Their fourth year was smoother. Things settled down to the point that no one bothered Harin or Jungkook about their friendship anymore. They were always together anyway. What they were already doing great at, the twins were focused on improving until they were flawless. Harin was the best Chaser in the school, and Jungkook wasn’t losing out in athletic recognition either. It took a while for him to figure out what it was that he wanted to do, but he felt like being a professional Seeker could be it.

In their third year, they realized that Jungkook was a better rider than she was, so he helped her get better at it. After that though, she was off and flying like she was born to do it. Then it was all about them racing each other. The best matches, to everyone’s surprise, were the quidditch matches between Slytherin and Hufflepuff. The rivalry between Jungkook and Harin was intense enough to fire up the whole school for their matches -- even just the practice ones.

Towards the end of their third year, the Slytherins seemed to finally be opening up to her. It happened after they saw how personally Harin took any insult to her Slytherin friends. Plus, she brought them cupcakes. That she baked herself. And they were delicious. They slowly began to smile at her in the halls and talked to her whenever Jungkook or Haneul brought her over to their common rooms for whatever reason.

But it could have something to do with the time she found a bunch of Slytherins standing outside their common rooms because one of the older students had changed the password to something hateful they didn’t want to say. Slytherins may be mistrustful, and sometimes mean, but they had their own code to live by, a code that wasn’t disgusting, and they’d never break it. No matter how much bullying and isolation they had to face.

“What’s going on?” Harin asked when she found Yoongi and Jungkook amongst the crowd. Haneul was with her, likely about to lead her into their common rooms like any other day.

“Oh. Crap. I forgot. Did they change the password again? I didn’t check my messages.” Haneul grimaced, but then she noticed something flicker in Yoongi ’s eyes. “What is it?” She asked suspiciously.

“When they told me they changed the password, I had hoped they were lying.” Yoongi  gritted out.

“I don’t… I’d really rather not say it.” Jungkook tore his eyes away from their entrance. “It’s not… I really don’t want to say it.” There were others in the group that nodded solemnly. “There has to be another way in.”

“What is it?” Haneul asked again.

“Why? What’s wrong?”

“There are things I refuse to do. Slytherins may not follow your rules, but we have our own honor code.” Jungmin had huffed.

“I know that. Of course I know that. I grew up with a Slytherin. What’s going on?”

“It’s a bad word, the password is something disgusting, and we don’t want to say it.” Mingyu sighed.

“Like… a curse word?” Harin asked.

Yoongi said the password through gritted teeth. Everyone looked down, either ashamed that that word of bigotry was once more associated so openly with Slytherins, or because the word made them angry that it was associated with them. They may not be the most welcoming or open group, but it was due to the continued ostracization of Slytherins that historically made them so hateful in the past. These Slytherins were working so hard to work past it, and focus on becoming fully grown and skilled wizards in their own right. Something different from the shame of their house title.

The entrance opened, but Yoongi slammed it shut, refusing to enter.

“Oh.” Harin frowned. “Well then. Lucky for you, we have space enough in our common room. Let’s go. Come along now.” She smiled encouragingly at the group.

“What?”

“If it’s in your honor code not to support the use of such hateful language, no one at Hufflepuff will fault you. Hufflepuff isn’t as neat as the Slytherin rooms are, but they’re quite cozy.” Harin was already walking ahead of them, and by some odd force in nature, the group followed after her uncertainly.

A sixth year, Jung Hoseok, was in the common room, as was a bunch of the younger students. A common scene in the Hufflepuff common room. There was always an upperclassman ready and willing to help the younger ones, even just to be a comforting presence. Everyone looked at the extremely unexpected entrance of a mass of students in green instead of yellow.

“Is that… a table of snacks and candy?” She heard one of the Slytherin students ask another one.

“Harin?” Hoseok asked her as she was the one at the lead. “What’s going on?”

“Their passwords were changed to something terribly bigoted and they all refuse to say it or enter their common room under those circumstances. It would be wrong to force them to do so.”

Hoseok grinned fondly at her. “It would indeed be wrong. They have my respect, and I support the decision for a sleepover.”

“Thank you!” Harin beamed up at him. “Haneul, let’s find Namjoon and see if he or any of his friends can figure something out about that darn door.”

“You’re going to bring us here and then just leave us?” Yoongi asked, slightly nervous.

“No, of course not.” Harin grinned and opened the entryway once more. Haneul had her wand ready in hand beside her. They whispered a spell and it looked like nothing was happening until people looked closely at the twins’ eyes. Both of their natural dark brown eyes were now white and opal towards the center where the pupils were supposed to be.

“He’s not in the library.” Haneul said.

“He’s not in the infirmary.” Harin responded in kind.

“He’s not in the great hall.” Haneul hummed.

“He’s not in the Ravenclaw tower.” Harin sighed.

They went back and forth until they found him laying out by the lake, looking at the stars and humming to himself. Haneul found him first, so Harin ended her spell and used another spell to follow where Haneul was to send the message to Namjoon. He nearly jumped out of his skin, but accepted the message and was quickly grabbing his things to come to them.

When Haneul was back to normal, the twins turned back around to an awestruck and or confused. “What?”

“What was that?”

“A charm to speedily search a massive space. It’s great for when you drop something under the couch or bed.” Harin beamed. “It took Haneul and I a month to perfect it. It’s a little tiring on the eyes though so we can’t do it for long.”

“That’s amazing!”

“Thank you!”

“That’s so cool!” The younger students crowded around them, asking to be taught how to do it. Harin stepped forward to meet them and block them from getting at Haneul. Haneul, though truly kind at heart, wasn’t a fan of being crowded around.

That moment led to a major change in attitudes towards Slytherin, at least the many who refused to oblige to using that password. Namjoon and nearly all of the Ravenclaw house spent all night trying to figure out a way to bypass the password, but was unsuccessful. And then Gryffindor students were brought in and they tried to hex the door, and when that didn’t work, they started thinking along the lines of explosions. That was when Hoseok sheepishly brought out a small chest of items from under his bed.

“I have a couple things that might work.”

“What?”

“Potions is my best subject. When I was stressed, I kinda… started inventing some stuff. This isn’t the safest stuff, but I guess that would be helpful to making this work.” Hoseok sat, surrounded by awed and impressed Gryffindors (and pretty much everyone really) as he set aside various potion bottles, haphazardly labelled in his messy script. They set up an explosion, and everyone’s best pyrotechnicians came forward to lend their expertises for this moment of great (and highly dangerous) unity of forces.

And really, someone should’ve figured it was not going to end well.

Harin didn’t even have enough time to grab her wand when they realized the explosion was going to range wide enough to severely hurt them as well. She just used a huge force of magic to push everyone as far away from the explosion as she could.

Haneul and any of the faster wizards and witches put up a huge protection spell around Harin, the only one Harin couldn’t get away fast enough. Harin grabbed her wand as fast as she could, still in the protective bubble, and used a spell to cage the rest of the explosion against the entrance. When it finally subsided, they took down their spells to inspect the damage. The entrance was caved in and barely hanging on.

“What in heavens happened here?!” The teachers and headmaster all came rushing down the hall when they heard the beginning of the explosion. All of the students, no matter the houses, just broke out into a fit of giggles and laughter.

The Slytherin students still slept over in the Hufflepuff common rooms that night, and were forced (honestly, the badgers didn’t even have to try that hard to convince them) to make arts and crafts and eat snacks by the fire together. Harin had made a friendship bracelet, not too different from the one she made for herself and Haneul, for both Jungkook and Yoongi.

People were interested to see how the grumpy Yoongi would respond. They knew Jungkook would accept. It was unspoken knowledge that Jungkook’s code definitely had ‘make Harin happy by being a great and supportive friend’ somewhere at the top of the list.

“Look, I… I’m more of a monochromatic black and white style person.” He sighed, looking at the combination of yellow and green braided strings with dangling beads on them.

“Oh… You… You don’t have to wear it.” Harin’s face fell slightly.

It wasn’t even just Jungkook who glared at Yoongi with enough anger to melt his face off. The other Slytherins frowned at him too.

Yoongi sighed. “No, don’t be stupid. Of course I’ll wear it. But I expect the next one you make me to be black and white.” He patted her awkwardly on the back when she hugged him. “Stop being mushy.”

So their fourth year after that was so much better. The school was functioning a lot more like how a school ought to be, and the animosity was fading away significantly. It was just sad that Yoongi graduated and Namjoon and Hoseok were about to graduate as well with this being their last years. Taehyung and Jimin were always around them too. As a group, they formed a tight knit bunch. After a while, people realized that even though Harin was kind and would absolutely give you as much time of day as you asked for -- her friends were only from that small circle. They stopped begging for so much of her time and things quieted down around her. She was able to find more and more alone time to practice magic alone on her own.

Jungkook hadn’t even realized that that was what she was doing. He bumped into her outside of the Room of Requirements one night, and she was sweaty and tired.

“Oh hey!” She grinned when she realized it was him.

“Why are you so sweaty?” He asked. It looked like she had tried to wipe off most of her sweat, but her hair was still a mess.

“I’ve been practicing something new.”

“For quidditch?”

“Not quite.” She smiled enigmatically. “I hope to never actually need it, but it would be nice to be able to do.” She shrugged. “Don’t worry about it. I’m gonna go hose down now. I’m all gross.”

He followed her for a week and saw that about the same time every day, for about the same length of time, she was in the Room of Requirement, and always left a little sweaty and worn out. Finally, he made himself known to her.

“What exactly are you doing in there?” Jungkook startled her as she was entering the room.

“Practicing magic. Would you like to join?”

“I guess.”

“Dumbledore’s Army used to practice here.” Harin smiled, watching the room adjust around them.

“So what do you even need to practice? You’re a fourth year, but you and Haneul are the best duelists in the school. You guys can only practice against seventh years.”

“What I’m practicing is much harder to control. Ever since the Explosion last year, I’d wondered about what I could do.”

“When you used magic without your wand or spells?”

“Yeah. It’s a lot harder than using the wand. I can do wordless magic now, but sometimes it lacks a bit of control and finesse. Wandless magic is tough to direct. I’ve spent months working on forming the magic over my skin to use it. When it comes to big stuff, it’s easy for me. Probably due to my nature of being kind of headstrong and aggressive. I’ve actually been thinking of starting a new training to work on my control.”

“How so?”

The room presented them a table with three candles. She intended to work on lighting and putting out individual candles without error. She blew up a couple of them until she got the hang of the delicacy of it. She made some progress by the end of her little session.

“You’re incredible.”

“I’m stubborn is more like it.” Harin smiled.

“No. Stubborn is stubborn. You’re amazing. How do you even do that? Any of that?”

“I can start training you. You seem to be like me. The big stuff will probably be easier for you, and now that I’ve got the hang of it, why not?”

He, of course, agreed to practice with her, and eventually, Haneul followed them and joined in as well. She had all of the control between the three of them. Wordless magic was a breeze for her, and the delicate training with the candles took her only a couple tries to perfect. It was the bigger stuff, the more combative moves, that she struggled with. Instead of doing that, knowing that it would never be her strong suit, she continued studying spells and learning how to create her own that fit her better. Eventually they were all creating a new style that fit them best. Harin could concentrate an incredible amount of magic, like sparks, around her fists and she used them to create the same amount of damage as a wrecking ball. She never planned to use it, but it was fun being able to.

Jungkook created a far more aggressive style, though he was still struggling with wandless magic. He could handle wordless magic and he was quicker than they’d expected. He was sharper. He also devoted more and more time into memorizing spells and charms. His hexes were on par with Haneul’s by the end of the year.

He grew confident in his skills as a wizard. He was more open to learn in classes. He even raised his hand once to answer a question in class. Sure, he still wanted to be a professional Seeker, but now it wasn’t really his only option. He was smarter than he’d thought.

They all kept their new skills a secret, but it was always there in their arsenal.

That was the year Jungkook learned that he didn’t actually have to rely on Yoongi and Harin, or even Haneul, for protection. He was capable on his own, even if he wasn’t alone. Not with them.