You could drown in the circles under Myungsoo’s eyes. He stumbled through his classes, not knowing what else to do; he wasn’t allowed to stay with Sungyeol and so the only thing left was to mimic some form of normalcy.

The news was all over school by then – ‘The only thing that spreads faster than gossip,’ his mother used to tell him, ‘is the flu.’ – Sungyeol was in the infirmary dying of something terrible; Myungsoo, Dongwoo and Woohyun were somehow involved; none of the teachers knew what to do; Snape left his quarters every night to tend to Sungyeol; no one was allowed to see Sungyeol; it was dark magic, blood magic, the classroom was cursed, Snape was killing Sungyeol instead of helping him, Myungsoo had done it, Myungsoo was dangerous and not to be trusted, so on and so forth. Myungsoo was tired of people staring at him.

It had been three days since it had happened, and every night was the same story – Sungyeol’s wounds reopened around three to four in the morning and Snape would be there waiting to close his wounds, singing the same low spell over and over until the bleeding stopped and the flesh knitted. Then he would leave without a word to allow Madam Pomfrey to fill Sungyeol again with the blood he’d lost. McGonagall and the other professors occupied their free time weaving words of enchantment over and through Sungyeol – spells of protection and shielding, of resistance and blocking, of revelation and drawing-out. Through everything Sungyeol lay insensible to the world and the curse held – simple and yet fiendishly complicated.

“As far I can see it’s tied to his blood, inseparable. To remove it by force would be to kill the boy,” Flitwick murmured to McGonagall who had her head in her hands, her elbows resting on the edge of Sungyeol’s bed.

“A blood curse?” McGonagall asked, not raising her head. “How on earth would anyone in this school be capable of casting such a thing-”

Flitwick’s eyes darted involuntarily to the spot Snape had occupied earlier beside Sungyeol’s bed, but McGonagall still hadn’t looked up and so missed it. He held his tongue.

“I don’t know how long his body will be able to sustain this,” he said, casting an eye over Sungyeol’s white face. “The curse aims to kill him, clearly, and all we’re doing is prolonging-”

“Mr Kim, you should be in bed,” McGonagall interrupted abruptly, her voice taking on the tint of Headmistress she only used when speaking to students. Flitwick looked around in surprise to see Myungsoo standing hesitantly a few steps into the infirmary.

“I – I couldn’t sleep,” he answered, figuring that the truth was no worse than any excuse he could think up.

“I’ll tell Madam Pomfrey to make you up a sleeping draught,” she said, tone not indicating whether he should turn around and go back to his dorm or if he could approach. The sight of Sungyeol lying on the thin mattress as he had been for the past few days made his chest ache, and he tried to ignore the flare of embarrassment he felt at her knowledge of their relationship, of why he was there.

“You can stay for a few minutes,” McGonagall told him briskly, her matter-of-fact expression making him feel better somehow. “Once Madam Pomfrey is done with your potion you are to go back to your dorm, do you hear me?”

Myungsoo stood quietly by as the professors got up to leave, a fraction of his brain wondering how they were feeding Sungyeol – were they giving him food in potion form, or was it a nutrition spell? Was there such a thing? Did Sungyeol need food in this state? He supposed it was a good thing a part of him could still be objectively curious when the rest of him was numb.

He reached his hands out to help adjust Sungyeol’s head on the pillow but thought better of it at the last moment, choosing just to look.

Sungyeol’s skin was papery, translucent in the strong infirmary light that brought out his veins in high relief against the white of his skin. The wounds were covered once more by new bandages and there was an additional bandage wrapped around his elbow that hid the puncture wound where Madam Pomfrey had been giving him the Sanguis potion, filling him up again every day as if he were a leaky cup.

“I didn’t know I was your first kiss, too,” he told Sungyeol, for want of breaking the silence. “I must be some kind of jinxed for this to happen to the first person who kissed me, huh?”

Sungyeol lay there, his chest rising and falling almost imperceptibly.

“Your parents are coming tomorrow,” Myungsoo continued, his voice sounding extremely small in the large room. “Charms - charms class is fine. You owe Professor Flitwick your homework on Containment spells.”

Myungsoo took a breath. “Yesterday was the due date for the Potions projects. You and Woohyun hadn’t got anything to hand in so Professor Snape gave you both a ten-foot essay on potions to help indolence and tardiness,” Myungsoo tried to smile, the telltale burn of approaching tears beginning in his throat. “Woohyun was so mad. It made me feel better, though, that Snape was treating things as if you were just sick with the flu or something. Not that that made Woohyun any happier about it. They’re both – they’re both doing okay, Woohyun and Dongwoo. They’re very worried about you, obviously. Everyone’s worried about you. Oh, your DADA group – your girls,” Myungsoo gave a tiny laugh, rubbing away a tear slowly rolling down his right cheek. “They gave Woohyun some flowers to give you. I’m not sure why flowers though, not like you can see them. He’ll probably bring them here tomorrow morning.”

Myungsoo paused, taking another deep breath to ease the tightness in his chest. “I told Junghwan and Luna about us. Didn’t seem such a big deal anymore. And you were right – they didn’t care. They were kinda mad that I hadn’t told them from the start, but that was it. They’re pretty horrified about the whole thing – like it’s something out of a fairytale, only backwards. True love’s kiss is supposed to break curses, not cause them. Of course,” Myungsoo hurriedly continued. “Not that I’m saying I’m your one true love. Or that kissing me caused this. I’d kill myself if that were true,” he trailed off.

Madam Pomfrey coughed quietly behind him, and he turned around with a jolt. She handed him the small vial of sleeping draught wordlessly, raising a hand to his hair. Myungsoo wasn’t very sure what to do, because this was very un-Madam Pomfrey-like behavior, but he thanked her haltingly for the potion anyway.

“I’m sorry, but I couldn’t help overhearing – what was that last part you said?”

“What?” Myungsoo swallowed quickly, wondering how much of the nonsense he had been rambling to Sungyeol she had heard.

“The part about the fairytale?”

“Um, that it’s – it’s like a fairytale but backwards because first kisses are supposed to bring good things, not bad. My friend Luna said that.”

Madam Pomfrey made a little humming sound in reply, looking thoughtful. “First kiss, you say?”

*

“Poppy, we’ve tried that. We’ve tried every single spell of revelation that any of us knows, and nothing. Nothing! It refuses to reveal itself to us. I don’t know how the curse is managing to block us that way, but maybe the original caster had woven in strong words of concealment with it, I don’t know. Without knowing what the curse is there is nothing we can do to counter it.”

“Headmistress, have you tried testing the other boy?”

“What?”

McGonagall looked at Madam Pomfrey in puzzlement, wondering what Myungsoo had to do with this. “He’s innocent, I thought we’d gone over that.” Madam Pomfrey put down her tray of Sanguis potion instruments, the nightly treatment of Sungyeol becoming almost routine; Snape’s bass voice could be heard in the outer chamber, singing Sungyeol’s wounds closed for the fourth time.

“No, test him for the curse,” Madam Pomfrey explained earnestly, putting a hand on McGonagall’s arm. “It’s just something I overheard him say yesterday. It was their first kiss, were you aware of that? Doesn’t that make you wonder?”

“Poppy…” McGonagall began skeptically, but Madam Pomfrey cut her off.

“I know it seems silly. But that’s exactly what the boy said, that it was like something out of a fairytale, and we all know fairytales are true. You told me it’s a blood curse the boy is suffering from – what if one of them has been cursed through his bloodline – to be manifested at the first kiss? First love?”

“That’s absurd,” McGonagall answered, doubt lining her face. “Those kind of things are ancient – family curses don’t exist anymore. You are the last one I’d have picked to be such a romantic, Poppy.”

“I’m as lost as you are, Headmistress,” Madam Pomfrey answered, shaking her head. “But it’s worth a try, at least, testing Mr Kim. What if you’re getting no results with Mr Lee because it’s not him the curse is on?”

McGonagall finally sighed deeply, clearly at war with herself. “We have no other ideas, at any rate. We’ll try it.”

*

“Woohyun,” Dongwoo waved a hand in front of his face, jolting him out of his reverie. “You’re supposed to be writing Snape’s essay.”

“To hell with Snape’s essay,” Woohyun bit out, leaning back in his armchair.

It was unbelievable to Woohyun that the teachers – some of the greatest witches and wizards of their age – hadn’t been able to cure Sungyeol yet. There was a lot that they weren’t telling Dongwoo and himself, obviously – but the fact was that Sungyeol still lay unconscious in the infirmary day after day, no closer to getting better. And he wished fervently with no small measure of resentment that they would tell him whatever they knew – didn’t he deserve to know? He was the closest thing to family Sungyeol had at Hogwarts. Sungyeol’s parents had arrived that morning, solemn and worried, and he’d spent a few minutes with them before they’d gone to see Sungyeol. They’d always been welcoming and warm with him but this morning it was clear that they had no space for anything or anybody else on their minds other than their eldest son.

“Dongwoo,” Woohyun asked suddenly, causing Dongwoo’s quill to slip on his parchment. “How many siblings does Myungsoo have? Are they older or younger than him?”

“One younger brother, that’s all,” Dongwoo answered, taking in Woohyun’s slight frown. “Why?”

Woohyun’s frown deepened. “They’re both firstborn sons.”

“Yes,” Dongwoo agreed, waiting to see where Woohyun’s train of thought would lead them. Dongwoo didn’t need to ask who the other person making up the ‘they’ were; he was constantly in Dongwoo’s thoughts.

“And it had been both their first kisses.”

“Yes?”

“Dongwoo, would it be crazy if – argh, no,” Woohyun threw himself backwards into his chair, beginning to chew on a thumbnail.

“Spill it before you explode,” Dongwoo advised, erasing the mistake he’d made with his quill.

“It’s just – I can’t stop thinking of what we’re doing for our DADA project. This curse hits Sungyeol out of nowhere, right? Myungsoo didn’t cast it. No one else was in the room. Sungyeol hadn’t come into contact with any Dark object or whatever. I really doubt anyone in school would know how to cast a curse like that-”

“Really?” Dongwoo stopped him. “He-who-must-not-be-named learned a lot of Dark magic when he was still in Hogwarts. Any one of the students with rich families – many of the purebloods – could gain access to books of the dark arts that are banned here.”

“Be that as it may,” Woohyun said, refusing to be derailed. “Think about it. They’re both firstborn sons. It was their first kiss, and not just with each other, but with anyone. Sungyeol’s a pureblood – what about Myungsoo?”

“He’s Muggle-born,” Dongwoo told him, and watched Woohyun deflate slightly.

“He isn’t a pureblood too?”

“No,” Dongwoo shrugged. “His parents are Muggles.”

“His younger brother?”

“Not magical, as far as I know.”

“So it’s not Myungsoo,” Woohyun decided firmly. “That makes things clearer. It has to be Sungyeol’s family that’s cursed. He, the firstborn son, kissed someone for the first time, and the curse took effect, trying to break the bloodline.”

“That’s a really ridiculous curse,” Dongwoo mused. “What does kissing anyone for the first time have to do with breaking the bloodline?”

“Well-” Woohyun hesitated, trying to think like Sungjong, the only stumbling block being that he didn’t have Sungjong’s brain. “To cause the most pain as possible? Back when the curse was struck – who knows how old this is – people didn’t go around kissing other people unless they were married, right? When would their first kiss be?”

“During the wedding, I guess?”

“So you have your first kiss and pow! You’re dead. Everyone panics. Your new wife is traumatized forever. Your family never recovers and no one dares to marry or form a relationship with any of your siblings in case the same thing happens. Nobody has any children and so the family dies out. Sounds plausible, right?”

“How do you explain Sungyeol’s family still existing, then?”

“What?”

“If it happened like you said, how come Sungyeol’s family has survived till today? Whichever side was cursed, his father’s or his mother’s – the bloodline hasn’t been broken yet.”

Woohyun was stumped. “Maybe it only affected sons? So it didn’t touch the girls?”

“So you’re telling me that ever since Sungyeol’s family was cursed they haven’t had sons at all?”

“It could have been really recent-”

“Remember what Sungjong said, Woohyun. Anybody who put a curse on someone’s family will have to let the person being cursed know it – if it was recent they could have just been reported to the Wizengamot and the person would have to lift the curse on pain of death.”

“Argh!” Woohyun punched the arm of his chair hard, other hand raking painfully through his hair. “This is ing pointless!”

Dongwoo lowered his eyes, feeling bad for arguing with Woohyun and not allowing him a false lifeline to hold on to, because coming up with a possible reason for Sungyeol’s curse was one step closer to finding a cure for it. Woohyun was desperate for it; each day brought increasingly restless and curt behavior, as if Woohyun was carrying something inside him that threatened to burst at any minute and he was becoming less and less able to contain it. Dongwoo pretended not to see Woohyun’s red-rimmed eyes in the morning when they went for breakfast together, whether from insomnia or crying, and poured his energy into helping Woohyun create the illusion that everything was fine. The teachers would find a cure and Sungyeol would be alright. It was only a matter of time.

Woohyun had got up from his chair and was now pacing back and forth, teeth again worrying at his thumbnail.

They had no answers, Dongwoo sadly thought, only what-ifs. And while Woohyun paced, his best friend wasted away.

*

Myungsoo was summoned to the infirmary after lunch, anxiety quickening his steps. The only thing he could think of why he was being called to the hospital was that something had happened to Sungyeol – the possibility of it being something positive not worth entertaining.

He let McGonagall lead him to a chair and sit him down once he’d arrived, Snape not taking his eyes off him the moment he entered the door. Madam Pomfrey stood near Sungyeol’s bed, with Flitwick nearby. They all watched Myungsoo expectantly as if he was about to start performing circus tricks.

“Not to worry, Mr Kim,” McGonagall addressed him finally, stepping back from Myungsoo. “We just need to test something, just to be sure-” she looked back at Madam Pomfrey, who gave her a quick nod. “We need to find out where the curse originated.”

Myungsoo’s mind was racing. “Where it originated?”

“I’d rather not say any more at this point,” McGonagall said, and Snape snorted, earning him a glare from Madam Pomfrey. Myungsoo looked between them, thoroughly confused. “Just – if what we want to try works, then we will know for sure what the curse on Mr Lee is. If not… we’ll think of something else.”

Myungsoo wanted to protest that he wouldn’t agree to anything until they explained themselves, and demand he be told whatever they had found out till then – but with the teenager’s native distrust of adults, he doubted they’d tell him anything anyway. He settled for knitting his brows and moving further back in his seat, wishing that Professor Sprout was there. Even if she might not be of any use to the proceedings – herbology was her forte, not charms and spells – just his Head of House’s presence was usually enough to comfort Myungsoo.

Seeming to sense some of the uncertainty Myungsoo was feeling, McGonagall began to explain what they were about to do.

“We’re going to cast the same spells over Mr Lee and then yourself, and see if we get any information out of that. Just simple ones – revelation, seeing, searching – and hopefully by the end of this we’ll know more about the curse we’re dealing with. Alright?”

Myungsoo nodded, wondering what else he could do.

McGonagall and Snape turned then to Sungyeol’s prone body, wands held at an angle. They began to speak in tandem, twin streams of sky blue snaking their way over Sungyeol from their wands, forming glowing leylines where his veins lay just beneath the skin. The lines split and feathered until they had formed a perfect network of fine threads of light pulsing slowly in time with Sungyeol’s heartbeat. Snape took a minute or two to check them, narrowing his eyes to see the finest of the lines, and when he was satisfied, he nodded. Flitwick then joined in – murmuring low into his cupped hands until Myungsoo could see a brilliant tiny ball of green spinning slowly in his small palm. Fascinated, Myungsoo watched as Flitwick released the ball gently onto Sungyeol’s right big toe.

It turned immediately to a blazing red, and Myungsoo’s head snapped up. Surely that meant something? However, the professors showed no sign of surprise or interest, and Myungsoo continued to watch the ball in confusion. The ball travelled up and down each blue pulsing pathway, sometimes helped along by a word or two from Flitwick when it seemed not to know which way to go. There was absolute silence in the room as they all followed the red orb with their eyes, watching it flow from one blue rivulet to another. By the time it had reached Sungyeol’s head, nearly an hour had passed without anything happening – it had completed its journey, and winked out into nothingness.

“Nothing, just as before,” Flitwick declared.

Just as before? Myungsoo thought, understanding now why none of them had seemed surprised at the ball changing colour when it had touched Sungyeol.

“Red means the presence of dark magic,” Snape informed him, cutting into Myungsoo’s thoughts and making him jump. It was the first time Snape had spoken to him directly since that first day, and Myungsoo hurriedly tried to think of something else on instinct. He now felt raw and exposed in front of Snape, as if he had no secrets he could possibly keep from the man. It didn’t help that Snape had the stare of a sphinx. “But, as you can see, there is no origin of it in Mr Lee’s blood. The curse is in him, but not from him.”

Dark magic, Myungsoo shuddered despite himself, quickly looking away. He hadn’t wanted to hear it confirmed.

“And now you, Mr Kim. If you would be so kind?”

Myungsoo realized that McGonagall was gesturing to the bed next to Sungyeol, and Myungsoo got up onto it, feeling terribly self-conscious beneath the glaring hospital lights. He lay down, fidgeting with his clothes to make sure he didn’t look as awkward as he felt. He had no idea what to do with his hands.

Madam Pomfrey handed McGonagall a bloody bandage, and she passed it to Flitwick. Myungsoo’s eyes widened – was that-?

“The spell needs to know what to look for in you,” Flitwick told him, noticing Myungsoo’s look of shock. “Mr Lee’s blood – and therefore the curse in it – is needed for direction.”  

Myungsoo swallowed and looked away as Flitwick began to smear the blood over his own hands, looking no less uncomfortable than Myungsoo felt. His stomach began to churn.

“I could take your place if you cannot handle a little blood, Filius,” Snape said, his bone-deep voice not bothering to hide his amusement.

“That will not be necessary,” Flitwick snapped, tossing the bandage aside. “We are all aware of your tastes in magic, Severus, but your eagerness to help in this case is unwarranted-”

“Enough!” McGonagall’s voice cut sharply through the quarreling, quarreling which felt like it had an undercurrent of real hate and a long history behind it; Myungsoo closed his eyes tight, wanting to be far away.

A silence followed that Myungsoo found was even louder than the two men’s raised voices. He opened his eyes again to find McGonagall staring the two of them down, finally dropping her gaze to move back towards Myungsoo.

“Will I-”

McGonagall paused, her wand already held over Myungsoo’s body. “Yes?”

“Will I feel anything?”

“No, Mr Kim, you shouldn’t feel a thing.” Myungsoo kept his gaze trained more towards McGonagall, sure that if he were to look at Snape he’d see only mockery there. Flitwick took up his position at Myungsoo’s feet, and the magic began.

The same blue light streamed from Snape’s and McGonagall’s wands, attaching themselves to the pattern of his veins and bloodways, forming little cities of blue over major arteries. Myungsoo tried his best to look down at his body without squirming too much, but had to lie flat again at a warning look from McGonagall. Flitwick prepared the little green blast of light, holding it carefully in his bloodstained hands as he waited for the vein-mapping to be completed. At a nod from McGonagall, he let it slip daintily off his fingers and onto Myungsoo’s right big toe, still murmuring directions at it.

None of them were prepared for what happened next – the ball not only turned crimson immediately, but the blue light reached out for it, pulling it along Myungsoo’s major veins like a red boat being towed upriver. It reached his heart in only a few seconds, settling there with an inexplicable deliberation to the shock of all who were watching.

“What-” Myungsoo jerked off the bed, Snape putting out a firm hand to keep him down. “What does it mean? What is it doing?”

McGonagall had a hand to before she realized what she was doing, and let it fall. “It would appear,” she began slowly, exchanging worried glances with Snape, Flitwick and Madam Pomfrey in turn before she carried on. “It would appear, Mr Kim, that it isn’t Mr Lee who is cursed. It is you.”

*