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 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 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 ‘ing 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.