow his footsteps to a tee.” His eyes are kind and his smile adorably dimpled and something in Yoongi’s face seems to soften at that; he shrugs a little, but there is a small smile on his lips that hadn’t been there beforehand. “Yeah, common Yoongi. There is no way that you would ever want to work as an auror when there is a broomstick with your name on it.” Jungkook is grinning in that way he does that makes his front teeth stand out a tad more than usual, resembles something close to a bunny, and Seokjin may or may not have to resist the urge to coo and pet at his head a little bit.
“Last week that scout was practically salivating when he saw you do those insane maneuvers- you could choose any team you wanted. That like...never happens. Not like this, and your dad deserves to have his eyes opened to the talents you have.” Jungkook is shy, blush high on his cheeks that he tries in vain to hide. Yoongi’s lower lip trembles though, just enough for Seokjin to pick up on it, but he’s quick to clear his throat and lift his eyes with the same small smile. Seokjin feels infinitely better, like the dark cloud hovering over his boyfriends head is finally dissipating. Until, of course, Yoongi receives another howler from his father.
Then things go to hell real quick.
It doesn’t mention Seokjin or his previous statement to, in a subtle way, butt out of his son’s future plans. It doesn’t mention Seokjin at all, actually, but what it does mention is the decision to have an understudy set up for Yoongi the month he graduates Hogwarts. It’s under an old, haggard witch who is infamous for her catty attitude and impeccable sense of justice.
Yoongi sits in his empty dorm room with fists clenched so hard his knuckles turn white. Seokjin has seen him angry, has seen him upset, has seen him sad and crying. He has never seen him look so utterly done though and he’s grateful for the other Slytherin students to have been down in the Great Hall still enjoying their meal.“I can’t do this anymore.” Seokjin knows. “I can’t keep letting him dictate my life.” Seokjin feels immense satisfaction when Yoongi looks at him not with misery or defeat but with steely determination. He looks feral and beautiful and strong. The most like himself that Seokjin has seen in nearly two years. “I’m done letting him do this to me.”
Seokjin can do nothing but kiss him carefully, smiling and showering him with praise- “You are so strong, baby. So strong. I’m so proud of you.” Until Yoongi gets up and puts his words on paper to be sent off with his owl. The parchment is littered with fat teardrops and Yoongi’s hand was shaking as he wrote but he gets it finished. He sets his owl off toward home and waits, awake and anxious, for a reply that doesn’t come. Seokjin vaguely wonders if a howler would have sparked a reaction instead of a letter.That night, or rather early morning, Yoongi cries himself to sleep but swears it will be the last time. Seokjin believes him, strangely enough, and they spend the time sleeping curled up to each other in the quiet darkness of the largely shared dorm room. Nobody makes any remarks, there is no teasing or snarky comments; just the quiet of sleeping bodies breathing in and out. Some time before waking hours he has to give the Slytherin Prefect the stink eye when he opens his mouth to send the Gryffindor back to his own rightful part of the castle. He’s very, very quick to turn on his heel and leave the room with just one glance at a comfortably snoozing Yoongi however; the threat of another nice collection of feline teeth in his flesh proves to be enough for him to leave the two of them be.Before they can so much as finish brushing teeth and combing hair, a letter is brought up from the Great Hall by none other than Jungkook with Namjoon hot on his heels, brows furrowed and lower lip caught between teeth anxiously. It has the Min family’s insignia stamped onto the back. Never has Yoongi looked so afraid to see it- but it doesn’t stop him from carefully opening and reading the letter.
By the end of it he has his eyes shut tight and the paper wrung tight in a fist. The room is quiet, all eyes on him with worry shining bright, but nobody can truly tell if he is upset. He stands beside his bed with the paper crunched in his fist and breathing deceptively even before he stomps his way into the common room with a trail of three other boys behind him and then promptly tosses the piece of paper into the fire before Seokjin has a chance to ask for a chance to read it.He doesn’t cry or scream or show any sign of the letter having been emotionally damaging as he watches it burn. It’s a tad strange to Seokjin that his boyfriend had reacted in such a way when it had probably been sent in response to his letter; he distinctly remembers a statement that Yoongi had made about the man needing to either accept him for who he was as a person or get the hell out of his life- stated in a much more polite manner of course. He knows what talking in that way means for Yoongi and it irks him to imagine the same words from numerous other letters and howlers having been written in response. But he had seen Yoongi roll his eyes, get irritable and angry when he had to see or hear them- but he is doing none of it.
Instead Yoongi lets out a breath that sounds physically relieving and smiles. He turns to Seokjin with the same smile that doesn’t show gums or teeth but boy does it show happiness and acceptance.
“My mum wrote off the understudy. She’s sending me all of the letters the quidditch scouts have been sending home.” Seokjin feels happiness rush through his veins as if it had been himself in that situation and then begins to feel his eyes sting with oncoming tears. The prospect of his lover living a life that made him genuinely happy….it was enough for him to-
“Oh and my dad has banned all mail under your name from entering his office at the ministry.”
Yoongi’s smile turns amusedly smug, eyes shining with mirth. “No more howlers for you.”
It takes a split second for Namjoon to make his presence known again with a loud, “Ha!” that has eyebrows raised and heads tilted. “What- he could….he could just have someone else send it for him.” He shrugs and stands awkward under the sudden attention, and Yoongi can’t help the loud noise of amusement that pours out of his mouth. Leave it to a Ravenclaw to think of a way around a problem so damn quickly. Not that he would be letting his boyfriend send anything to his father. Ever again. One fuck you was enough, really.
Or maybe just a few more strategically placed fuck you’s would be enough.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
It’s cold and Yoongi shivers in his quidditch gear, lips curled in a scowl at the way his nose immediately starts sniffling and running at the sudden change in temperature from the Slytherin locker rooms to the frigid cold of the quidditch pitch. The rest of his team are already up in position, looking down at him disdainfully as he kicks off with a lazy shrug and grumbles his way over to his own position as seeker.God did he hate early morning practices, especially when fall and winter started coming ‘round. It made his bones ache and his sinuses run and damn it he hated that he couldn’t even sneak in a few hand warmers because his gloves were just tight enough to prevent movement with something stuffed up into them. The captain likes to remind him that spells and enchantments were used for a reason but fuck that, he thinks, it’s too early for digging through textbooks for a stupid hand warming enchantment. He’ll regret not doing it later when his fingers develop frostbite but whatever.Why he liked quidditch was beyond him at times like those.But then again, he also got to watch his boyfriend be bright eyed and bushy tailed over the sport he loved, and maybe Jimin looked exceedingly attractive in his Beater gear...so many muscles, Yoongi’s mind unhelpfully supplied in a wispy little Disney sigh, God those thighs.His boyfriend was a tad of an enigma with his pillowy lips and bedroom eyes, looking every bit a walking wet dream- yet he had one of the single most giving and loving and precious personalities that Yoongi had ever had the luck to experience. He was cute and snuggly and had a deep seeded love for any and all things feline, yet his body practically screamed the complete opposite. Jimin was a Hufflepuff in a Slytherin’s world, and yet the entirety of Slytherin had an unspoken acceptance, and even fondness, for their black sheep. Yoongi had been no exception back when the sorting hat had placed Jimin in Slytherin after a good debate with itself. The pink haired little first year had been so tiny, so adorable, that he had to hop up onto the chair and blushed furiously when his toes just barely reached the first rung of the chair.Yoongi had been immediately enamoured. He still was, almost ridiculously so, all these years later (ok so maybe it was only five years but it was five bloody years of people constantly trying to get their grubby paws on Slytherin’s enigmatic little cutiepie and Yoongi was not at all the sharing type). And he was absolutely positive his teammates were about ready to decapitate him for it, if the bludger aimed for his head was anything to go by, and with a sharp turn of his upper body to avoid said bludger he was back in the little inter-team skirmish. One of the other teammates was glaring daggers at him for spacing out, and he mustered up a shrug in response to the girls angry muttering. They were up for the game of the year, Slytherin against Gryffindor in little less than a month and Yoongi knew more than well that Slytherin pride was weighing heavy on each and every single one of their shoulders.No more musing over his cute little lover, Yoongi distractedly told his mind, just focus on catching the stupid snitch and putting an end to the torture that is zipping around a quidditch pitch in frigid winter weather. Ignore the way Jimin’s thighs flex when he has to use a hand to bat away a bludger. Ignore the way Jimin grunts and curses and makes totally non-sexual noises. A cute blush high on his cheekbones so similar to the way they pinken when Yoongi whispers dirty in his ear- Yoongi wishes he could backhand his own brain. And Jimin for making him nearly topple off his broom when a whistle is blown to call them all down for a quick pep talk. Namjoon may be a fantastic captain but he’s insufferably awkward when it comes to handling their feisty little keeper and her blunt complaints about their “horny seeker”. With a horrendously choked cough and a wave of Namjoon’s hand they are all sent back to their positions.Yoongi’s stationed himself high above the rest of the team as he looks out for the snitch, one of the hopefuls for the seeker position once Yoongi graduates just across from him with eyes focused and fingers clenched tight around the handle of her broom. She’s a tiny little thing with fiery red hair and eyes so green they remind him of the emeralds in his mother’s favorite rings. He thinks she might actually be a good choice, what with her being so similar to him in the way she handles decision making on the pitch. However, despite his distraction in the form of Park Jimin, he manages to spot the golden streak of the snitch before her. She is fiesty and determined, something Yoongi can appreciate, but the second her eyes widen and her body leans forward Yoongi regrets thinking it. She’s off in 0.5 seconds with a hand outstretched and Yoongi is quick to take off after her, shoulders hunched against the way snow attacks him from the speed he’s moving at. His goggles are starting to hinder his eyesight, snowflakes sticking and melting to water that almost immediately freezes. It’s not something that usually bothers him too much in the grand scheme of things but he quickly finds that his hands keep reaching up and away from his broom to wipe furiously at the protective eye gear. He’s still going strong side by side with his opponent, both making almost the exact same maneuvers to get to the snitch quicker. Yoongi however is quickly finding that he can’t keep his hands away from his eyes. It’s strange, completely out of the norm for him to be so bothered by something so trivial, and before he can truly process it he is pushing both himself and his broom past their limits. He wants this to end and fast. Something about the way his body is reacting bothers him, almost as if it isn’t listening to him. He can’t stop his hands though, can’t keep them on the broom even with how far he’s pushing it but he keeps trying to push through it, keeps trying to end the game with a win.This, in hindsight, was probably not his best move ever. He knows after years of playing this sport that there are right and wrong ways to deal with things. He also knows it takes only a split second to be knocked off of a broom, be it by collision with another player or taking a hit from a bludger or quaffle. In his case it happens to come in the form of the other seeker, bodies colliding harshly enough for him to hear a sickening crunch and his lungs compress so hard the wind is knocked out of him before his broom disappears from underneath him completely. The pitch becomes a big blur of color, green streaks of Slytherin quidditch robes below him and then above him, panicked screaming reaching his ears as he falls. It’s happened before on occasion, where he just can’t scramble his way back onto his broom but to be knocked off so harshly that he starts to see black spots clouding his vision….it has never happened to him before. He’d always been completely aware of what was happening, in control of how he could force the outcome to be one way or another. It’s scary the first few seconds he realizes that he is free falling to the ground with absolutely no way to regain control, but then he hits something so hard he can feel his entire body literally convulse from the pain for something so quick he can’t decide if it’s a second or a millisecond, and then it’s like someone flipped a switch and he shut down. No sound, no feeling, no sight. It’s terrifying for the moment he can still process thought. Jimin prides himself in his abilities as a quidditch player. He can push through fear, worry, anger, anything he has the ability to feel, you bet he can push through it and keep playing the game. Even use them to his benefit at times. He has lived up to this claim many times over the years he had been playing but this is different.Yoongi had always gotten up when he fell in the past. He’d taken his fair share of tumbles and bumps but never once had he fallen so hard and from so high up. And as Jimin, amongst all of his other teammates, stopped everything to land and rush their way to their fallen seeker…..he felt his entire existence come to a halt. There was blood, Yoongi had blood pouring from his nose so dark it almost looked black. He was making noises that Jimin knew would be haunting him in his sleep, gurgling and moaning that sounded so foreign coming from someone so seemingly unbreakable. Yoongi was unbreakable, Yoongi was not someone who went down so easily. Yet there he was looking down at a broken body, feeling sick to his stomach. There were limbs that writhed and laid at unnatural angles, at some places bone had broken skin and it made a few of the students around him physically be sick but Jimin felt unable to move- unable to breathe. All he can do is watch his boyfriend be taken from the quidditch pitch, eyes wide and mind dizzy with shock. Quidditch came with the expectation that you or your teammate were going to be injured at some point. It was something that everyone knew and accepted but hoped and prayed wouldn’t happen because goddamn were the injuries nasty. Jimin knew that Yoongi was aware of these things but he couldn’t help the way his mind angrily yelled that it was all because of quidditch that Yoongi was in such bad condition even for the wizarding world. He blamed the broom, blamed the pitch and even came to place blame on Hogwarts for allowing the sport. It was easy to place blame when he was sat beside an unconscious Yoongi, looking small and fragile and broken in a bed almost the same colour as his skin; white, white as snow or white as a ghost. He’d stopped bleeding. There was no more splotches of scarlet on his hospital wear, no more dark blood streaming across his cheek and into his hair- he remembers hearing snippets about deoxygenated something, remembers being so scared that it had meant Yoongi wasn’t getting oxygen to the brain and that he would die but what scared him more was that Namjoon had been quietly trying to translate all the medical gibberish and paused when he heard that specific term. He’d skipped a good portion, Jimin knew he had, and continued with broken bones here and torn muscle there but none of it had quite registered after that first comment.The staff of Hogwarts had quickly, scarily, deemed themselves quite unable to handle Yoongi’s situation and called for St. Mungo’s. The entirety of Hogwarts had been silent that night during supper. Not that Yoongi had ever been the life of the party or anything, but the knowledge that one of their own had been carted off to St. Mungo’s scared them. Seokjin and Hoseok had silently slipped into place beside him at the Slytherin table; they received no complaints about House rules, no nasty glares directed at the lion embroidered onto their robes. Taehyung joined shortly after, a bubbly and beloved Hufflepuff with a strange knack for...well...being strange. But he made Jimin smile and liked to see his friends smile, so Jimin let him stay. Even if he couldn’t really smile. His boyfriend had been cursed by his own teammate and then left to be hospitalized where Jimin couldn’t see him. He wasn’t able to smile for a long while, Hoseok and Taehyung’s attempts be damned.Over the days that Yoongi was absent the other students slowly became more their usual roughty selves, not forgetting but trying to move on in a sense. Seokjin returned to his own House table to eat and mingle and hold his boyfriends hand with shy little smiles. Taehyung stayed, alongside Hoseok whm both attempted to lift his mood with ridiculously bright and comical shenanigans- he had to admit that he cracked a few smiles. But nothing made him smile like the news of Yoongi being well enough to bunk out the rest of his recovery in Madam Pomfrey’s wing of the castle. “Fucking- can you fucking stop that?” True to the rumoured words Yoongi was definitely on the mend. He’d taken to being scowley and grumpy and snappy, and Jungkook was beside himself with happiness when he realized he had gained the opportunity of a lifetime. Not even Seokjin could manage to pull him out of the medical wing after he discovered the length Yoongi could reach from his spot on the bed.Jimin tried to warn him on a few occasions, eyes narrowed and head shaking in warning from his spot sat on the mattress beside his boyfriend but the little shit just kept poking fun at this bedridden classmate.He had taken to not only picking through Yoongi’s stash of gifted sweets (Jimin swore he had no idea how many of their classmates liked his boyfriend despite his flippant and uninterested attitude) and leaning just out of reach so he could make rather snarky remarks about Yoongi’s quidditch abilities between mouthfuls of candy. It was apparent he was only saying it all because he got a raise out of Yoongi actually reacting but said boy was anything but amused. In fact he had voiced just so when Jungkook had left for deviations class about three days into his return to Hogwarts and Jimin was all too eager to talk his grumpy lover into plans for revenge.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Jimin has pink hair, gorgeous blue eyes and a dusting of pretty little freckles over the bridge of his nose. He likes to see the reactions of younger students in the Great Hall when he morphs his features, likes to make others laugh and smile and be genuinely happy even if just for a few moments. He’s a ball of sunshine in every sense of the term, and Namjoon thinks that he is the best person to have ever walked the earth. There isn’t a mean bone in his body, and while he is undeniably talented in the Slytherin category he is often mistaken for a Gryffindor. He’s managed to befriend nearly the entire school, ghosts and portraits alike, and is more often than not well liked amongst their fellow students and classmates. How in the bloody hell Namjoon managed to catch his attention is so far beyond him that he still occasionally has to pinch himself to make sure he isn’t dreaming their relationship up. He spends morning breakfasts with Jimin snuggled up into his side with wide smiles and tiny hands wrapped up in his robes in an attempt to keep him close. He spends his potions class giving his boyfriend heart eyes and enchanted notes that are revoltingly sweet and equally as cheesy- Yoongi received one by chance once and promptly turned around to give him the most disgusted look he had even seen. Nevertheless Park Jimin is like the sun and Namjoon wishes he could keep that sunlight all to himself….but life is cruel and the sun was never meant to be held captive. He watches Jimin smile and hug and laugh with their fellow classmates and a part of his heart shrivels every single time. He can’t justify it no matter how many times he tries to tell himself that Jimin is Jimin and that means he thrives on the love of others. The happiness and smiles and content little sighs he gets when he offers a hug. Despite the little shrivel of a heart he has left by the end of their fifth year Namjoon manages to love his boyfriend with every single fiber of his being. He sneaks up to the younger boys common room and waits to be let into the dorms so they can snuggle and fall asleep in each others arms. He still likes to feel that warm little body pressed up to his side in the Great Hall during meals and still cheers his hardest at quidditch matches for the opposite teams beater. He still lives to hear Jimin say that he knows Namjoon loves him. No matter how hard it all becomes with every confession of love for HIS boyfriend. No matter how hard it gets with every sweet smile that isn’t directed at him.It all comes to a head when the grounds are blanketed in white snow and the air is crisp enough to make breathes visible. He’s on his way to the owlery with arms full of Christmas gifts and cards to be sent off before break when he hears a familiar laugh. It’s Jimin, he knows immediately that it belongs to his boyfriend but what he doesn’t know is the laugh that accompanies it a few seconds later. It’s completely unfamiliar but distinctly male and it makes Namjoon’s chest tighten; most days when a guy is laughing at something Jimin has said it means they want in his pants. At least that’s how Yoongi had so eloquently put it.Apparently he’s right because not ten seconds later the laughter is cut off and replaced with the sound of lips smacking together- this guy was kissing his boyfriend. He would blame the frigid cold of winter for the way he completely freezes in his spot but he knows better. He feels guilty for listening, eavesdropping even, but when the kissing doesn’t stop immediately it squashes any and all guilt. The noises keep going and Namjoon’s heart keeps shriveling and before he knows it he has dropped everything to get away from it all. He, oddly enough, finds himself sat in the Gryffindor common room. He doesn’t want to look at Jimin when he returns from the owlery but there he is sat in the one place he is guaranteed to see him at some point of the day. He’s sat on the floor in front of the fire with his hands folded on his lap, having been warming them before he was joined by a familiar yet unexpected presence. It seemed that Min Yoongi had a tendency to appear when he was needed most and sleep when he was needed….well….less. The fact that he was now in the Gryffindor common room instead of his own was somewhat strange for him, but Namjoon welcomed the appearance openly. He and Yoongi had a strange unvoiced agreement between one another that was of course when one of them needed someone but did not want to talk about why, it was either Yoongi or Namjoon respectively that the other would seek out. Namjoon never truly needed to seek because Yoongi was scarily intune with his emotional state. “Sophie asked me to go to Hogsmeade with her this Saturday.” Yoongi says it as if he’d been stating the weather was cold. It never ceased to weird Namjoon out when his older friend made things sound so utterly unimportant, and then kept his facial expression entirely neutral as well.
“I told her she should ask that one Hufflepuff girl with the purple hair instead.” At this Yoongi’s brows furrow and his nose scrunches. “She slapped me and told me to fuck myself. I think she may not be into girls?” The way he states it makes him seem so naive, as if he was unaware that he had turned down a girl and she was angry about it- not that she was offended by his offered advice- Namjoon has to physically hold himself back from cooing. Yoongi had that way about him that made him seem simultaneously older than his years and a child at heart. So accepting of the world around him and yet ready for it all to change. He was an enigma of the best sort really. To say Yoongi was endearing would be a bit of an understatement but Namjoon figured everyone had felt that at least once during their years of classes with Yoongi.
He’s entirely wrong though and he can ignore that little snippet of his mind when he’s too busy being in love with Jimin or trying to still be in love with Jimin or trying to not be in love with Jimin.
He keeps that routine up even as he’s aware that Yoongi is rumoured to have been harbouring the biggest crush on him since first year, keeps it up even when Yoongi scoots just a little closer and inches a hand to rest over one of his in his lap. He vaguely realizes in the back of his mind that he is doing to Yoongi what Jimin has been doing to him. He lets his older friend slip their palms together and tangle their fingers together and then lets him lay his cheek against his shoulder. Jimin comes back with pink cheeks and a red tipped nose from the cold, smile wide and eyes shining with his usual undeterred happiness. He’s got the scarf Namjoon gifted him for Christmas last year wrapped around his neck and a pair of mittens on his hands, looking adorably fluffy and marshmallowy in his puffy winter coat. Namjoon hates himself for falling in love all over again. “Namjoon!” His heart breaks and mends itself in mere milliseconds at the sound of his name rolling off of Jimin’s tongue, but he can’t fix the way Yoongi’s heart breaks when he gets up and leaves the Slytherin sixth year to blink down at his now empty hand. It was Gryffindor’s seeker, Jungkook, who had kissed Jimin that day. Namjoon becomes aware of this on the day he returns back to Hogwarts from Christmas break spent with family. Jimin is curled up on one of the Gryffindor common rooms couches with a blanket draped over his shoulders and a mug of steaming hot chocolate clutched between his hands. Jungkook, a tall and rather fit fourth year, is sat beside him looking all kinds of content with an arm wrapped loosely around Jimin’s waist. Namjoon wants to lose his shit and scream at them, maybe punch someone’s lights out...but instead he just feels so completely and utterly tired. Like he’s done, just so finished trying to make himself believe that Jimin still loves him back.So he lets Jimin get up when he notices Namjoon standing in the doorway, lets him take his hands and kiss his knuckles and look up at him with big ‘ole crocodile tears in his eyes. He lets Jimin struggle through an explanation, “I love you Namjoon I always will you know that, but I’m- I’m not in love with you….anymore.”And then he lets Jimin drop his hands, turn to Jungkook and cry into his shoulder. It’s strange how numb he feels considering he had been trying so damn hard to feel something for so long.It’s no surprise that Yoongi finds him and initiates their usual quiet comfort. It’s not in a common room or a classroom this time but in the Great Hall during supper. They kind of just sit there and stare down at their food whilst everyone else eats and shares their stories of merriment over Christmas. Namjoon can see Jimin sitting at least a foot away from Jungkook, eyes downcast and spoon playing with his share of pudding listlessly. He looks guilty and Namjoon feels a little tiny bit satisfied. But Yoongi is sat beside him and he can physically feel the strange discomfort coming off of him in waves; it’s unfamiliar between them to feel any sort of discomfort and it starts bothering Namjoon by the time he realizes that he’s finished his entire supper and started on dessert but Yoongi has done nothing but push some carrots around his plate and fork the living hell out of his meatloaf. He hasn’t touched his food. He’s frowning. He’s quiet and withdrawn. He’s entirely unlike himself. Namjoon’s attention shifts and for the first time in years he doesn’t have to force it to stop trying to go back to Jimin.He’s lost weight and dark circles blossom under his eyes. He looks so sickly and tired and weak that Namjoon forgets his own hurt in the form of a broken heart. He wants to wrap Yoongi up in a warm blanket fresh out of a dryer and make him his favourite dishes so he will actually eat. He wants to tuck him into bed and let him sleep for a week. But he is used to these feelings of want, had become very familiar with them as he’d sat on the sidelines of Yoongi’s bouts of depression and insomnia; but this time he’s kind of done with being too wrapped up in a love that wasn’t there. He’s done being selfish and faux unaware. He’s got his favorite upperclassmen wrapped up in his comforter at two am and he’s got his own eye bags from staying up to listen to Yoongi quietly voice worries and anxieties and things from his past that still feel a little too close. He starts to watch Yoongi eat- or not eat some days- and he comes to like knowing what foods he can’t resist, which sweets are his favourites. And then he likes to conspicuously make requests for them, likes to watch Yoongi’s eyes light up and his lips twitch with an oncoming smile.But Namjoon feels like the scum of the earth when he realizes just how hard it has been for his friend. And he hadn’t done anything to make it easier, hadn’t even acknowledged it. But he knows that all of what he feels by the time Hogwarts is dusted with pretty blossoms and wildflowers and green leaves….is nothing compared to what Yoongi feels on a daily basis.
He isn’t scarily intune with Namjoon’s emotions, he just likes to wander when he can’t sleep and needs to clear his mind when it gets too messy and loud. Sometimes he needs it to be empty, and he finds Namjoon somewhere along the way. He isn’t just a shoulder to cry on when it’s convenient for him. And Namjoon hates himself for ever thinking that he was.Sometimes Yoongi is like spring though, can melt away the cold of winter almost naturally and Namjoon finds that it lifts his spirits. Yoongi can smile at him with his cute little teeth and gums on full display and he can hum out melodies that smooth over his heart like a healing salve. He does these little things that Namjoon was too distracted to see the first time round. His heart had grown unbearably heavy with regret and guilt when he really got to know Yoongi past the quiet acceptance of being there for each other and nothing else. He had grown to see that Yoongi was a different kind of caring and loving and happiness than Jimin was; but it was all still there, in a way that was much more subtle. It had been there just waiting to be noticed and it finally was when he had Yoongi sat beside him in the astronomy tower.Four o’clock in the morning with a blanket of starlight overhead, Yoongi had told him that he wants to have a happy life; a future that is shared with someone he loves and people he can lift up and lives he can help save. He wants kids, he wants friends and family to spend holidays with and share memories with and for some strange reason it makes Namjoon go inexplicably soft. He remembers Jimin’s planned future involving quidditch and….and…..and he doesn’t remember if Jimin had wanted kids. He doesn’t remember if Jimin had ever mentioned marriage or holidays with family. It’s kind of like the last little push his heart and mind had needed and suddenly he can see a future that doesn’t cater to another person but to himself. Instead of quidditch stands he can imagine a quaint library with sunlight streaming through windows and dust particles. He can see a cup of tea on his coffee table surrounded by pages and writing instead of newspapers littered with Jimin’s grinning face. It is oddly peaceful.And maybe he adds Yoongi and his gummy smiles and his sleepy eyes and his laughter into a few pictures; soft, sleepy eyes in the morning and long fingers cradling a cup of coffee at three am when neither of them can sleep. Maybe he lets himself enjoy the way Yoongi’s fingers are cold where they are laced with his own in that familiar comforting sort of way, gives them a squeeze and smiles because Yoongi shivers from the warmth against cold skin. He feels butterflies fill his chest when a cheek presses into his shoulder, still as strong as they had been back when he’d pushed aside feelings and emotions. He still feels a warmth pumping through his veins that bring a blush to his cheeks when Yoongi tells him that he had dreamt Namjoon into his future more than a few times.Namjoon is in love far before he accepts it and he feels kind of childish owning up to it, but he does. Leans up on an elbow and rests his forehead against Yoongi’s temple for a moment, like he thinks Yoongi will do anything but what he’s wanted to do for so goddamn long, and then he presses their lips together. It feels new and old at the same time, like they had been kissing each other for centuries but it is unlike anything he has ever experienced. It….makes him feel a sense of belonging that he had not felt for years. And when he leans back just enough to look down at the boy he’d just kissed he sees that Yoongi is blushing all the way up to the tips of his ears, bottom lip trapped between teeth in an attempt to not smile. There is a light to his eyes that Namjoon thinks he recognizes, maybe had seen when he was so madly in love with Jimin that nothing else really mattered- but Yoongi is different, everything still matters, but Namjoon is there and he matters too. It is the equal balance that he had been craving and while Yoongi was always there he had never really wanted to take the time to see it. He almost feels like Jimin had been the cloth over his eyes but he knows that Jimin was more than that; he was a first love. Yoongi was a first love too, a different kind of love that comes naturally and easily and makes Namjoon all soft inside instead of hot and jealous and possessive. Unlike their unspoken agreement, this time Namjoon really needs to make it loud and real and tangible so he offers for Yoongi to accompany him to Hogsmeade. As a date, he stammers out nervously, you know like as boyfriends. But only if you want that.
He thinks it’s kind of funny that Sophie tells him to watch out, make sure Yoongi doesn’t accidentally open his eyes to his soulmate- all while hand in hand with that ‘purple haired Hufflepuff’ looking lovesick. Yoongi is struck with shock for a moment before silently taking Namjoon’s hand in his own, squeaking out a rather embarrassingly flustered, “Yes- yeah, boyfriends yes.” If Jimin and Jungkook give each other looks that scream ‘fucking finally’ Namjoon chooses to ignore it. But Yoongi finds it kind of amusing and simultaneously rude (Jimin cheating on Namjoon is kind of a strange concept for Yoongi’s lovestruck heart and mind) so he gives them both- and the surrounding populis- the finger.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Seokjin had been fighting for far too long. There was not one single person amongst their ranks that wasn’t fighting for something though, and Seokjin’s something came in the form of a first year Hogwarts student who happened to be his baby sister. She was bright for her age and had a heart of gold much as their mother did but she also had a pique of curiosity that often got her in trouble- he could sympathise because he had been in her shoes when he was a student. He remembers all of the grandeur of The Great Hall, now in shambles as it acts as a makeshift area for regrouping and caring for the fallen. He can see the moving staircase in his mind’s eye before it had been blown to hell, spells and curses taking their toll. Hogwarts was a beautiful place full of beautiful memories yet he was standing in what felt like a graveyard.Dead bodies lined the sides of the hall and there were far too many people crying, grieving losses and betrayals. It felt dark, dismal even as he walked into what he thought would be a hall full of his friends and comrades.There are familiar faces among those of the dead. Young and old, from faces he had seen when sending his sister off to Hogwarts on her first day to professors and past classmates. It would have broken him had he not already been numb.He feels a twinge of a sting behind his eyes as if he wants to cry but no tears fall; a past lover is surrounded by many with tears and expressions of resignation as they look down upon a lost loved one. Seokjin had been smitten back in his fifth year by beautiful green eyes and hair the colour of the sun yet there he was, observing the death of all he had fallen so deeply in lo- love? No, not love more like a strong like really- with. Green eyes are dulled and sun kissed hair is darkened with dirt and blood. He’s holding the limp hand of a girl, the one they are mourning. He’d moved on. Seokjin wants to smile because the boy had taken the breakup rather sourly, but he can’t bring himself to do much other than give a nod in acknowledgement and perhaps grief as he continues on his way to what he desperately hopes will be his group of loved ones- free of grief preferably.But he can’t get the thought of that specific love out of his head. Love had been reserved for his sixth and seventh years at Hogwarts. For a boy who spoke with a sharp tongue and had a smile that made him feel like cotton candy on the inside; He had been a good student, a good friend, a good lover. But he had fallen into the hands of one that should not have been trusted and it ruined him. It paled his skin and bruised under his eyes, crushed his spirit slow and steady. He’d stopped eating and stopped sleeping and became angry- so angry. Seokjin had been scared for him, for the loss of such a good person.A month before their graduation he had found a hastily penned letter. His lover, or past lover considering, had left to join the dark ranks of Lord Voldemort’s followers.There had been a blanket of cold, silent betrayal among the students of Hogwarts. The Slytherin Dungeon had gained a new decoration, a stack of books and a pair of robes left out on one of the couches at all times- just in case he came back, as Jimin had said tearfully upon questioning. He’d lost a best friend, not quite ready to admit to himself that he was truly gone. Seokjin had held it together relatively well compared to the raw hurt that had shown through in their group of friends, there to be a shoulder to cry on or an ear to confide in….he had kept his own suffering to himself and on occasion Namjoon. He’d kept his grades strong and his smile on and graduated Hogwarts top of his class. But even then, years later and in the middle of a battle, he still felt that missing piece that had never been truly satisfied by any lover or one night stand that had happened thereafter. He was still missing something as he came upon his friends, all alive and mostly whole; Jimin and Jungkook sat together nursing equally nasty gashes, Namjoon was looking down at his hands with wide eyes glazed over with tears (he made a vague mental note to speak to him about it) and standing with twin tearful smiles and outstretched arms were Taehyung and Hoseok. But the lack of a smiling face hit home.Tears spilled then, from his stinging eyes to pour down his cheeks and leave trails through the aftermath of dirt and ashe and dried blood. Warm arms pull him into a sturdy chest and hold him there for wracking sobs and stuttered words of thanks to finally be let out- “It’s alright, we’re all safe. It’s okay.” until he’s left weak in the knees and exhausted to the point of struggling to stay upright. He’s got Hoseok rubbing small little circles of comfort on his lower back and Taehyung’s hands holding him close but there is that hole of darkness that whispers of loss and longing and want. He has learned to ignore it. Learned to be afraid of the darkness that his lover had fallen into, that was mirrored in the longing deep seeded within his heart. But in that moment, under those circumstances, he lets it consume him. Just that once.He wants for familiar hands holding him tenderly and soft words of naive love to be whispered in his ears- he feels his chest tighten and his lower lip tremble for a second time with how badly he wishes it were someone else holding and comforting him. But that doesn’t change the fact that Taehyung is the one holding him and Hoseok comforting him. It doesn’t change that Jimin is looking at him with big, sad eyes and Jungkook is trying his best not to cry with him. It doesn’t change a single thing and perhaps it should force a sort of acceptance out of him but he can’t bring himself to believe that he won’t pull away and find eyes the colour of sunlit whiskey or an endearingly gummy smile. The only chance of seeing that again came in the form of betrayal. And Kim Seokjin knew better. He’s not met with what his heart desires when he pulls back from the embrace. It doesn’t do much other than tug at his heart strings a tad, had become timid in the pain it caused him over the years. “We thought you wouldn’t be coming back to us alive….” Is mumbled off to the left of him, Namjoon looking up with clear eyes and a sniff of attempting to hold back any further tears.“Thought you’d be lying on the floor like all the others.” He gestures widely to the other small groupings of people before them with a trembling hand and sadness in his voice and it makes Seokjin want to cry for him. But he’s out of tears to cry. It grows quiet from then on, the sounds of crying and mourning and whispers of gratefulness for returned loved ones the only background to the silent heaviness they all felt as they sat and waited. Waited for the next ignited battle to tear them away from the ones they had reunited with. But that particular quiet does not last nearly as long as they had hoped for; the familiar reverberation of a voice speaking to them, mentally and with the slippery sort of disgust that comes with true loathing, starts a confused sort of panic amongst their remaining ranks. “For every ten minutes Harry Potter does not give himself to me, I shall kill one of innocence.”It begins with quiet murmurs of confusion before growing into full blown panicked exclaims of missing friends and family who verywell may have been alive but had yet to return to The Great Hall. Jungkook is one of said panicked people; his elder brother had not come back when they were given time to collect their dead. He’s standing then, with frantic eyes and heavy breathes and Jimin holding him by the bicep in an attempt to calm him. Seokjin can’t truly sympathise, his family had been paranoid that year and stayed as far from Hogwarts as they could- something Seokjin was so completely and irrevocably grateful for that it almost hurt to remember that his little sister and parents were not going to be brought in with the dead. But he was there, he was fighting, and he was content with knowing that he was doing something good for people who would be growing up in a world free of darkness. That doesn’t mean he cannot feel the raw pain that has Jungkook struggling to get free- to get to his big brother. He’s grown in the years that have passed since his time in the school, he’s developed muscle and brawn and lost the shy boyish way he used to carry himself with. He’s become a man and the way Jimin had begun to actually strain against his younger lovers fighting spoke wonders of it. Behind that strength and determination was just a scared boy though, hiding and crying and cowering. “No, no please I can’t lose my brother you don’t understand!” There’s a long while of discussion between all present in the hall before there is the loud, distinct sound of a beckoning call. Blood runs cold and feet move slow as the left survivors make their way cautiously to the entrance to the courtyard; there are so many numbers in the dark ranks that Seokjin feels sick to his stomach. But stood before them is a lone figure, looking meek and small and misplaced. It is a male, dressed in jet black head to toe with striking features and a head of familiar mint coloured hair- Seokjin remembers running his fingers through it in the morning with laughter at wild bedhead and grumbly complaints and adorable sleepy crinkled button noses. He feels his entire existence come to a sudden halt, air stolen from lungs and eyes filling with tears. “Innocence. Such a sweet concept.” He’s trying to yell, to scream because that’s Yoongi. That is the person he used to dream up a future with. But he is in the clutches of pallid hands, holding him by the shoulders with a wand resting against the side of his neck almost carelessly. He looks resigned to whatever outcome happens and it stirs anger deep within Seokjin’s belly. That was not the way Yoongi had been, not the strong kind of resilient that was only partial to him. “It comes in many forms, does it not?” There is no sign of it as a long, cold looking finger strokes down the side of a hollow cheek. “This is corrupt innocence.” Seokjin feels a warm palm wrap around the fist his hand had unconsciously formed by his side. “I am rather fond. However I have no qualms with letting this one go.” Yoongi’s parents are on the sidelines. Seokjin can see them. They are whimpering cowards, holding each other and shedding tears but doing nothing to put a stop to the death of their son. It truly, completely, disgusts him to his very core.“Cowards.” There is sudden silence. The hand around his goes tense, pulling a little. Seokjin imagines he would be able to hear a pin drop at the way every single mouth has clamped shut. The hand drops and his vision is blocked by Namjoon’s appearance. “Seokjin what the hell are you doing.” It’s hushed, almost afraid, but it is not nearly enough to make the anger boiling within him settle to a simmer. He doesn’t bat an eye when Namjoon shakes his head, instead gently pushing against his shoulder to take a step around his taller frame.“You are fucking cowards.” The people around him have started to look doubtful, probably of his sanity, but they do not hesitate to part when he shoves his way out of the small throng of people that only hold him back when he reaches the front lines. He is angry but knows when anger begins to borderline reckless and pauses to take steadying breaths before he lets his eyes fall upon the two people he had never truly gotten to know past their names and stories of childhood splendour by none other than the son they had so willingly given to death. “Your son is going to be killed and you do nothing. Have you no shame?!” There is a quiet murmuring that picks up behind him, slowly growing louder as the two parents begin to shy away from judging eyes. The dark lord however, from his stance finds it all a bit amusing. He laughs, deep and guttural and disturbingly nonhuman. Yoongi doesn’t even flinch.His mother however flinches hard enough for the both of them. She looks torn, eyes terrified but body staying exactly where she had been standing when her son had been taken willingly from her side. “No, no you do not understand why-” Her husband, a man that looks vaguely like Yoongi, shakes his head and hushes her. But she continues speaking anyway. “He has a plan….for us.” She sounds weak and strangely subdued, voice wavering and quiet although she looks determined when Seokjin truly focuses on her expression. There is no further sound from the dark clad people standing across from them, none of agreement. It honestly sets a small part of Seokjin into a hazy sort of fear. These people had been so disillusioned that they were willing to die- willing to give up their own flesh and blood for a man that would not do the same.The fear does not last nearly as long as he had thought it had potential too however, not when a curse whizzes from the tip of her wand, narrowly missing her son when it is deflected with a harsh shout. Following, there is complete silence. Nobody dares move, all eyes shifting between the Dark Lord and the woman who had just tried to kill him. Seokjin himself has eyes only for Yoongi, stood stock still with wide eyes and the first glimare of emotion shining through the carefully constructed emptiness. In his eyes Seokjin see’s unbridled terror.Chaos ensues just as Yoongi’s mother open her mouth, spells and curses sent in every direction as yells and screams of orders are given. He’s jostled in all directions by elbows and hands and frantic feet but he manages to snag Namjoon’s hand and yank him to safety in the form of a relatively still-put-together stone pillar. He feels dizzy and disoriented, everything happening far too quickly for his brain to process even as they hunker down and look for openings to lend a helping hand in the fight. Namjoon lands a very well gratifying spell on Yoongi’s father and Seokjin feels a swell of pride at the way his friend lets out a shaky little, “serves you right, dickhead.” His pride splinters though. Dies out like water over a flame. Beside him the spark in Namjoon’s eyes dulls drastically, head shaking in disbelief when they are left yet again to...collect their dead. To hand over the only person that would appease the death and destruction. There are far too many left on the cobblestone ground of the courtyard by the time it is relatively safe to leave cover. Amongst them is Yoongi’s mother, eyes wide and unseeing from where she is lying limp on her side. It makes Seokjin shiver, hard. She may have been a coward, she may have betrayed wizards and witches alike but she did not deserve death. Seokjin recognizes this and bends to slide her eyes closed gently with a sigh. She resembled her son uncannily- to the extent that it made him think about how Yoongi’s features would look slackened and still in death. His stomach clenched at the thought. But there are others who are familiar to him- all being brought into The Great Hall. Jungkook has his arm around his older brother who looks far more worse for ware than he had not two or three hours previous. Jimin is on his boyfriends older brother’s side with a should for support- the two of them are in the same shape they had been before everyone made their way out to the courtyard and Seokjin lets out a heavy exhale of relief. Taehyung had stumbled his way over rubble and debris to get to his and Namjoon’s side and was alright save for the fact that his sweater had met an untimely death, causing him to shudder lightly at the chill in the air. It was Hoseok that did not come within his line of vision. It made his heart sink until the three of them made their way into the Hall with the small crowd and Seokjin was able to spot him. He was standing with a group of adults, most being aurors or Hogwarts professors, and he looked an odd mixture of angry and relieved. The expression on his face was undeniably out of place for him as he tended to be on the more positive of outlooks in situations that pulled the worst out of people. Namjoon seemed to have noticed and broke away from where he had leaned against Taehyung in a last ditch effort to keep himself upright- and the second he made it to the younger man he turned to look Seokjin directly in the eyes.He had seen many emotions in Namjoon’s eyes over the years, too many to count really. But the way his eyes looked in that exact moment was something he hoped that he would never have to see again; the only way he could describe the look was that someone had just died.It scared him, made his stomach drop to the soles of his feet and his chest stutter when he tried to inhale. He had never dealt with losing someone to death like this, he didn’t know how to handle the onslaught of irrational anger and denial that flooded his veins.He didn’t even know if someone had truly passed on. But the way Namjoon laid a palm on Hoseok’s shoulder and gave a gentle squeeze before walking back over to where he and Taehyung had halted in their walking made the fine hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. “Seokjin. He-.....” Namjoon couldn’t even finish his sentence before he had to stop and try to recollect himself as tears poured down his cheeks. All he could do was step aside and point back to where Hoseok had crouched down to run a gentle hand down a still cheek. Jimin had joined him as Jungkook and his brother were whisked off to be treated, stood off to his left with both hands rubbing over his wet face. He was crying just as Namjoon was, knees looking weak as they wobbled precariously.Laying before his feet was Yoongi. He had a small rivulet of blood running from his nose that disappeared into his hairline and turned his hair a strange pinkish red. His skin looked deathly pale against the dark grey of one of the blankets that had been lain out beneath him. He was completely still. Careful steps lead him to the limp body where he garnered pitying gazes and he was quick to kneel at the younger mans side, hands hovering as he tried to figure out what to do with them. One hand pulled a cold, limp hand between both of his own and the sudden way his heart kicked in his chest made him suck in a shaking inhale. “Yoongi?” Looking down at Yoongi’s face after years of missing it so much was like seeing the sun after years of rain. He still had the same button nose and cupid’s bow lips, but his cheeks were hollow and his skin was so pale it was nearly translucent. The further down Seokjin’s eyes moved the more he felt his heart tear, the man that Yoongi had become was fragile and weak; his ribs were visible from under his shirt, legs so skinny they were nearly nothing but flesh and bone. He looked so small, so broken and worn despite being physically whole.And that broke him, finally made the weight of the situation crash down over Seokjin like a harsh wave. People were dying left and right, darkness was overwhelming, and after so long the love that never really died was right there in front of him but still out of reach. He couldn’t keep his head up when everything became so damn heavy and he let his forehead drop to rest against the back of his hand. Tears he thought had long since dried up slid down his cheeks to collect at his chin and drip to the floor. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Yoongi sleeps for two days straight. He is still and peaceful in his slumber, features slack peacefully in the way Seokjin remembers; lips just barely parted, eyelashes fanned over high cheekbones. There is some of the boy that he used to be in the way his features have held some of the boyish roundness, but most of him has grown sharp and handsome as compared to the way he used to be adorable. It makes Seokjin want to turn back time, to be able to watch the boy he loved grow into a man- the man he had meant to be. Subtly sweet with a heart of solid gold, gummy butterfly inducing smiles and softly hummed tunes half written on paper.But somewhere deep down in his soul Seokjin thinks there might still be some of that left in the man lain prone against the sharp white of a St. Mungos hospital bed.And when Yoongi blearily cracks an eye open, followed by another, there is an immediate recognition there as he blinks over at Seokjin. They both stay silent, Seokjin because he really doesn’t want to shed anymore tears and Yoongi because he….isn’t too sure what to say. Or where he is. Or what happened. So they settle for just sharing small squeezes where their hands are connected; Seokjin had been holding it for quite a while and Yoongi didn’t mind if he were honest.A thumb rubs over his knuckles and then is followed by lips that press to the back of his fingers and Yoongi wants to deny that he feels broken inside but he does. He feels broken and dirty and worn, but Seokjin is the same old Seokjin and he is there with small smiles and careful touches as if what happened had never torn them apart.For the first time in years Yoongi feels emotion rush through him like a dam breaking.When he opens his mouth to speak it sounds more like a croaky squeak- his throat is dry and raw and it rebels when he tries to force it back into use. “Jin- Seokjin,” he has to cough a few times to get it to sound anything remotely close to a voice and Seokjin looks at him almost as if the moment weren’t real. “So sorry…..” He’s silent then, just watching and not expecting much in form of answer. He had done far too much wrong...he didn’t want to be forgiven. Not really. He wanted Seokjin to yell and scream and hate him for leaving, for going against everything he should have stood for. It would make him feel exactly how he felt he deserved to feel; like he were nothing but a lost cause.But Seokjin was never the type, and he knew that a little too well, so he just swallows thickly and shakes his head a little. Drops one last kiss to the back of his hand and then leans up over the side of the bed to card his fingers through Yoongi’s hair to get it away from his forehead and eyes. “Oh, Yoongi. I know….I can’t say it’s okay, not yet. But….I know you’re sorry. And I missed you.” His voice is soft and a little wobbly but it’s got an air certainty to it that makes Yoongi’s throat close a little in a choked out sound meant to be words of acceptance.Tears burn in his eyes and he can feel his brows draw together as they pour over and down his cheeks. It had been so long since he had heard Seokjin’s voice, almost to the point that he forgot how it sounded. But it was choked up and deep, almost tired as he started speaking again. “I missed you so much. So fucking much, Yoongi. You have no idea.” He doesn’t know. Couldn’t have known, really. But he wants to tell Seokjin that he was missed too. That he would lay in bed some nights wide awake and thinking of him. Or that he sometimes had to be restrained from going back- to him, to their friends and the life he left behind for his parents approval. But he doesn’t because Seokjin looks angry then, looks angry in the way that tears whell in his eyes but aren’t given the chance to fall before they are wiped harshly away with the arm of a wooly sweater.“I hate you for leaving me.” Is mumbled down at the mattress, small and angry and irritable. Yoongi can only nod because he hates himself too.“But I never stopped loving you. So where does that leave me.” Something in Yoongi’s chest eases, smooths out at the sound of Seokjin saying that. It reminds him of something he hardly recalls ever feeling after leaving.It reminds him an awful lot of hope.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Everyone knew Jeon Jungkook did not back down from a challenge. No matter how stupid.He’s shivering so hard his teeth are clicking and he can’t feel his toes- or his fingers for that matter, and to add to the list he swears his hair is starting to freeze. Yoongi is looking at him with the single most deadpan stare he’d ever seen and can he really blame his boyfriend? He’d just taken a dunk in the great lake in the middle of winter on a dare that the so called ‘giant squid’ was nothing more than an overweight grindylow. “I’ll kill him. I swear I’ll gut him.” The deadpan exasperation in Yoongi’s eyes goes from flat to fiery anger to something resembling worry as he tugs at the scarf around his neck and begins the daunting task of handing over the layers he can share with his younger love. The robes he had worn out to the lake had been left to soak up melted snow and slush, the only piece of clothing salvageable being his flimsy at best snow boots.Between the two of them they were a spectacle to many of the students they encountered in their mad dash for the warmth of the nearest common room- Ravenclaw as it were- half dressed, one wearing a few articles of clothing that were far too small. It made Jungkook snicker, the little shit, but Yoongi was far less amused as he blushed furiously at being observed in his undergarments.Of course Jungkook’s amusement fell away in favor of slight misfortune for the poor soul who had dared him, as more than two thirds the way to Ravenclaw Tower they managed to make an even greater spectacle in way of Yoongi hexing Taehyung to burp bubbles for nearly giving his boyfriend hypothermia over a fucking squid. To say Taehyung went bright red in embarrassment when half of the student body in The Great Hall started laughing was an understatement.Jungkook figured it beat getting gutted alive. Especially by someone like Yoongi who was fiercely protective of the ones he loved and despised going back on his own word- a true Slytherin through and through. And his theory was further proven correct when the dormitory promptly emptied upon their hasty arrival with nothing more than Yoongi’s glare and a sharp, “Privacy, it’s a thing.” followed by the stripping of Jungkook’s cold, dampened clothes.He’d never seen Namjoon run so fast- nor quite so coordinated. “Where do you keep your shit-” Yoongi, ever the eloquent languist, wasted no time in yanking the blanket from Jungkook’s bed to wrap his shivering boyfriend up in the dry warmth it provided. He was mumbling quietly to himself, something he rarely did, as his eyes flitted around the dormitory in search of said belongings. “need to get you into something dry….”Large, warm hands disappeared from where they had been rubbing up and down his biceps over the blanket, a sweet but not very effective attempt to get him warmer. He almost wanted to whine at the loss but finds that the urge to thaw out and be warm is taking precedence. “Under the bed. Should be some clothes in the storage.” He’s left to curl up at the foot of his bed, watching Yoongi bend down to peek curiously under his bed. When he looks back up his eyes hold the all too familiar endearment that has become the norm when learning the little muggle things that carried over into his wizarding life. This case being the efficient storage bins he preferred to keep his belongings in, carried over from his time at home where his room was far too small to house all of his belongings. The chests were great but as far as Jungkook is concerned muggles could be crafty as hell and, well, organization was nice without having to use a spell just to find a clean pair of underwear.Yoongi looks like he’s about to open his mouth before he shakes his head in a far too amused maner, small smile forming on his lips that spoke volumes of just how much Jungkook impacted him. He disappears from view for a few moments before he’s coming back up to dislodge Jungkook from his blanket cocoon, flannel pajamas in hand. “Common, out you go.”A hand returns, this time to lightly slap at his thigh, and Jungkook wants to grumble at the way Yoongi slips it, cold and tickly, under the fold of blanket to tug it away from his chest. He’s finally starting to feel warm all snuggled up in its warmth and sees no need to subject himself to the open slightly chilled air of the dorm room.“Can’t we just naked cuddle?” He may or may not have whined like a child but it did the trick, because Yoongi was quick to shuck off what little articles of clothing he had on (i.e, his underwear) in favor of pushing his boyfriend down onto the bed so he could crawl under their shared blanket. His skin was warm, soft where it settled against Jungkook’s side. He couldn’t help turning to nuzzle into Yoongi’s shoulder, legs curling so he could tuck his cold toes into the warmth of the older boys calves. It earned him a hiss and shove to the shoulder, laughter bubbling in his chest at the look of utter distaste in Yoongi’s eyes. “You are such a child, I swear to God. Why do I love you.” The tone is flat but after having known Yoongi since he first arrived at Hogwarts, a muggle born boy from Busan who was immediately taken by Yoongi’s easy demeanor and penchant for making his own way when going with the flow just didn’t interest him, he’d learned quickly that behind a flat tone a million emotions could be brewing. In this particular case the emotion shone loud and clear through a brush of gentle fingers through his hair, a careful attempt at pushing the hair from his eyes and forehead. “You love me because I have rippling muscles, a heart of gold, and one hell of a fantastic arm in quidditch.” The sudden squinting of eyes and small purse to Yoongi’s lips, almost a pout but not quite there yet, was worth the fun poking. Adorable. “Yeah because your ‘rippling muscles’”, unimpressed air quotes followed this particular bit, “are what I actually mean when I say I love your heart.”If Jungkook’s entire face catches flame from the sheer intensity he blushes with at his boyfriends words, nobody actually has to ever- ever know.