“Ugh, what the heck is that terrible smell?”

Your eyes flutter open weakly in response to the disturbance. Instead of feeling as well-rested as you were used to, you instead feel as though you had pulled an all-nighter whilst subsisting purely on energy drinks. In addition, you could faintly smell the residual scent of dungbombs clinging to your skin.

You jerk up from your bed with realization and quickly lift your arm to sniff it. The smell was unmistakable. Somehow, the extra cleansing charms and shower had not completely washed the smell off of you. How was this even possible?

You yank aside your bed sheets and leap out of your bed. The girls in your dorm notice the sudden movement and stop to stare at you in surprise, mouths hanging open. They begin to exclaim something, but you are deaf to their words as you angrily stomp down the staircase toward the common room.

As you enter the room in a rage, you hardly notice the few people lounging around glance at you with strange looks. Instead you zero in on the three boys huddled together near the entrance of the common room. They look up, instantly noticing your sudden entrance. Taehyung’s eyes widen for a second at the sight of you and he turns to whisper something to Jungkook. The youngest boy smiles and shrugs his shoulders nonchalantly before linking his hands behind his back.

Paying little mind to the exchange, you focus on Taehyung with a glare that could kill even a basilisk, stopping to stand in front of the Golden Trio with arms crossed.

“Hi, [Y/N],” Taehyung smiles with his stupid boxy grin. “I like your bunny pajamas.”

“Stop acting dumb,” you growl visciously, stamping your foot. “Reverse this now!”

“It’s a good look for you, though,” Jungkook insists, his eyes widened in an earnest expression.

You turn to glare at him. “I’m not talking about the stupid pajamas. I want you lot to get rid of this stench!”

Taehyung’s eyes widen and he stares at you blankly. Before you can snap at him for being an idiot, he leans forward toward you and sniffs deeply. You grit your teeth, struggling not to lose your patience. That kid was sure determined to test your patience nowadays.

After Taehyung finishes acting like a weirdo, he turns to look at Jimin for some reason. You follow his gaze expectantly. The mild-mannered boy straightens up with surprise at the sudden attention from the three of you.

“Oh! Um, I guess that worked then.” Before you can demand to know what he is talking about, he begins to rifle through his schoolbag. You frown when he takes out a potion vial and holds it out for you to take. After staring at him for a few solid seconds, he decides to speak up again. “Uh, I think you want to take this.”

You remain silent for a few seconds before showing your irritation. “Why.”

He shifts uncomfortably under your scrutinizing gaze while still holding the vial out. “This reverses the stink. I promise.”

You snatch the potion from his outstretched hand and immediately remove the cork to gulp down the potion. You shoot a nasty glare at Taehyung before stomping back up the staircase toward your dormitory.

As the dormitory door slams behind you, you roommates jerk with surprise.

“[Y/N]!” Irene exclaims and runs up to you, blocking your path to the bathroom.

“Yeah, Irene?” you ask wearily. It was already shaping up to be a long day and whatever it was that was putting that flabbergasted expression on Irene’s face was surely going to make your day even better.

“Why do you look like a Malfoy?”

You stare at her in confusion, not quite computing her words. A Malfoy? “What-“

You freeze immediately after your first word. Malfoys...platinum blonde hair. The surprised expressions from your roommates. The weird looks from your housemates in the common room. Taehyung’s surprised expression and hasty whisper to Jungkook immediately after seeing you enter the common room.

You run past Irene without a single extra word and barrel into the bathroom.

Your wretched reflection confirms your fear.

Professor McGonagall’s thin-lipped reaction to seeing you with platinum blonde hair marked one of your most embarrassing moments in life, right beside last night’s near-encounter with Min Yoongi. And the common denominator, yet again, was Kim Taehyung.

You couldn’t for the life of you figure out when your hair had changed. It certainly hadn’t been this color while you were trying to wash up after making it back to your dorm. It was then either a delayed effect from the dungbomb or somehow, some way, one of the golden trio pranksters had sneaked into the girl’s dormitory. You hope to Merlin it wasn’t the latter, because it was quite frankly the most terrifying thought ever.

A bell chime signals the end of the class period and you begin to pack your writing supplies back into your schoolbag. As you stand up from your seat, Professor McGonagall strides up to your table.

“Miss [Y/N], may I have a word?” the stern woman asked with clipped politeness.

You smile nervously and reply, “Of course, Professor.”

You stand awkwardly in place as the last of your classmates trickle out of the classroom. Once the pair of you are alone, she casts a spell to close the door. She turns to look at you expectantly.

“Should I be concerned, Ms. [Y/N]?” she asks, her eyes flitting to the pale blonde locks framing your face.

You consider ratting Taehyung and his friends out for a moment when a strange sensation washes over you, causing you to abandon that train of thought. “No Professor, I just… picked up the wrong hair dye potion,” you reply, smiling weakly.

The older woman remains silent for a moment, evaluating your response. “Alright then, I suppose. Please alert Mr. Kim that the Head Boy has called for a prefect meeting after dinner. That is all.”

You nod in response. “Thank you, Professor.”  

After watching the woman nod once in dismissal, you turn to leave the classroom. As you walk out of the classroom, your legs feel weak, as if they had turned into fresh putty.

Why in the world did I lie so readily? What was that feeling that washed over me? Magic?

You suddenly ball up your fists in realization. On top of everything else, those little miscreants have casted a compulsion charm on me!

This day couldn’t get any worse.

You had barely been able to catch Taehyung long enough to demand a reversal of all of his prank’s effects on you, let alone tell him about the prefect meeting all day. It seemed that he was determined to avoid you all day. In the end, you had angrily charmed a piece of parchment to fold into a paper airplane and go flying toward Taehyung as he hurriedly left the Great Hall with his idiot minions.

You had written him a very straightforward note: “Prefect meeting after dinner. AND REVERSE ALL OF THIS CRAP ON ME OR I WILL HEX YOU EVERY SINGLE TIME I SEE YOU.”

Now you were sitting in the classroom among the rest of the prefects and the Head Girl, struggling not to squirm under the strange looks from the rest of the prefects and the Head Boy and Girl. The breezy idiot had even dared to claim the spot next to you and continued to act as if nothing was amiss.

It was not helping that one of the Slytherin prefects from your year, Archimedes Malfoy, had been staring at you with a strange expression ever since you had entered the room. Finally, after minutes of deliberation he spoke up, “We’re not related. Right?”

The other prefects in the room stare at him in disbelief.

“I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that come out of one of my housemates’ mouths,” a lazy drawl cut in, signaling the arrival of Min Yoongi. You bite the inside of your lip and hold your breath with nervous anticipation as he walks past you to take a seat in a chair at the front of the classroom.

Malfoy shifts in his seat and tousles his hair sheepishly without a word.

“Well then. I guess you all are wondering why I summoned you for a meeting,” Yoongi begins, scanning everyone’s face closely. His pointed gaze seems to linger on you for a second longer than it had on everyone else. “Last night we had a wannabe prankster breaking curfew. And they ran away from the Slytherin dungeons. So it must have been somebody from another house.”

“What did they do?” Jung Hoseok, a sixth year Hufflepuff prefect, asks with concern etched on his face.

Yoongi sighs and crosses his arms. “I’m not sure. All I know is that I bumped into a disillusioned person who stunk like dungbombs. They were still wearing their school robes, so I don’t even know their gender. And it seemed like they had dark hair, but I didn’t get to see them for long enough. I was more focused on catching them than with figuring out who they were.”

“Well if they knew the disillusionment charm, then they were probably an upper year student. Sixth year, at least,“ a sixth year Ravenclaw prefect, Kim Namjoon, contributes thoughtfully as he leans forward in his seat, resting his chin on his hand.

You inwardly sigh at the Ravenclaw’s words. Though he didn’t know it, Namjoon’s logic was actually helping you out.

“I thought the Disillusionment Charm was a N.E.W.T.-level spell,” seventh year Hufflepuff prefect, Kim Seokjin, asks with a glance at Namjoon.

Kim Namjoon shrugs indifferently. “Nobody said you couldn’t start early.”

Typical Ravenclaw response. You struggle not to smile.

“Well, either way, I wanted to know if any of you managed to catch any students out of bounds last night,” Yoongi tapped his foot expectantly. His smoudering eyes were once again roving through the rows of prefects seated in the classroom.

“Ravenclaw definitely had no students out of bounds last night,” Head Girl Amber Liu responds confidently.

“Nor Hufflepuff,” Seokjin waves his hand gracefully in dismissal.

You turn to look at the composed Kim Taehyung beside you, still unable to speak your mind with the compulsion charm working against your own sense of morality. “Gryffindor was quiet as a mouse last night,” he smiles innocently.

The Head Boy narrows his eyes, his expression resembling that of a chess player contemplating their next move. “I suggest you all keep an eye out for troublemakers then. They are clearly becoming crafty.”

He stands up and ambles out of the classroom after one last thoughtful glance in a direction that was much too close to yours for comfort.

When you see his figure disappear past the doorway, you quietly release a breath you hadn’t realized you were holding. Then you tense up once more and pointedly glare at Taehyung. He shoots you a brief wink and smiles guiltlessly as he stands up from his seat, shuffling quickly past the rows of desks to leave the classroom before you can confront him.

You privately fume in your seat as the rest of the prefects are leaving the classroom at their own leisure.

If the ‘Golden Boy’ wants war, then a war he shall have.