Woohyun just looked at him when Sungyeol beat the late bell by a scant minute, sliding nonchalantly into the Transfigurations classroom and his seat next to Woohyun as if he wasn’t wearing the looniest smile on his face Woohyun had ever seen.

“So,” Woohyun began, facing him. “Someone had an interesting morning.”

“Mmmm,” Sungyeol agreed happily, scooting forward in his seat to rest his chin in his hands but thinking better of it when the quick movement required a bit more of his stomach muscles than they were willing to give at the moment. “Ow.”

“You sure you okay?”

“Oh, yeah. Just bruising.”

“You actually spent the whole of breakfast with Myungsoo? He told us you’d taken a hit to the stomach and wanted to rest a while before lessons started so not to worry and he was bringing food to you.”

“Yup.”

“…And?!”

“And what?” Sungyeol grinned, knowing it would just infuriate Woohyun further.

“What did you do? I hate you! What happened?”

“We talked,” Sungyeol smiled, leaning carefully back. Myungsoo had returned levitating milk, cereal and fruit compote behind him and even haltingly asked if Sungyeol wanted him to transfigure the hard bench Sungyeol was sitting on into a soft couch. Sungyeol wasn’t sure what royalty experienced on a daily basis, but he had an idea that being treated like their comfort was everyone else’s top priority like this was pretty close to it. Conversation had been a little stilted at first, because Sungyeol wanted to say it felt like a private picnic but it had awkwardly come out sounding more like he meant private date and Myungsoo hadn’t really known what to say to that, so subsequently they mainly kept to safe topics like Quidditch and Charms, which turned out to be both their favourite school subject.

“What did you talk about?!”

“Nothing really,” Sungyeol answered, which was the truth – they’d spoken about completely inconsequential things as they ate, and half the time Sungyeol found it hard to remember how to make words when he was watching Myungsoo’s adam apple bob as he swallowed and the tiny dimple that appeared in his right cheek when he smiled.

Sungyeol looked at Woohyun then, noticing the great exasperation splashed across his face which made Sungyeol break out in giggles, his stomach muscles regretting each and every one.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he said, hugging Woohyun’s arm. “But really. We just talked about stupid things and then we walked back to the castle and he went for Care of Magical Creatures while I came here. That was it.”

“That was it,” Woohyun repeated flatly.

“That was it. And it was amazing,” Sungyeol sighed happily, resting his head on Woohyun’s shoulder. Woohyun shrugged him off, tsking.

“Also there was a part when the stairs changed suddenly as we were walking up them and I lost my footing and he caught me and he smelled so good and he kind of laughed shyly after that and eeeeeeee,” Sungyeol squeed into Woohyun’s arm. Woohyun stared at him in horror.

“You gross lovesick stick insect,” he muttered, trying to shake Sungyeol off his arm.

*

“’Hereditary curses tend to affect pureblood families more seriously than families whose bloodline is mixed with Muggles, Muggleborns or Squibs’,” Sunggyu read from his research book, keeping his voice down so that they wouldn’t be chased out of the library by Madam Pince. “Well, that’s obvious. ‘This is why, in rare cases, a pureblood family afflicted with a particularly vehement or hostile curse would sacrifice their pride and give their first child to a marriage with a Muggleborn in hopes of breaking the curse down the generations as the bloodline is diluted; Muggleborns being deemed the most acceptable out of the three non-pureblood categories. It is also partly why a law was passed in 1764 that pureblood wizards and witches were no longer allowed to marry first cousins in order to keep their family inheritance and name.’ ”

“That’s interesting,” Woohyun said, Howon nodding along. “Maybe we should focus on that. Try to find a case study where a pureblood family tried to break a hereditary curse by marrying their firstborn to a non-pureblood.”

“Why only a firstborn, though? Wouldn’t all the children be affected?” Dongwoo asked.

“Most ancient hereditary curses focused on the firstborn, and usually the firstborn son, because traditionally that’s who would be getting the inheritance and the father’s title. Purebloods made up the vast majority of wizarding aristocracy, after all, where the eldest son was responsible for carrying on the family name,” Sungjong answered, not looking up from his own book. “Which is why quite a few ancient hereditary curses also had extremely tricky clauses that would only allow the women of the family to have one firstborn son, and none after; or if the firstborn was a daughter, then no sons afterwards. Sometimes the women just never had sons, or sometimes the boys died as infants, or went insane. A few families tried to defy tradition by passing on the inheritance to the firstborn girl, of course, but society never really accepted them. Few men wanted to marry into a family where his wife would be the titled owner of the estate and he was expected to play the role of an equal, or inferior. And so those bloodlines died out, satisfying the curse.”

“Is he reading off his book or was that all from his own head?” Sunggyu whispered to Woohyun, past slights apparently forgiven. Woohyu shrugged and spread his hands in a sincere gesture of cluelessness, knowing better than to underestimate Sungjong but still incredulous at Sungjong’s usual walking-dictionary act.

“Whoa, so if in current society? Where women are accepted as a family’s sole inheritor?”

“Holy Merlin, some families could be cursed and not even know it,” Howon interrupted Dongwoo, finishing his thought. “They may think that the curse died off or was broken just because they haven’t had firstborn sons for a few generations or something, since the family hasn’t been negatively affected, right? Since the bloodline isn’t in danger of dying out?”

They all had the same panicked thought simultaneously – though likely with the exception of Sungjong, who rarely got worked up about anything – and all began talking at once.

“My family’s safe, I have an older sister and me,” Sunggyu said in a tone of high relief.

“Me too! Two older sisters!” Dongwoo high-fived Sunggyu.

“I have an older brother,” Woohyun started uncertainly.

“Me too, me too!” Hoya chimed in. “And a younger one! Wait, I don’t know what that means!”

“That’s only one type of hereditary curse that prevents a family from having boys, there are those that don’t discriminate between daughters or sons,” Sungjong said, bored at their inability to be critical and still not looking up from his book. “Some curses take very long to work, having exact conditions for the effects to be felt. Some affect all the children, not just the first. And I was only talking about curses in connection with titled families.”

Identical worried frowns bloomed on the other four faces, paranoia slowly setting in.

“So you’re saying that any family might be cursed and not really know it? If curses can be that specific and the conditions just haven’t been favourable for it to manifest?” Woohyun asked tentatively.

“It’s possible,” Sungjong answered, finally looking up. “Every curse has its own specifications. But what family would forget that they’ve been cursed? Curses don’t work unless the victim knows that they’ve been cursed.”

“No, that’s not true, you can give someone a harmful potion without the person knowing –“ Howon objected.

“No, revenge magic works differently. You are cursing all the person’s descendants. What’s the point of something bad happening to someone you want to take revenge on and having the person not even know why it’s happening to them? They could just attribute it to bad luck, when you want them to regret the day they ever crossed you. Hereditary curses are very dark spells, not simple harm-and-injure ones. How else can a curse endure from one generation to the next until the bloodline is broken? It takes as much out of the curser as it does the cursee.”

“I know it’s a blood pact,” Dongwoo volunteered.

“Exactly,” Sungjong continued, enjoying playing the role of expert. “Some even require the life of the one who casts the curse, they’re that serious. If I were going to sacrifice my life in order to curse someone I hated so badly, I’d make sure they knew it.”

“Sungjong,” Woohyun started slowly. “Exactly what don’t you know about hereditary curses?”

“Probably not much,” Sungjong answered honestly.

“He reads advanced reference books in his free time,” Dongwoo told to Howon, who couldn’t decide between being impressed or intimidated and so just settled for admiring.

*

Woohyun woke up on a Saturday morning a week later to find Sungyeol preening in the bathroom; first combing his hair one way and then the other, ruffling it with his fingers and then quickly making it neat again.

“It’s a Quidditch game, not a beauty pageant, stupid. You’re not going to get points for how good you look.”

Sungyeol ignored him and turned first one way and then the other to see how his hair looked from all sides in the mirror.

“And once you get up in the air your hair’s just going to end up looking like a hedgehog when you get down like it usually does anyway.”

“Really? That’s what I look like after I fly?” Sungyeol turned to him, concerned.

Woohyun just gave him a Look. “He’s not going to care how your hair looks,” Woohyun told Sungyeol, enunciating every word. “He’s going to be way down in the stands, too far away for him to see what you look like.”

“You’re right,” Sungyeol said, nodding quickly. “I need to impress him with awesome flying and scoring many many points.”

“How about you should score ‘many many’ points for Gryffindor so we can win?” Woohyun demanded, following him out of the bathroom and back into their bedroom while trying not to get toothpaste on the carpet.

“I haven’t had any excuse to spend time with him in over a week,” Sungyeol complained, putting on his Quidditch robes. “Ugh, if only he was in one of our project groups.”

“Like Potions? To see you fail pathetically?”

“Maybe if he was my Potions partner I’d be motivated to not fail,” Sungyeol said, and immediately got whacked on the head with a pillow.

“Are you saying you’re not trying just because you’re with me?! That’s it. I quit as your best friend. Go to your Myungsoo, I don’t care,” Woohyun huffed, half-pretending to be mad. His act was somewhat spoiled by a mouthful of toothpaste suds, and so he gathered his dignity and marched back out to the bathrooms.

A minute later he poked his head back into their bedroom to see Sungyeol lacing up his boots like nothing had happened. “This is the part you come running after me to say ‘No, Woohyun, nobody could take your place,’” he said, toothbrush still in his mouth.

“No, Woohyun, nobody could take your place,” Sungyeol dutifully repeated with no feeling whatsoever, and so Woohyun spit his toothpaste onto Sungyeol’s carefully-coiffed hair.

*

The first game of the season was always the one Sungyeol looked forward to and dreaded the most. A good performance boded well for the rest of the year and raised team morale even higher – a bad one just infected the subsequent games with horrible negative energy that caused a vicious cycle of lost confidence and stupid mistakes. The day was bright and chilly, winter reminding everyone of its imminent arrival in only a few months’ time; Woohyun had made up for his toothpaste and saliva in Sungyeol’s hair by giving him Woohyun’s favourite scarf to keep him warm, but only after Woohyun had extracted a hundred apologies from Sungyeol.

The stands were already full when the team left the locker room to start their pitch warmup, elegant Ravenclaw banners flying in the morning breeze on one side of the stadium and vibrant Gryffindor flags on the other. Ravenclaw was always a tough team to beat; while Gryffindor had the guts and passion, Ravenclaw had the brains and they always flew in such perfect formation that their strategy alone was sometimes enough to unseat their opponents. Rousing cheers greeted the two teams as they took to the air, still a good half-hour before the whistle.

Sungyeol sat straighter on his broom than usual as he moved through his drills, trying to face his good side to the Gryffindor supporters in case Myungsoo had come to watch – he’d be sitting with the Gryffindor camp, wouldn’t he? He wouldn’t be cheering against Sungyeol today, right? Or would he? What if he had come to the game together with someone, today? Dongwoo had told them after their kimchi breakfast Myungsoo wasn’t attached; but he wasn’t sure if Myungsoo hadn’t already got his eye on somebody.

Ugh, Sungyeol thought. Just ugh. Crushes were so troublesome.

Gryffindor’d found a new seeker, after all – some scrawny first-year called Harry with huge glasses – who flew kind of astonishingly like he was born to do it; but he was still untried, and anything could happen. Sungyeol just had to make sure they, the chasers, were relentless and on target. They executed some of their flying formations a few last times before Madam Hooch strode out onto the middle of the pitch with the official bludgers, quaffle and the snitch – cheers rose from the red-and-gold-bedecked stands as they swooped together with their quaffle, passing it easily from one to the other. The blue-and-bronze side of the stadium answered with louder cheers which the Gryffindors replied with outright yelling until the entire pitch was a cacophony of rousing noise and screaming students: Sungyeol loved it.

They got into their positions at Madam Hooch’s first whistle, Darius flying off to the end of the pitch to take up his place in defending Gryffindor’s goals while the chasers and beaters took up their own attacking positions facing the Ravenclaw team, the new seeker off to the side. Sungyeol noticed Priyanka, the beater nearest him, give the tiny first-year a reassuring thumbs-up; Harry looked like he wanted to throw up. Sungyeol grinned, remembering his own first game. Myungsoo’s watching, his traitorous brain whispered. If he is, then I’m going to give him something to think about.

Madam Hooch blew the whistle, the bludgers and snitch leapt into the air, and she threw the quaffle straight up – and they were off. Everything always moved so fast during a Quidditch game that Sungyeol rarely had time to think – it was all instinct and reflexes as he reacted to the players’ movements around him, kept an eye out for the bludgers as he mentally registered the positions of the beaters of his own and the opposing team, as well as focused on passing the quaffle well and getting it into Ravenclaw’s goal. Points jumped on the scoreboard – Gryffindor, then Ravenclaw, then Gryffindor, then Ravenclaw twice, then Gryffindor – Sungyeol intercepted the quaffle as a Ravenclaw chaser was unsettled by a particularly good whack of the bludger by Priyanka and raced for the goal, his own chasers immediately circling him and shouted instructions and warnings flying fast and furious as they passed the quaffle between them to throw off the Ravenclaw beaters. They were barely metres away from the scoring zone when Madam Hooch’s shrill whistle was heard.

Sungyeol turned to find Kyung, their second beater, slumped over his broom and favouring his right arm, Priyanka hovering protectively nearby. Madam Hooch called a time out while they ascertained the injury – a broken forearm from a well-aimed bludger, and now Gryffindor was left with only one beater. The Gryffindor supporters yelled out boos and insults even though this was par for the course, and with passionate screams of support as their background Darius called a quick meeting to impress on them the danger of only having one beater, telling Harry that it was now or never for him to find the Snitch and end the game before any more of them got hurt. Easier said than done, since Harry had been conscientiously combing the pitch for the snitch, desperately trying not to get fouled by anyone and to watch the Ravenclaw seeker at the same time with no results. As the older players tried to reassure him saying that this was normal, Darius did an emergency reshuffling of their positions to cover Kyung’s absence and they broke up their huddle as poor Kyung was levitated off the field. Sungyeol was always impressed with his captain at moments like this; forceful but never bossy, in-charge but never domineering.

“Lee Sungyeol!”

Sungyeol looked up smiling just as he was about to kick off to see Woohyun and Dongwoo waving madly at him from the stands only two bleachers up, and then his stomach lurched to see Myungsoo next to them, giving him a teasing grin.

You’re not bad, Myungsoo mouthed at him, making a so-so gesture with his hand and pretending to be unimpressed.

Sungyeol mock-bowed back at him, causing a few second-year girls to giggle excitedly, thinking it was aimed at them. Sungyeol looked at them, surprised. Maybe his fanclub dream wasn’t too far off, after all.

He threw a last look back at Myungsoo and his overexcited friends before he took to the air once more, feeling like he was flying amongst the clouds.

*