Donghae woke up the next morning with a sharp pain to his temple. Cracking his eyes open, he spied a large barn owl perched on his nightstand with a letter in its beak. It was a red letter, more specifically, a howler.  Howlers were never good. He watched in horror as the bird poked him in the temple with the letter "for old times’ sake" before letting it drop onto his chest and flying out the open window of his chambers.

               Yawning into his morning stretch, he reached blindly for Brixby, whom he let sleep on his bed the night before, and ruffled her hair. The hair was soft and long as it weaved through his fingers. Satisfied with the calming ability the cat seemed to have for him, Donghae finally reached for the howler, bracing himself for its contents. The last thing he wanted was for it to explode if he didn’t open it quick enough.

               Letter in hand, he ripped the envelope open. Immediately, the voice of Professor McGonagall filled the bedroom chamber with fear and dread. “Mr. Donghae Lee, if I do not see you in my office within the next hour, I will personally see to it that you are never accepted into Auror training! Do you hear me, Mr. Lee? Get up! Get up this instant!”

               Donghae quickly threw the letter into the air and watched it burst into flames not a moment after it left his hand.

               He was late and he could not afford to be late. Professor McGonagall was doing him a favor, a favor she could retract at any second. Donghae wanted to become an Auror just like his idle Harry Potter but unlike Harry Potter, he was never in a wizarding war. Not that he wanted to be, but his lack of combat experience meant he would have to go about Auror acceptance like everyone else, and that meant getting high marks in his N.E.W.T.s., which meant regular lessons with Headmistress McGonagall for transfiguration classes of which he barely got an O.W.L. in.

               Donghae jumped from his bed as if the letter had burnt him, getting dressed as quickly as possible. He was almost out the door, wand in hand, when he noticed something rather peculiar dominating his peripheral and sitting on his bed. Taking a few steps back, he craned his neck for a better view of it.

               “Hey, friend,” a boy of his age waved to him. “Thanks for letting me sleep here. I’d always wanted to see what Hogwarts looked like from the inside. Never realized how big it really was," he said, eyes growing wide as they gazed with wonder. "I mean, I have a big room at home, but do all students get their own chambers to sleep in? Are you the only student here? I mean, there are like six beds in here. Do you sleep in a different bed every night? Wow, must be nice.”

               Donghae stared at the boy who was in his bed, more than just a little confused. It was a prank. It had to be.

               There were only a handful of muggle-born students at Hogwarts and even fewer foreigners. Sometimes a few of the students liked to since he was both foreign and muggle-born, which made him very gullible and extremely easy to prank. He didn’t particularly like being made fun of—he didn’t think anyone did, so he really couldn’t understand why it happened to him so often. He figured that someone must have heard him whisper the password last night and they switched Brixby with this boy.

               He was more than a little upset but he would be damned if he was going to let the boy see it. He had to remain calm. “I’m sorry, do I know you?” he asked.

               The boy just smiled, a wide display of teeth and gums and Donghae felt a little strange after seeing it. It wasn’t a bad strange, just a feeling he hadn’t really felt before. For some reason he was reminded of Professor Brixby.

               “Listen, I’m late and I need to get to my lesson. You can laugh at me all you want once I get back,” Donghae announced with a curt nod, as though it was the best decision for both parties.

               “Wait! Donghae, it’s me…Brixby,” the boy said.

               Donghae turned back around, eyes narrowed in equal parts suspicion and confusion.

               “You brought me up here last night, remember? After I led you back to the castle,” he added while twiddling his thumbs.

               Donghae just continued to stare.

               “You almost hit me with a gnome? Ring any bells yet?”

               This time Donghae jumped back, his wand extended in a defensive stance toward the boy in his bed. It was the same stance he had learned in dueling exercises and one he intended on perfecting before he left Hogwarts to become an Auror. “Who are you? How do you know my name? Have you been following me?”

               “I’m Brixby,” the boy stated again, as if that explained it all. Donghae looked him over, sizing him up. He was thin, thinner than him and roughly the same age. He was East Asian like himself, maybe even Korean but spoke with a perfect English accent, unlike himself. He was certain he had never seen him before in his life.

               “Who are you…really?” he asked again.

               “My name is Hyukjae, really. Brixby is the name you gave me though, when I was a cat. I’m an animagus. I can change into a black cat, as you saw and umm…I’m a wizard like you, but an animagus as well,” the boy explained with a rush of words. He looked as though he wanted to say something else but stopped himself.

               Donghae knew from his studies what an animagus was, and that it wasn’t something easy to do. It was a discipline that took skill, practice and patience since it wasn’t easy morphing oneself into an animal, and if you didn’t have the aptitude, it could go horribly wrong. The only animagus he knew of was Professor McGonagall. There weren’t many registered animagi in the wizarding world and it was nearly unheard of for a boy his age to be one, but he was more interested right now in what Hyukjae hadn’t said.

                “What?” Donghae asked, prodding the boy to say what he didn’t.

               “I was watching you well before I made myself known to you,” he paused. “I’m curious…you named me after her, didn’t you, your professor with the red hair?" Cocking his head much like the curious animal he claimed to be, he continued. "Why? Last I checked I was a black cat, not an orange tabby.”

               “You both have green eyes,” Donghae spoke before he could stop himself, a verbal acceptance of the boy's outrageous claim. “At least you do in cat form. Your eyes are just a boring brown like mine now.”

               “You don’t like my eyes?” Hyukjae smirked.

               Donghae floundered, “No! I mean, yes—no. I mean, your eyes are fine, just not green anymore like when you were a cat. That’s all I meant. Your eyes are fine,” Donghae shrugged.

               “You think my eyes are fine?” the boy asked, and there was a twinkle in them that made Donghae think that they were more than just fine, but he would never say so.

               “You know what I mean,” he clarified.

               “Fine, fine, fine. I think I like your eyes though,” the boy teased, throwing back the blanket to better cross his jeaned legs, letting his fingers fold across his belly. Donghae thought he looked more at home in his bed than he ever would.

               “No," he said in answer to an unspoken question, but one that needed answering all the same. "This is not happening. You have to leave. You can’t get comfortable here. You’re not a Gryffindor, I would know and if anyone catches you up here, I’m the one getting in trouble,” he said, ignoring the compliment and pointing his wand at him again to drive the point home.

               “You have a crush on her, don’t you?” Hyukjae asked, ignoring his demands.

               Donghae found the question more than a little obtrusive and well beyond any boundaries one should dare cross before knowing them, but he found himself answering all the same. Almost as in defeat, he nodded and lowered his wand.

               “Muggle-born wizards are given advisors, so that we can adjust easier in the new environment. She’s my advisor here and a professor as well. She’s the reason I’m going to school here, really. She’s the one that informed my family that I was a wizard and what that would mean for the future. I could have gone to the nearest wizarding school in Japan, but if I was going to let anyone take me away from my family, it was going to be her. I think I fell for her even before I knew I fell for her. My little ten year old brain just didn’t know it at the time.”

               “That’s because love comes from the heart, you idiot.” Hyukjae smiled again and Donghae felt something ignite in his chest. It was the smile that reminded him of Professor Brixby, he surmised. It had the same wild abandon.

               “That also explains why you so badly at de-gnoming gardens then,” Hyukjae said, rising from the bed and straightening his tee-shirt and jeans that were spoiled with sleep. Donghae was thankful that he wasn’t , as he knew that animagi could change with their clothes on. “You throw like a girl, by the way,” the boy teased, and yet Donghae felt no malice behind the words.

               “I thought you were a girl, by the way,” Donghae shot back.

               Hyukjae paused, staring Donghae down before breaking down in a fit of laughter, which in turn had Donghae joining in on the infectious sound. After a moment or two, the laughter settled and Donghae continued with his questioning. He was still cautious but there was a certain level of trust he felt with the other.

               “So, now that you know my story. What’s yours? You look like you’re my age but I’ve never seen yo