ಥ‿ಥ I swear that’s just dust in my eyes, but someone drew BG fan art for me and I’m just really touched [ x o ] I know I don’t get back to replying everyone all the time, but thank you so much for enjoying my stupid fictional universes and for keeping me invested in my stories. 

“My mom’s going to kill me,” Hyoyeon mutters as she sinks lower into her chair.

“Bet you my parents are going to kill me first now that I’ve disgraced the family,” Sunny sighs from beside the girl.

“At least your parents give a ,” Yoona grumbles from the other side of Hyoyeon. “My folks probably wouldn’t even bat an eye if I set this academy on fire.”

“Unless you want to add arsonist to your list of felonies, I would advise you against such actions, Miss Im.”

The three girls tense up as soon as the headmistress enters the office and walks past them before taking a seat on the other side of her massive mahogany desk.

The students don’t often see the headmistress, but the sight of her effortlessly takes breaths away. The woman dresses herself as a queen would in her robe is rich of colors, decorated with embroideries of flowers and peacock feathers. She keeps her pitch-black hair pulled away from the strong features of her face, retaining her neat tresses in place with gold pins and flourishes. Anyone looking upon her would agree that Gong Li is a woman truly deserving of the Headmistress title.

Yoona was feeling defiant when she had first entered this office, but the headmistress’ presence is enough to make her shrivel into her chair.

However, Hyoyeon doesn’t share the same sentiment. “Shouldn’t we be in an infirmary or something? That werewolf could’ve bitten us, ya know?!”

Headmistress Li has heard her staff members complain about these girls many times before, but the head-witch’s involvement was never needed, until now. Not amused by this notorious troublesome trio, the woman arches a single brow. “And…were you bitten?”

“Look at my leg!” Hyoyeon says as she hoists her dusty shoe onto the headmistress’ desk.

Watching debris off dirt trickle from the girl’s sneaker to her polished desk, the headmistress frowns. “Ms. Kim, that’s obviously a scratched shin,” the woman brushes off, using a pen to push the student’s filthy foot from her desk. “Looks like you took a stumble when a werewolf chased you out of a room—I’m not wrong, am I?”

Huffy, the young blonde girl pouts before folding her arms across her chest and sagging back into her seat.

“Professor Choi’s already looked you guys over. I’m sure our wolf didn’t touch a hair on your pretty, little heads.”

“You didn’t see it!” Yoona exclaims. “It just came outta the shadows and tried to eat us!”

Ignoring the panic, the headmistress calmly looks over her paper in front of her. “Wandering around past curfew, vandalism, and stealing—from a professor, no less. I’d say you three are just looking for a reason for expulsion.”

“Are you really avoiding the fact that you have a werewolf in the basement, headmistress?!” Sunny snaps. “What do you think the Council of Magic will have to say about your sorry—”

“Ms. Lee, I suggest you take a moment and calm down before you keep running that mouth of yours,” the woman sternly warns.

“ this school.”

“Sunny, watch your language. You got some mouth on you for a thirteen-year old girl.”

“Seriously, screw you and this place! I don’t want to be here! I want to go home!” Sunny bursts, standing from her seat.

“SIT DOWN!” the woman explodes, slamming her palms down and rising from her seat as well. The lanterns littered around the room abruptly burst in light and all three girls shrink into their chairs once they realize the head-witch’s daunting powers. “I have HAD it with you three. I should just expel all of you, right now!”

Watching angry shadows and lights dance over the woman’s serious face, Sunny winces when she knows she’d be the only one content with going home to her life in the mortal world. Hyoyeon and Yoona though….

“I-it was my idea!” Sunny suddenly blurts out. “I was the one who saw Professor Choi going into the dungeon; I was the one who convinced them we should go check it out. If you want to expel someone, expel me. I-I was wrong, headmistress.”

The fiery lanterns start to dim as the woman’s temper begins to cool as well. “As noble as your cause may be, I hardly suspect you were the sole cause of this evening’s mischiefs,” the woman states as she slides back into her seat. “I want you all dismissed from this academy. There are plenty of other witches who would die to be here and you three are wasting their opportunity.”

“Headmistress Li, please!” Hyoyeon begs. “I-I’m sorry, okay? We were just having some fun! Please don’t do this. My parents won’t have enough money to get me into another witch academy.”

Knowing that her friend was born from two non-magical parents, Yoona doesn’t want to see Hyoyeon go back to such a bleak ordinary life. Even though Yoona would prefer to be anywhere but ‘home’, she begs with the older woman. “Headmistress, please, at least pardon Hyoyeon, okay?”

Back having been straight since the moment she sat down, Headmistress Li finally leans back into her seat while she contemplates other possible courses of discipline. Maybe not discipline, but maybe…

“What if I had a different proposition for you girls?”

Hyoyeon sits up higher, leaning in and full of curiosity. “What? What else could we do?”

“Our…‘special’ student can only have staff members look out for her so often. I think…I would like some of her peers to support her where we can’t. And I don’t just want Hyoyeon on this. I want all three of you there for her.”

Sunny feels her jaw drop. “Y-you want us to…you want us to babysit that…werewolf?!”

“She’s pretty much harmless. You girls just need to keep her safe, keep her healthy, and most of all, keep her secret a secret. She needs all the help she can get as she gets accustom with her new life.”

“It wasn’t a full moon,” Yoona mutters. “What’s going on?”

“That…is a long story, Ms. Im.”

“Well, how did she get changed? Was she bitten?”

“A story for another day, perhaps,” Headmistress Li sighs. “Maybe we’ll all discuss that together.”

“So…who is the wolf-girl?” Hyoyeon asks, unaware of her old childhood friend’s mutation.

“Hey, wake up!”

“Huh?” Sunny’s eyes flutter open to see Taeyeon standing over her bed. “Sorry, I just wanted to nap,” she mutters, rubbing the sleepiness from her eyes.

“Wakey, wakey!” Taeyeon chimes. “We gotta go meet the professors out front.”

“You’re awfully chipper this morning,” Sunny groans. She sits up on her bed, hoping that she would’ve been able to sneak in five more minutes before they had to leave.

“Come on, it’s fieldtrip day! It’s supposed to be fun. We can finally go out into the enchanted part of the forest,” Taeyeon coos, waving spooky fingers at her friend. “And, besides, everyone’s going to be there. It’ll be fun!”

Sunny groans as she stands up and grabs her backpack. “Yeah. Everyone’s going to be there,” she groans, not ready for whatever headaches the day has in store for them.

***

***

Standing outside the school gates, Taeyeon tries to remember to be excited about this fieldtrip, but it’s hard to be in a good mood when she spots Tiffany on the opposite side of the park. She expects the girl to be glowering at her, shooting dangerous laser-eyes at her, but she’s almost surprised—and maybe a little disappointed—when the Hufflepuff witch is simply ignoring her presence altogether. Tiffany would normally seize any chance she can muster to throw her old friend a dirty look, but today she keeps her attention on Bora instead.

She shouldn’t be invasive, but Taeyeon angles her head slightly to better stretch her acute hearing in order to eavesdrop on Tiffany and her Hufflepuff roommate.

“Seriously, should you even be on this fieldtrip today? You look terrible,” Tiffany states, staring at the other girl’s tanned, sweaty skin. “Do you need to go to med?”

Bora sighs and can barely look at her roommate through heavy lidded-eyes. “I missed all my classes last week. I should really at least be here for today.”

“Stop vacationing with your family in the middle of the semester then!” Tiffany laughs at her spoiled roommate.

Bora manages to muster a feeble smile. “Well, I got to be lounging on Thai beaches while your butts were rotting in class.”

“Can’t believe you’d skip all your classes to vacation in the mortal world,” Tiffany scoffs. “What if you picked up the zika virus or something?” she comments, staring at the other girl’s feverish state.

“It’ll be fine!” Bora’s normally the queen of optimism, but even she can barely deliver the line without quivering. “It’ll be fine. Just gotta get through today, and then I can sleep all weekend.”

“Hey!”

Surprised by Sunny’s sudden voice, Taeyeon turns her attention from Tiffany back to her group of friends.

“Do you guys remember when we first met?”

“Where did this come from?” Taeyeon asks her roommate.

“I don’t know, I was just thinking about it this morning,” Sunny replies.

Taeyeon chuckles when she thinks about the troublemakers that her friends used to be. “Didn’t you bad kids break into the dungeon, looking for the teacher’s booze, but found me instead?”

“I thought it was going to be a wine cellar,” Hyoyeon grumbles, her disappointment still evident after all these years later.

The girls laugh before Taeyeon mentions, “Lucky I wasn’t feral, otherwise I wouldn’t have any friends at all now.”

Her three friends offer her quick tight-lipped smiles before Yoona bursts into giggles. “Unnie, do you remember the first time I ever checked up on you?”

“Oh gosh,” Taeyeon whines, “that was so embarrassing….”

“Taeyeon-unnie?” Yoona knocks on the black sliding doors again. “Unnie?” When there’s still silence, Yoona panics and immediately pulls her dragon-core wand out from her cloak. “Alohomora!” The yellow charm flares from her wand and pops the gold lock open. Snapping doors open, the Hufflepuff girl meets Taeyeon’s stunned face, half hidden beneath the hood of her cloak.

“What’re you—?”  Taeyeon can’t even finish her sentence through her embarrassing sobs. She just sinks herself deeper into her hood and uses her hands to cover her tear-stained face in the presence of her peer. “Y-you shouldn’t be here—”

“Unnie, Professor Choi says that he was looking for you earlier today. He asked me to check up on you.” When nothing but the sound of the older girl’s hiccupping sobs fills the room, Yoona instantly feels her annoyance dissolve. Yoona’s sure as hell not close with the girl, but it doesn’t stop her from shutting the sliding doors behind her and rushing over to the bedside. “Unnie? What’s wrong?” She reaches out and, as her fingers graze Taeyeon’s shoulder, the older girl flinches and shuffles backwards on the bed.

“D-don’t touch me!”

“Why? What’s wrong? Do you need to go to med?”

“D-don’t look at me!”

“Unnie?”

Given her abnormal condition, the academy had set Taeyeon up with a single room. Not accustom to having a roommate or anyone in her bedroom at all, Taeyeon begs through her cries, “Please go away!”

Instead of leaving, Yoona crawls onto the mattress too, forcing her way into the girl’s personal space. “Come on. Professor Choi wanted me to check up on you.”

“Y-yoona—”

“C’mere,” Yoona says sweetly, coaxing the girl over. “You’ve missed days of class—why are you hiding from me?”

“I-I, uh,” Taeyeon sniffs, shaking under the cover of her black and red hoodie. “I ca-can’t fully turn back.”

Puzzled, Yoona goes to pull the girl’s hood down. She’s surprised when two pointy, black ears spring up from the confines of the fabric. She’s met with gold irises and black scleras, but they look more human than wolf when they’re glossed with fearful tears.

“It’s not funny!”

Not even realizing that she’s smiling, Yoona cups a hand over . “I’m sorry, it’s just that…you….”

“Wh-what?” Taeyeon asks fearfully.

“It’s just…you’re so cute!”

“Yoona!” Taeyeon shrieks as she pulls her hood back over her head. “This is awful!”

“I’ve never seen you half-turn since then,” Yoona says pouting. “It was soooo cute.”

“Ah! Yoona!” Taeyeon laughs while wriggling away from the way the taller girl pinches her cheek. 

However, her giggles quickly die out as soon as her nose picks up on a specific berry lotion in the distance. Even though Tiffany was screaming in her face yesterday, Taeyeon is far more nervous about a different witch—well actually, she’s more nervous about seeing a specific pair of witches enter the park.

Late, the Slytherin roommates, Yuri and Jessica, are the last of the students to join the meeting of classes. The fox-girl's dark eyes briefly meet Taeyeon's and the werewolf timidly dips her gaze away, still embarrassed by the awful prank the other girl pulled on her last night.

Jessica though, she doesn't even scan the area for her other friends. She just numbly walks in stride with her taller roommate, fingers trailing against the plants as they make their way over. She plucks a loose twig from a shrub and twirls it in hand as they come to a standstill.

Jessica doesn’t even know why she’s irritated. She had already told Taeyeon already about her probably-platonic and maybe-not-romantic feelings, so she can’t understand why she feels so damn irked. Was Taeyeon not genuine with her feelings beforehand? Had Jessica been...played? Had the wolf-girl managed to make her care for no reason at all?

She snaps the twig between her fingers.

At the sound of splintering wood, Yuri looks down at her spaced-out roommate. “Hey, you okay?”

Turning up to face the tall captain, Jessica can’t stop seeing the image of Yuri and Taeyeon, tangled in each other’s embrace and passionately kissing. She frowns at the memory. “I’m fine. Just tired.”

“You did get in awfully late last night.”

“Was at the library late. Had some studying to do,” Jessica lies.

“Of course you did. Such a bookworm!” Yuri laughs, ruffling the short girl’s hair.

Jessica slaps the captain’s hands away, irritated beyond belief. “Stop it.”

“Whoa, someone’s cranky today,” Yuri remarks, surprised about her roommate’s sudden icy flare.

Before Jessica can form a reply, all the gathered witches turn their attention to the sudden twists in the dimension, watching images of maple and oak trees spiral in space before a loud pop breaks into their two professors that now stand before them.

“Welcome to today’s special fieldtrip!” Professor Choi announces with Professor Song Jihyo at his side. “Some of you are in both botany and potions, some of you are only in one of these classes, however, we feel like this is an excellent trip for all students, regardless.”

Even with the merged multiple classes of botany and potions, the number of students is still small, maybe just over twenty individuals. Professor Song is still mindful of the youth’s abilities though. “We understand apparition is skill that’s not mastered by all students, so we will be using something more stable in today’s travels. We will be using two portkeys,” she explains, holding up a large calligraphy brush.

Simultaneously, Professor Choi produces a keychain from his pocket.

The female professor continues to instruct her students to, “Please join one of us at our portkeys and let’s try to make the most of our day wh