The students started whispering and looking around in confusion when instead of professor Slughorn there was professor McGonagall entering their Potions classroom.

"Unfortunately Professor Slughorn fell ill, I'm here to fill in for him today. To anyone in doubt I am more than competent to give classes on Potions. It seems like you always work in the same teams so today I'm going to shuffle you a bit." She pulled out an empty cauldron and placed it on her desk. "You're all sitting in pairs so I'm going to ask one person from each pair to write their name on a piece of parchment and put it in here. Then the other person will come up and draw their new partner. No peeking and no switching, unless someone pulls out their current deskmate's name."

Jinki sighed. He'd rather just work with Kibum like usual, but his friend obviously didn't share his point of view as he quickly wrote his name down in hope of getting picked by Minho.

Two minutes later students started to draw their partners one by one and the less names were left in the cauldron the more nervous Jinki was getting. Almost everyone was already paired up and for some reason Jonghyun's name still hadn't been drawn. With so many people in class Jinki hadn't thought even for a second that he might end up with Jonghyun but now this option seemed to become more and more tangible.

When it was his turn to pick he slowly stood up and made his way towards the teacher's desk. Apart from Jonghyun's there were still three more names in the cauldron. Which meant that there was a 75% chance he wasn't going to pick him, there was nothing to worry about right? Jinki took a deep breath and dipped his hand in the cast iron pot. His fingers closed on a piece of parchment and he was about to pull it out but then he quickly picked another one feeling like it might help him fool destiny or whatever. He then withdrew his hand, unfolded the parchment and took a look at what was written on it. His eyes fell on the "J" the name was starting with and that was all it took for him to realize he was screwed. His heart stopped for a moment before beginning to stutter in panic. No way, this had to be a joke of some sort. He swallowed hard and involuntarily glanced at the owner of the name who was currently staring right back at him with a curious gaze.

"Mr. Lee, I'd appreciate it if you stopped blocking the queue. Go to your partner and start reading the recipe."

Jinki lowered his head and walked very slowly towards Jonghyun's desk, his mind completely blank and legs feeling like lead as he dragged them forward. He couldn't believe this was happening, fate really could be cruel when it wanted to.
When he finally reached his destination he grabbed the unoccupied chair and sat at the very edge of the desk. He tried to be casual about it, he didn't want the other boy to think he was purposefully putting as much distance between them as physically possible.

Jonghyun glanced at him and felt his heart fall a little at how far away from him Jinki had sat down. He did his best not to show how hurt he was though, he put on a straight face and frowned. "You might as well sit at another desk at this point. We can't work like that, you can't even reach the cauldron from there."

Jinki wanted to let out a grunt of acknowledgement but somehow his vocal cords decided to fail him at that moment an the only thing that came out of his mouth was a puff of air. He his lips nervously hoping that the other boy didn't notice anything. He felt like it would be awkward to try to grunt again so he just sat with his back hunched and eyes cast downwards, looking at everything but the boy next to him.

Jonghyun's frown deepened when Jinki didn't reply. "I do realize you'd rather be in pair with anyone else but you're stuck with me so get over it. The sooner we finish the potion the sooner you'll be free to go so get your arse over here and help me prepare the ingredients." he hissed out and then turned his head, now facing the desk. He didn't look to see if Jinki had listened to him and moved closer. He couldn't bring himself to. So he just grabbed the first ingredient listed on the recipe and started chopping it with a knife.

It was hard. Sitting so close to Jinki and being forced to keep his feelings at bay, pretend he was okay with how unwanted Jinki made him feel. He couldn't believe his heart had started pounding in anticipation when he saw Jinki walk his way with the piece of parchment marked with his name. He couldn't believe he had actually thought Jinki would stop ignoring him just because they ended up as partners for this assignment. He was a fool. He had blamed Minho for giving him false hope but in fact he himself had never lost it. No matter how bad things had gotten he had always hoped. He was such a fool.

He grabbed the next ingredient and placed it on the cutting board. He made a few cuts and then halted, feeling like all this was meaningless. Why was he even trying so hard? He put his knife away and took a deep breath. He wanted to take a look at what Jinki was doing. To see whether he actually started doing something or just kept sitting completely still like a statue, refusing to accept the fact that he was supposed to work with him. Jonghyun was curious. So he slowly turned his head to look at the boy sitting next to him.

 And Jinki was indeed doing something. But it was the very same something Jonghyun had been doing barely a few seconds ago. He frowned. "What are you cutting this rat's tail for? I'm almost finished with mine."

Jinki flinched under Jonghyun's strong gaze. He had been asked an actual question, if he didn't answer it would definitely count as ignoring and he didn't want Jonghyun to get upset. He cleared his throat, making sure that this time the sound did come out. "Um. You're doing it wrong." Jonghyun's eyes flared with anger so Jinki quickly added "You're cutting it vertically and the recipe says to make 3 horizontal cuts."

Jonghyun scoffed, feeling something snap inside of him. "Oh yeah?" He grabbed the pieces he had cut and threw them into the cauldron anyway. "Too bad you didn't tell me in time. Why's that I wonder? Oh, I don't know, maybe because you didn't ing cough up one word to me ever since the lesson has started?!" Jonghyun furiously stirred the potion and then threw in a few more ingredients, not really caring about the instructions anymore. "You're such a ing Lee Jinki. I understand you might not be feeling the way I do and that's really not an issue, my feelings, my problem." he spat out, continuing to angrily throw in everything close at hand. "I thought we could just behave like adults and not get in each other's ways unless absolutely necessary. But here we are, supposed to make a stupid potion and you can't just ing it up and get it done like a normal person. Is talking to me really that awful? Or looking at me? Because you seem to hate doing that too. You just couldn't sit through it without making me feel like some worthless trash, could you?"

Jinki glanced nervously over Jonghyun's head, he could see professor McGonagall briskly coming their way with an alarmed expression on her face. He wanted to warn Jonghyun, tell him to keep it down but the boy was so engaged in his monolog he wouldn't probably hear a word of what Jinki said.

"Do you think I ever wanted to feel this way? I wish it wasn't you. I wish it was Minho even though I know he'd never return my feelings. But he at least wouldn't make me feel like for having them." Jonghyun couldn't stop, everything he had been bottling up just pouring out of his mouth. He knew he was being unreasonable. He knew that he and Jinki had always been enemies, that the boy owed him nothing and it was his own fault that he let himself fall for him. But none of that seemed to matter right now, with Jinki so close to him for the first time since what felt like forever, finally looking at him and listening. "I'm just so ing done with you. You can go ahead and keep ignoring me, I'll get over it. There's only a few more weeks left. Just a few more until the semester is over and then you'll never see my face ever again." Jonghyun grabbed the last thing lying on the desk and raised his hand to throw that into the cauldron as well for a good measure.