“Wanna talk about it?” Daesung asks softly, and Seungri turns his head to the side to stare at Daesung.

They were sitting under a pair of desks in an abandoned classroom on the 4^th floor. This wasn’t necessarily unusual, as sometime around the middle of October little Seunghyun had decided that the best way to get away from the sadness that he felt far more frequently than he was willing to admit to most anyone was to sit underneath a desk in an abandoned classroom. He had imagined that he would be doing so alone, and was more than thrilled to have found such a random and out of the way classroom to do his sulking in. Unfortunately for little Seunghyun’s plans of a pity party for one, Daesung showed up less than 15 minutes into his sulk and crawled under the desk next to him.

After that very first time, Daesung would always show up and slip silently into the room, sometimes sliding under the desk next to him, and other times sitting against the wall near the door while he waited for Seungri to be ready for him to be closer. This happened far more often than Seungri would like to admit; but he knew, somehow, that Daesung hadn’t once told any of the others about this habit of his.

“No.” He says quietly, and Daesung nods before leaning his head back.

“The undersides of desks are atrocious.” He says and Seungri lets out a soft snort of laughter, looking up to see if his desk was just as offensive as Daesung’s apparently was.

They sit in silence for another half hour before Daesung shifts and pulls Seungri closer so that the younger boy’s head is resting on his shoulder. “When’s your first exam?” He asks softly.

Seungri scrunches his eyes closed and lets out a deep breath, “Tuesday.” He mutters and he can feel Daesung nod.

“What class?” He asks, and Seungri sighs lightly causing Daesung to throw his arm around the younger boy’s shoulders and pull him closer.

“Potions.” He says as miserably as he can muster. Daesung hums low in his throat and Seungri keeps his eyes closed, deciding that he was much happier being comforted than he was sitting in silence underneath his own desk right now.

“Ahh Potions.” Daesung says, “You know who’s good at Potions? Youngbae.”

Seungri wrinkles his nose and sits up so that he can face Daesung. “He yells.” Seungri says, his face showing his disapproval.

Daesung laughs, and it’s loud and full and it makes Seungri smile just a little bit. “He does not! If anything he gets all sweet and soft-spoken and then you know you are screwing everything up.” Seungri smiles broadly at that while nodding in agreement.

“Yes, so I can’t ask him…and I don’t really need help…I just…” Seungri trails off and looks down at his hands.

“You’re just nervous.” Daesung says softly and Seungri looks up just a little bit. “I understand…in fact, we all do because secretly Seunghyun, Youngbae, Jiyong and I are all really afraid that we will screw up and not be allowed to come back.” Seungri looks up completely to see Daesung’s sincere smile. “Don’t tell them I told you that though; they want you to think they are cool or something.” He finishes with a bright and sincere smile.

Seungri nods and promises that he won’t tell a soul what he now knows. They sit there in comfortable silence for another twenty minutes before Daesung scoots out from beneath his desk and holds his hands out to help Seungri up as well.

“I have to go study with some kids from my dorm, and you have a walk around the lake with Seunghyun that you can’t be late for.” Daesung says, and Seungri wonders again briefly how the older boy can possibly see when he smiles. Seungri nods once and they walk quietly out of the classroom, parting ways at the staircase so that Seungri can go up to the seventh to meet Seunghyun and Daesung can head to the Library.

***

“Wait, so you just want us to answer the questions as they appear?” Seunghyun asks, tilting the little book with his name embossed in a brilliant red on the front so that he could see it better in the bright sun glinting off of the lake.

“Well, I mean, sort of?” Youngbae says, embarrassed and probably a little frustrated. “I’ve enchanted them to only show questions that you are ready for…they are time-activated, so we all have the same question now, but none of will have the same second question, and they might just appear randomly.” He goes quiet for a moment as he waits for the other four to acknowledge what he had just said.

“So maybe if I answer this one tonight I will get a new one tomorrow or maybe randomly over the summer?” Daesung asks, lifting his head up off of Seunghyun’s lap a little bit to be able to see better as he flips his book open to the first page.

“Yeah,” Youngbae says, nodding. “I technically set it so that they would come up during the end of the year, but a lot of the spells I used have minds of their own, so who knows.”

“Are they all as sappy as this one?” Seunghyun asks, dangling the book op

en to the first page and waving it around. Youngbae frowns and Jiyong, who had been staring at Youngbae while he spoke, immediately came to his friend’s defense.

“Oh stop. It’s kind of a cute idea.” Youngbae blushes a little and turns away from Jiyong. “Who’s excited for the End of Term Feast?” Jiyong asks, changing the topic suddenly as he feels his own cheeks start to heat up.

“Oh! Me!” Seunghyun says, raising his hand in the air and waving it around. Daesung laughs and pokes Seunghyun in the stomach causing him to sputter and knock his arm into Seungri.

Luckily for little Seungri, Youngbae was sitting beside him so when he was knocked into by Seunghyun he didn’t go toppling backward into the Lake as Youngbae caught him. “Woah there, Tabi!” Youngbae says on a laugh, “Watch your arms!”

“Alright everyone lets head back to the study prison before anyone gets eaten by the giant squid.” Jiyong says, pushing himself up and holding out a hand to help Youngbae up.

“Wait, wait, giant…squid?” Seungri asks, scooting a little bit away from the edge of the rock where he had been sitting and absently grabbing onto the hand that Seunghyun offers him.

“Yeah,” Seunghyun says as he helps Daesung pack up his bag, completely unaware that Daesung had stopped helping and was staring at him in horror. “You can see it sometimes when it gets hot out, basking in the sun.” Seungri’s eyes go wide and he reaches out for someone and Daesung grabs him and pulls him closer.

“Wait, Dae, you can’t tell me you’ve never seen it.” Youngbae says, turning a skeptical eye on the two younger boys.

“I have.” Daesung says, his voice quaking in fright. Jiyong turns around so as not to show everyone how hard he was laughing. “But I had forgotten and now I am going back inside.” With that, Daesung drags Seungri with him off of the rock and up toward the Castle.

Youngbae sighs and looks around him. “I always forget how afraid Daesung is of the squid.” He says before shrugging his shoulders and picking up his bag. “I guess we have to get their stuff.” He says, nodding toward Seungri’s bag and the bag at Seunghyun’s feet.

“I got it,” Jiyong says, lifting up Seungri’s bag and gesturing for Seunghyun to grab Daesung’s. “Let’s head back; I need to work on Herbology.” Youngbae and Seunghyun snort at that.

“How’s your latest tutor, Ji?” Seunghyun asks, nudging the smaller boy as they start up toward the Castle.

Jiyong throws him a scowl behind Youngbae’s back. “She has to study for her own exams so I’m on my own.” Jiyong says, “But Youngbae and I are studying for it together so it will be fine. Right, Bae?” He adds, turning his scowl into a bright smile so quickly that if Seunghyun hadn’t seen Youngbae turn to look at them he would have been confused about what Jiyong was smiling about.

“Mm, yeah.” He responds, a smile on his face. “Last one to the Great Hall has to tell Seungri about the giant spiders in the Forbidden Forest.” He says before turning and sprinting up the hill.

“Not fair!” Jiyong and Seunghyun call out in unison before dashing up the hill after him.

***

Big Seunghyun always responded to absolutely every single letter that he received. He was good like that, and every letter was long and interesting and funny. Sometimes Youngbae thought that it was just because big Seunghyun was somehow surprised every time he received a letter. Youngbae couldn’t explain exactly why he thought that, however, no matter how many times Jiyong would press him for an explanation; he had promised Seunghyun that he wouldn’t tell anyone about how insecure he was about their friendships, about how no matter how comfortable he acted or how great they all treated him he was always afraid it wasn’t real.

The summer before the three oldest’s 5th year, Seunghyun disappeared. He didn’t respond to a single letter, he didn’t send a single letter, and he hadn’t told them anything on the train. They worried some days, and forgot on others; they were young and didn’t dwell on things and he was most likely on a trip with his parents.

Little Seunghyun and Daesung took to sending him long letters about what they did every day. Whereas Jiyong and Youngbae would send him quick little updates at the end of each week (or in the middle because Jiyong wasn’t as consistent).

When he showed up at little Seunghyun’s door on the morning of September the 1st little Seunghyun was understandably surprised, but he got into the car and waved goodbye to his parents anyway.

“I got all your letters last week,” Seunghyun says quietly as they sit waiting at a light.

“Oh?” Seungri says, trying not to sound as surprised and upset as he was.

“We went to visit family.”

“You could have owled us, even once” Seungri was looking out the window now, talking a little louder because big Seunghyun’s parents had gotten out of the car to get them some snacks for the train ride. Big Seunghyun didn’t respond to that, and it was silent between them until they made it through the barrier.

Big Seunghyun responds to every letter he gets, even if he gets them late, always. Every day for at least the first month and a half of the semester the four of them received a letter: every single day.

***

It was barely a full month into the school year and the three 5^th years were already swamped with work.

“Supposedly,” Youngbae says as he leans around Jiyong at the Hufflepuff table one day at dinner, “it’s to help us get ready for the O.W.Ls.” Seunghyun scoffs at that.

“More like it’s to prepare us for an early grave.” He mutters darkly, stabbing his fork into the mound of mashed potatoes that Youngbae had dropped onto his plate just moments previously.

The homework was harder and there was a lot more of it. Little Seunghyun and Daesung found out rather quickly that the best way to keep up with their older friends outside of mealtimes they would need to spend a lot more time studying with them in the Library during the week. Luckily for all of them, the older boys still had enough time to sneak off to the Alcove on the fifth floor on those random days when no one had Quidditch or Gobstones or Charms Club. Seungri still spent Tuesdays after class in the Room of Requirement with Youngbae and Saturday afternoons at the lake with Seunghyun. Everyone still had their designated breakdown times when you would find Daesung lying out on the Quidditch pitch with Youngbae or under a desk with Seungri. You could sometimes find Jiyong and Seungri huddled together in an empty classroom, yelling at each other or crying when things were too much and the stress was just not tolerable.

Seunghyun and Youngbae would sit back to back on the floor right in front of the Restricted Section of the Library and write or draw. Daesung and Jiyong would play hand games on the floor in the middle of the corridor, trying to see how many times they could play ‘rock-paper-scissors’ before a teacher came along and forced them to leave. Seunghyun and Daesung would just study together or walk the corridors at night, just before curfew. Jiyong and Youngbae would do homework together, and chat together late into the night.

It was during the homework sessions every Sunday that Youngbae first noticed it. It had always really been there, but as the homework became harder and the study sessions became longer along with the amount of time that they spent together, Youngbae started to really notice it. Jiyong and Youngbae normally sat on the same side of the table when they did work in the Ravenclaw Common Room. The tables were just that much longer than the ones in the Library that it worked out. On Sundays they would start out in the Common Room, sitting next to each other and doing all of the short work that they didn’t really need extra books for. When they sat next to each other it was the hardest to catch, the staring that is.

The first time that Youngbae actually consciously registered that Jiyong was staring at him was while they were in the Common Room, their knees bumping each other every time they leaned forward or shifted to get comfortable. Youngbae had just finished a particularly difficult Ancient Runes translation and was just getting ready to turn toward Jiyong to ask if he had finished it, when his eyes caught Jiyong looking before he could fully turn his head. It was only out of the corner of his eye, and by the time he had registered it his head had already turned toward Jiyong and Jiyong had already turned his eyes away. It wouldn’t have bothered him except for the look of deep confusion that had been on Jiyong’s face. He told himself that he had imagined it and that most likely Jiyong hadn’t really been looking at him; he had probably been staring off into space while thinking about the homework.

This explanation suited Youngbae’s thoughts just fine and so he brushed it off and had almost forgotten about it by the time they were settled across from each other at their favorite table in the Library. He was well on his way to completely forgetting about it when he glanced up briefly while reading over a summarization that Jiyong had handed him only to see that Jiyong was staring at him, that same look of complete confusion written over his face. Suddenly embarrassed, Youngbae felt himself flush under the obvious scrutiny and ducked his eyes back down to the paper so as not to let Jiyong know that he had noticed.

The staring became something that Youngbae expected, especially if they had tests coming up or large papers that were going to be due. He tried not to think too much about it, and he really didn’t think about it often; he became so used to it, in fact, that he barely registered it if they were studying and he happened to glance up.

While Youngbae had stopped really registering it by around Halloween, Seunghyun and Daesung had not. This was an interesting development that they wanted to understand more about.