"Mr. Kim!”

Kibum looked away from Minho when his gaze darted to Slughorn’s desk, his grin disappearing. “Yes, sir?”

“What did I just say?” Kibum blinked, his mouth opening and closing with a quiet snap. “Or were you not listening?”

“I’m sorry, sir. I -- “

“Please pay attention, Mr. Kim. I’m sure you have time for conversation when you’re not in my class. Unless it’s something you’d like to share with the rest of us?”

“Uh, no, sir.”

Slughorn nodded and continued his description of the process for the Invigoration Potion while Kibum glanced back at Minho, trying to hold back his smirk. Minho cleared his throat and averted his eyes, but even that couldn’t hide the smile twinkling in them.

It hadn’t been a conversation, really. Just a quip of a joke. The way Slughorn had said one of the ingredients amused Kibum and he repeated it under his breath, only for Minho to snicker and say it back.

“Alright, you can now gather the ingredients you need to prepare the Invigoration Potion. Mr. O’Daire, please stop fiddling with your cauldron and join the others.”

“Slughorn is in a mood today, huh?”

Kibum widened his eyes and let out a clipped huff of a sigh. “Always fun when that happens.” Minho sniffed a laugh and went up on his tiptoes, grabbing two vials of infusion of wormwood and passing one to Kibum. “Vervain, too, if you can reach it.”

“Right.”

The bottles clinked together as Minho grabbed them. They gathered the rest of the ingredients and brought them back to their work station, sorting through them to begin working on their potions. Kibum grabbed both his and Minho’s beakers and filled them up to the two-hundred-milliliter line and brought them back to their workstation.

“Thanks,” Minho said as he poured the water into his cauldron.

“Of course.” He grabbed his wand, and with a flick of his wrist, he said, “Incendio,” and lit the wick beneath his cauldron.

While he waited for the cauldron to bubble, he prepared his other ingredients -- crushing the dried billywig stings, peppermint, and alihosty plant in the mortar, finely mincing the stewed mandrake... He was about to mix the drops of the infusions and honeywater he needed to, but the water started to boil, and he put in the pinches of the plants he needed to and then stirred.

“Four...five,” he muttered under his breath before he stopped and stirred counter-clockwise twice. He took his spoon out of the cauldron and set it aside, stepping up on his tiptoes to see inside.

“Look okay?” Minho asked.

“So far -- “ Kibum started to say until Slughorn cleared his throat, both Kibum and Minho looking his way to find him watching them. Kibum tried not to smile as he went back to his potion, scooping up the mandrake he needed and stirring it inside. It started to thicken as it heated to a simmer, and he stopped stirring once it came to a boil.

Out of the corner of his eye, Kibum saw Minho lean a bit closer to him. “Do we have to mix the infusions?” he whispered.

“And the honeywater,” Kibum muttered out of the side of his mouth, looking over to make sure Slughorn wasn’t paying attention to them. They were in the clear. Kibum up the mixture in his dropper, then held it over the cauldron, counting the drops as the went in. “...three...four.” He pulled it away, watching the surface still, save for a few bubbles.

He stirred it counter-clockwise a couple of times before he grabbed the scurvy leaves and picked seven from the sprig.

“.”

He glanced over at Minho as he rolled the leaves together, crushing them between his thumb and forefinger. “What’s wrong?”

“I think I added too much mandrake.” Kibum went up on his tiptoes, trying not to cringe at the sludge in Minho’s cauldron. That wouldn’t be fun to clean out. “Do you think adding some water would help?”

“Too late for that. Hm...” He dropped the leaves into his cauldron and stirred a couple of times. “Add a few more drops of the infusions and stir to see if it loosens up.”

“Okay.”

Kibum grabbed his knife and the stalk of lovage between them, slicing it thinly.

“I think that helped.”

“Good.”

He laid each slice of lovage in one at a time, waiting until each one was dissolved into the potion before adding another. Once they were all inside, he stirred it slowly.

“Pass me the knife.”

“Oh, right.” Kibum picked it up and handed it to Minho, who quickly sliced the lovage and started to add it into his potion. “Min,” he whispered after he dropped in the first two, the faint smell of smoke tinging the air. “Did you add the scurvy leaves first?”

“Oh....”

Minho leaned over to scoop the partially dissolved lovage out of the potion, but once his metal spoon made contact with the surface of the mixture, a small fireball burst into the air, startling the entire classroom. Minho looked over at Kibum, his eyes blown wide. A little bit of smoke curled from the heat-frayed tips of his fringe.

Slughorn jumped out of his seat and rushed over to them, pulling Minho back to look at the potion himself. “I’m...I’m sorry, Professor. I forgot the steps.”

“Lovage before scurvy, I suppose?” Even though Slughorn wasn’t looking his way, Minho nodded, his gaze darting around the room until he met Kibum’s eyes. He gave him a sympathetic smile and mouthed, You okay? Minho nodded again. “How could you be so mindless?”

“It was just a mistake, Professor,” Kibum said, frowning at the back of his head.

“A mistake that could have caused serious injury. Ruined,” he muttered as he gingerly lifted Minho’s cauldron off of the rack, shaking his head as he walked away with it. “Completely ruined. Detention, Mr. Choi, for endangering your fellow students.” Minho’s brow furrowed as he nodded, his lips forming a thin line to keep from talking back.

Kibum, however... “Really? Detention for that?”

The entire class fell silent, everyone looking to Slughorn to see how he would respond. For a moment, he didn’t, and the only sound that filled the room was that of Slughorn pouring Minho’s potion into the metal bucket below the sink. “You’ll join him, Mr. Kim, if you continue to talk back to me.”

Kibum huffed and shook Minho’s hand off of his arm without looking back at him. “So, what are you going to have us do for detention?”

“We can discuss it after class.”

“Alright, then.” Kibum lifted his chin and went back to his potion, waiting until everyone looked away from him. It wasn’t until Slughorn told them all to resume brewing their potions that they did, and even then, he still felt the weight of surveillance.

But it was only Minho, now.

He sighed, then reached for his quill and parchment and scrawled a quick note on it. He slid it over to Kibum.

You didn’t have to do that.

Of course I did. It was a ridiculous reason for detention. I wasn’t gonna make you go through that on your own. Minho rolled his eyes and tried not to smile, but it was clear that he was struggling a little with that. Kibum smiled to himself, and snatched the parchment back, drawing a small screaming mandrake that looked sort of like Slughorn before he slid it back to Minho’s side.

Minho may have snorted a little too loudly when he realized what it was, and they may have gotten a pointed glare from Slughorn, but Minho’s smile was worth any extra punishment Slughorn might decide to give them.