Chapter Three. (Final)
Broomsticks are Made for SweepingChanyeol didn’t think he’d be back in the hospital wing so soon. It was just last week that Kyungsoo had nearly killed himself and now Zitao is hurt too. Chanyeol and Zitao may not be very close, but the Hufflepuff had showed him the way to potions class when he lost Kyungsoo, so it’s only natural for him to go visit the boy.
As Chanyeol approaches Zitao’s hospital bed, he hears Zitao whining and some girls giggling. Curious, Chanyeol waves at the trio and greets them with his usual smile.
“Hi everyone.”
“Oh, Chanyeol?” Zitao is sitting on the hospital bed with his back propped up against a pillow. Minyoung is on his right, laughing about how silly he is for needing to spend the night for such a minor injury while Sunyoung is shaking her head at Minyoung’s amusement. A broken toe can be pretty serious, Sunyoung would know, she broke her right toe two Christmases ago.
“That’s my name! How are you feeling?”
“Prett good I guess. Thanks for dropping by, I wasn’t expecting you.”
“No problem, just thought I’d come see if you need any help since I’ve gotten quite good at it helping Kyungsoo. He says ‘hi’ and ‘get well soon’ by the way. It’s hard for him to make the trek here.”
Minyoung stops laughing at the mentioning of Kyungsoo and Sunyoung smirks. Zitao ignores them.
“Oh, that’s… well that’s really nice of both you and Kyungsoo! I hope he gets well soon too. It’s also nice that you offered to help,” Zitao points at Minyoung then at Sunyoung, “but I’ve got these two to help me, so I think I’m in pretty good hands. Plus, I think I made a big deal out of nothing. My toe doesn’t really hurt too much anymore.”
“Ahh, okay. Well, that’s good then. I hope you get well soon. I’m sure umm,” Chanyeol looks at the two girls and rubs the back of his neck sheepishly, “sorry, I don’t know your names.”
“Ah! How rude of me, this is Minyoung,” Zitao gestures to the taller of his two friends first.
“Hi!”
“And that’s Sunyoung.”
“Hello.”
“Nice to meet you Minyoung and Sunyoung, I’m Chanyeol,” the Slytherin chuckles awkwardly and extends his right hand out to shake theirs.
“It’s nice to meet you Chanyeol,” Minyoung shakes Chanyeol’s hand firmly.
“Yes, it’s nice to meet you Chanyeol,” Sunyoung takes Chanyeol’s hand next and nudges Minyoung for pretending to not know Chanyeol. The girl probably knows Chanyeol pretty well since she spends so much time staring at his best friend.
“Well, I guess I’ll get going then? I hope you get well soon Zitao!”
“Thanks, and you can call me Tao if you’d like. Both Minyoung and Sunyoung call me that and I’d like to say we’re friends now too!”
“Oh, okay, bye Tao, bye Minyoung, bye Sunyoung. It was nice meeting you.”
“Bye Chanyeol!”
Chanyeol leaves the hospital wing feeling rather odd. He didn’t expect Zitao to look so lively after hurting himself and he also didn’t expect the boy to be friends with two girls from Ravenclaw. It’s not every day you find a first year hanging out with people from different houses.
With a shrug, Chanyeol heads to the Great Hall for lunch. On his way back, Chanyeol spots Kyungsoo and helps his friend get seated.
“Hey Yeol, you’re back already? How’s Zitao?”
“Oh, pretty good. He says his injury wasn’t too bad, I think he just broke his toe or something.”
Kyungsoo gasps, “he broke his toe? I bet it hurts quite a bit to walk.”
Chanyeol scans Kyungsoo’s bandage ridden body and shakes his head, “Soo… you broke like everything.”
“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean a broken toe wouldn’t hurt too,” Kyungsoo states. With a frown, Kyungsoo attempts to get some food, but struggles with his eating utensils.
“Riight,” Chanyeol grabs some corn and helps Kyungsoo get some potato wedges while he’s at it.
“Thanks,” Kyungsoo takes a bite out of his potato wedges then continues, “so, did the two of you talk about anything interesting?”
“Not really, I met his friends though.”
“Oh that’s nice.”
“Yeah, Minyoung and Sunyoung.”
Kyungsoo’s eyes widen at Minyoung’s name, “o-oh, you met Minyoung?”
“Yeah, she was really nice and she’s pretty too. Do you know her?”
“W-what?” Kyungsoo avoids Chanyeol’s eyes and shakes his head, “no.” Kyungsoo wants to know what Minyoung is like, but holds back the flurry of questions he has for Chanyeol about the girl and switches the topic instead. “I heard Zitao was quite a superstar during class before he got hurt, did you guys talk about that?”
Chanyeol is confused at Kyungsoo’s strong reaction to Minyoung, but ignores it for now. “Oh really? I didn’t hear anything about it. Tao and I just kind of exchange greetings before I left.”
“Ahh, okay…” Kyungsoo takes a sip of his pumpkin juice then shrugs, “oh well, I guess people aren’t really talking about Zitao since my awful flying skills are still the hot topic right now.”
“Hey, it’s okay Soo, I think people are more worried about you than anything,” Chanyeol helps Kyungsoo get a drumstick and gives his friend a consoling smile.
“I’m pretty sure the laughter I hear after people talk about me isn’t out of worry.”
“Aww, don’t be like that! People will forget about this soon.”
“Sure.”
The two Slytherins continue to chat while eating their lunch, the shorter of the two happy that his friend didn’t abandon him during his time of need while the taller is glad he isn’t the one hurt. While Chanyeol couldn’t care less about being a laughing stock or not, he’s such super bad at dealing with pain. He can’t even handle a papercut, much less broken bones. Every time Kyungsoo makes a large movement, he winces and in turn, Chanyeol winces too. Flying really is much too dangerous. If what Kyungsoo said is true, then even someone like Zitao who is good at flying can get hurt too. Chanyeol knows Yura is hoping he’d practice hard and join Quidditch like her, but Chanyeol isn’t so sure. There are just too many things that can go wrong.
“Yeol? Earth to Chanyeoool,” Kyungsoo waves his hands in front of Chanyeol’s face, but tall oaf doesn’t respond, “CHANYEOL!”
“Huh? What?” Chanyeol’s head whips back and forth while his eyes scan his surroundings in confusion.
“You started daydreaming while eating your chicken wing... is everything okay?”
“Oh, yeah, yeah,” Chanyeol waves Kyungsoo concern off, “I was just doing some thinking.”
“About what?”
“Um…” Chanyeol isn’t sure if Kyungsoo would want to talk about this, but they’re best friends and everything so it’ll be okay… right? “Flying?”
“Okay…why?”
“Cause Yura wants me to practice and get good at it so I can join Quidditch like her.”
“And…?” Kyungsoo can’t seem to figure out what the problem is. Of course Yura would want Chanyeol to practice flying and join Quidditch like her. There has to be something else to this though.
“…And I’m not sure if that’s what I want? I mean,” Chanyeol points at Kyungsoo’s cast and bandages, “you almost died and Zitao broke his toe!”
“Yes, but that’s cause I think flying is stupid and Zitao was flying too fast.”
“True, but what if I-”
“But what if you what? If you like flying and want to practice then do it, if not then don’t. It’s up to you. Do what you want to do, not what Yura wants you to do.”
“I don’t know what I want though…” Chanyeol plays with the hem of his robe and looks down at his thighs.
“Then don’t decide yet,” Kyungsoo places his hand on Chanyeol’s and stops him from fiddling with his robe, Chanyeol has had this habit for years now. “You have a long time to decide. We’ve only had two flying classes so far.”
“Yes, and you almost died during the first one and sat out with a death glare on your face during the second one!”
Kyungsoo’s brows furrow and he shakes his head, “that’s besides the point Yeol. I think flying is stupid because brooms are made to clean dust with, not to fly on, but if you don’t think that way, then it’s fine. We’re still friends you know.”
“Really? You don’t think it’s weird that I kind of maybe like flying when you don’t?”
“No.”
“Really?”
“Yes, really. I don’t care if you like to fly or not, just as long as that I won’t ever had to get on a stupid broomstick again.”
Chanyeol releases a sigh of relief and nods to himself, “okay, okay… then yeah… maybe I do like flying. I just wasn’t too sure. I mean, I did okay the first two times and Mister Shim seems to agree.”
“That’s good then. Keep practicing.”
“Yeah, I… I think I will!”
“Good, now can you please finish your food? We have class soon.”
After his conversation with Kyungsoo, Chanyeol feels like a large weight has been taken off his shoulders and is super excited for his third flying class. He thought long and hard about what Kyungsoo said and has finally come to the decision that yes, he does like flying and he’s really quite good at it too. So, while Kyungsoo sits back and watches everyone else in class fly, Chanyeol mounts his own broom and heads for the sky.
As Chanyeol accelerates he sees himself wearing a Quidditch uniform and playing Quidditch with the older students from his house. Chanyeol hasn’t really given this much thought before, but he thinks he’d like to play against his sister and Seungsoo when he’s older. He doesn’t think he’d be the best at it, but it’d be great if he could make the team at some point while studying at Hogwarts. Kyungsoo doesn’t like flying, but Chanyeol is sure he wouldn’t mind going to his matches and cheering him on. Kyungsoo is nice like that even if he tries to hide it.
Chanyeol continues to fly right above the training grounds during flying class and even swoops down to wave at Kyungsoo every now and then. The longer Chanyeol stays up in the sky, the more he feels like he was made to fly. Maybe, just maybe… he’ll get really good at this. Chanyeol looks at the students around him then back down at Kyungsoo. With a determined look on his face, Chanyeol drives down and attempts a quick spiral. He succeeds.
“Yeah! Woot!” Chanyeol hollers at the top of his lungs and laughs when he hears Kyungsoo clap.
With his newfound confidence, Chanyeol attempts some flips and performs other tricks that he’s seen Yura do. Chanyeol completes them all and only stumbles a couple times. As class draws to a close, Chanyeol dives down and spins one last time. Although Chanyeol had done a perfect 360 only moments ago, Chanyeol loses his grip this time and falls off his broom when he’s about half a meter from the floor.
He hears his classmates gasp, Mister Shim groan and Kyungsoo yell, but Chanyeol feels fine. He probably scratched his hands a little bit, but other than that, Chanyeol is okay. He’s always had a low pain tolerance, but that fall didn’t hurt nearly as much as he thought it would.
Chanyeol laughs, dusts himself off and stands up. “I’m okay!”
His classmates, Mister Shim and Kyungsoo all sigh in relief.
“Be careful next time you big oaf!”
Although Chanyeol went into this whole flying thing with absolutely no expectations, he has a very good feeling about it. Kyungsoo might have always been the smarter one, but he can be wrong too. Broomsticks aren’t just made for sweeping, they’re made for flying too!
Hi everyone, I just moved to Seoul and it took me a while to settle in. I will be writing again asap
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