Jongdae POV

Jongdae was actually looking forward to Potions. Sehun and Jongin hadn't signed up for the special class, and were doing homework in the library (he didn't think they'd achieve much, last time he'd checked they were working at an estimated speed of 3 inches of parchement per half-hour, squared by eighteen....).

It would be quite nice to have a class without Sehun getting the ingredients mixed up, or Jongin adding 0.5 milligrams of dragon blood instead of 0.6 milligrams. As long as his tutor wasn't a sloppy potioneer, he'd be fine. 

Jongdae had only been studying potions for a month, but something about all the mesuring and weighing appealed to his OCD subconcious. He was even quite good at it.

"Morning, Professor Slughorn." 

"Good morning m'boy!" Slughorn looked up, noticed Jongdae, and visibly perked up "Early as usual, eh?''

"Yes, sir." Jongdae put his rucksack on the table "I'm really hoping that the fifth-years will help me with my sleeping draught...."

Slughorn didn't reply, busy checking something or other. Jongdae started counting the bricks in the wall. He'd gotten up to 1,865 once. Today, though, he only counted 732 before a trickle of students found the potions room.

The 12 fifth-years they would be working with were all Slytherins, bar one nervous-looking Hufflepuff like himself.

"Right class!" Slughorn yelled "You will all be assigned to another pupil older or younger than yourself, with whom you will work for two hours on a Befuddlement Draught." he winked "The group producing the best potion will be awarded a box of Honeydukes' finest fudge!"

That perked everyone up. Jongdae was more interested in the challenge presented by a Befuddlement Draught. 

Tearing himself away from the wall (1,009 bricks so far, and he would so hate to lose count), he consulted the parchement tacked next to the blackboard, upon which the professor was busy writing the list of ingredients.

Right, so, divise by, say, eight, add  three, multiply by nine...There was a 98% probability of being with someone whose name began with 'J'.

Kim Jongin --- Kim Joonmyun.

 He was right! They had the same surname too, but 'Kim' was quite a common surname, wasn't it? In fact, if he could probably calculate the number of people in the world with that surname. So, carry the 5...

Someone tapped him on the shoulder.

"You Jongdae?"

"Yeah, so there's a 72% probability of you being Joonmyun now." Jongin said, "Are you Joonmyun?"

"Umm, yes?" Joonmyun was startled "You're weird."

"I have OCD."

"Sorry, man...Right, come on. This potion won't brew itself."

Joonmyun was very methodical in his potion-making. Jongdae was happy.

"I like you." he said.

"What the hell?"

"You use the correct quantity of ingredients 86% of the time. It's refreshing." explained Jongdae.

"You're weird." said Joonmyun.

"Thank you."said Jongdae, without any sarcasm. Jongdae wasn't capable of sarcasm.

"Have you ever tried to make a Befuddlment Draught before?"asked the older Slytherin.

"No...'" Should he have tried already? Jongdae was worried.

"Hey, relax," said Joonmyun, adding the mandrake root to the frothing liquid. "You're quite good at this.''

There was a short pause when one of the other groups' cauldron blew up.

"Jongdae?" asked Joonmyun "Wanna grab lunch? It's going to take Slughorn the rest of the lesson to sort that out."

"Ok."

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Sehun POV

He was so bored. They didn't really need to study. Jongin just wanted company whilst all ten inches of Trawleny's punishment essay for something he hadn't yet done was written.

Thank god Yixing wasn't there. He didn't know what to do about the older boy. On the one hand, he was cute, on the other, he was a sixteen-year-old Slytherin who was best mates with Park Chanyeol, the biggest jerk in the universe. But...he had said he'd go with him...and he was hot...Arrrgggh!!

He couldn't even talk about this to Jongin, who had a massive crush on the not-gay-or-even-bi Do Kyungsoo. And when he said 'crush' he meant 'stalkerish obsession'. To the point of barging into the poor kid so he'd talk to him. Now that had gone badly.

And his idiotic brother Luhan, who had decided to give up his quote-unquote (i.e. in Luhan's decidedly biased opinion) 'soulmate' Minseok 'for Minseok's own good'. Of course, Luhan thought that somehow Minseok would understand. God. Why couldn't his brother just tell mum and dad to stuff it? After all, they were both gay.

And he would just end up in his brother's situation anyway.

He silently passed  Jongin a spare quill, musing on all the massive piles of crap about to hit the fan.

"Hello Sehun!" said Yixing cheerfully "I brought that book, you know, Waiting for Goldalming?"

Oh .

Jongin was looking at him with wide eyes. Yixing looked hurt at his faliure to respond.

"Thanks." he muttered "Come with me for a minute?"

He led Yixing over to a corner of the library, and prepared to commence his speech on why 'they' would not work out.

Then Yixing kissed him.

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Baekhyun POV

The mixed-year potions class had been quite good. At least, until his cauldron BLEW UP. Slughorn had set him 12 inches of parchement on 'Why my Befuddlement Draught Blew up' for Monday, and it was Friday. Brillo.

Oh well, there was bacon for lunch. Bacon beat anything Slughorn could throw at him. It would also give him heart disease in later life, but what the hell.

He got two slices of toast, put the heavenly bacon between them, and bit down.

Mmmm!

Slughorn could do one!

He finished off his cholesterol-inducing lunch with a couple of Jaffa cakes, before heading in the direction of the Ravenclaw tower to get his Transfiguration homework.

Before he was halfway there, however, a soft hand wrapped itself round his mouth and another round his waist. Baekhyun found himself being pulled into a small corridor he had never noticed before.

Great.

It was Chanyeol. Who else?

"What can I do for you today?" asked Baekhyun tiredly. He was fed up with Chanyeol and his 'jokes'. He always got beaten up. Just like that song Kyungsoo liked, the one that went...oh yeah, "he laughs at us/we just beat him up''. 

Pulled back to reality by the fact that Chanyeol was right there and he was humming some weird punk song, he prepared for a beating.

"Oh, shut up !" whispered Chanyeol, "Do you get a kick out of this or something?!"

"No!"

Chanyeol got closer, until his mouth was right up against Baekhyun's ear, and God was it so wrong that he was getting a kick out that?

"Well, ," the older boy rasped, " 'cause I sure do."

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Luhan POV

Who even invented N.EW.T.S.? It was only November, but he already had about ten pages of Charms essay for Tuesday, and he didn't have Minseok to copy off now...... He was not going to think about Minseok. NononononoNO. Or the stiff letters he was having to exchange with Yoona, the most horrible person he'd ever had the misfortune of being engaged to. Or the letter his parents had sent him, saying how they 'commended his desicion-making skills'.

He had a charms essay. What was the subject..oh yeah. 'Uses to which a simple summoning charm, such as Accio!, can be put.' That was easy, umm... fetching his socks...stealing Joonmyun's fizzing whisbees. Head down, Luhan began to write.

"Here he is, Minseok!"

Luhan looked up. His bloody brother! Sehun had brought Minseok over. He knew that Sehun thought they should still talk, but he was only thirteen years old, for god's sake! He had never had a boyfriend for more than a week!

"Well, I'm sure you two have so much to talk about!" chirped Sehun before skipping off to whatever circle of hell he had come from. Traitor!

"Minseok...." said Luhan

"You know what, Luhan? I'm fed up with all your . You could have told me. We could have sorted it out." It was the angriest speech Luhan had ever heard. Every word was imbued with bitterness.

"God MInseok!" yelled Luhan "What did you want me to say? I'm engaged? I can't be with you? Screw you."

"Screw you too!"

"But...I still love you."mumbled the big fat idiot (aka Luhan).

Minseok crumpled. "Me too, Luhan...me too...but there's too much stuff you haven't told me.  I can't be with you. Not right now. Not when you're like this."

They were the saddest words Luhan had heard in his life (and, looking back, the cheesiest).

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Kris (Yifan) POV

"You! Pastis! Stop that right now! Or it's detention!"

Kris was so fed up with the morons pupils he was meant to be teaching. They seemed to be actively refusing all his efforts to get them to actually learn something. Yet it would still be his fault if they all got T's on their O.W.L.

His thoughts began once more to drift to Tao. They had moved on to practical wandwork now, and he was very worried that he would give in to temptation. Tao seemed to be wearing less and less at every lesson --- Merlin! was that the time?

"For homework, I want all of you -- yes, you too, Lamont -- to write me an essay on --- stop picking your nose Martin -- the use of transfiguration in last year's Triwizard Tournament. Remember, class -- don't do that to Floyd, Koudrief, or you'll get detention -- your essay should be no less than ten inches long. Class dismissed!"

Phew. Thank god he didn't have the 5th year  Slytherins for any double periods. He'd probably commit suicide. Most of them were alright but a few, like Lamont and Koudrief, ought to have been drowned at birth.

He glanced at the wall clock as he packed away the sugar mice (and the real mice that hadn't been succesfully Transfigured). Damn! It was nearly five! He quickly Accio'd the few remaining mice before running off to his office.

"You're late." remarked Zitao as Kris hurried into the cramped bureau.

Funny how he seemed to think of his pupil as Tao all day, but when they were sitting face to face in his office the younger boy was always Zitao...

"You're early." said the teacher simply. "Right, so today I suppose we could work on mice into sugar mice...I still have a few mice left over from those bloody Slytherins..."

"Bloody Slytherins?" Zitao cocked an eyebrow.
"Never mind that now. It's a simple incantation : Finibus!. With a well drawn out 'in' sound. Practice."

As Zitao carefully pronounced the incantation, Kris reached down for one of the sugar mice from the earlier class. He'd always had a weakness for them.

"Give me one, Yifan, I'm starving!" said Zitao petulantly.

" 'S mine." said the teacher in a voice slightly muffled by a pink sugar mouse. "Get on with your wandwork. You're not doing it properly."

Slightly miffed, Zitao got on with his wandwork. When Kris pointed out one of his mistakes, the boy started complaining that he had never shown him how to do it, so how could he get the spell to work, eh? So there!

Sighing, Kris put his half-eaten sugar mouse down on the table before moving behind his pupil.

"Right, your left arm should go there, and your right arm should be straighter...No, not like that, like this...Oh for heaven's sake..."

He grabbed his student's unruly arm and gently moved it a little to the left.

"Yifan!"

Startled, Kris dropped Zitao's arm and practically ran over to his desk : "Sorry...I didn't realise..."

"You know what?" said the boy with the mysterious smile, rolling his words in his mouth so, so deliciously, so wickedly "I don't think I mind after all."

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Well, here we go! Yet another chapter written whilst on the influence of caffeine at two in the morning! hope u like it... we have some bakeyeol which i have just realized reads like a bacon advert, and cheese ball xiuhan (which is for our resident xiuhan maniac, emily). Oh and Tao being a weird stalkery guy. And no real plot. But forget i said all that! its a great fic, and blah blah blah (shameless self promoting). The song baek references is in-sight by the dead kennedys. all you need to know about the dead kennedys : their lead singer was called jello biafra and their guitarist east bay ray. all their songs reference either , death or ronald regan. they r on my writing playlist (which is 5 hrs long). Listen to the song anyway! Oh and all the people kris yells at are real and did nothing to deserve being drowned at birth (had to say that). Dancing round the kitchen to funland at the beach (a song) , writing fic at ridiculous times, remaining less crazy than emily, Cath.