sicheng pulls his luggage from the conveyor belt and heads towards the exit, his head spinning from excitement. clad in a marigold sweater, black skinny jeans, and a warm beige wool coat, sicheng exits the airport and welcomes the crisp london air. this was nothing like china’s overbearing pollution, and on top of that, he loved being in england. he loved european food, he loved the view from the london eye, and he loved that england held his greatest joy in life: hogwarts.

he remembers when he got his letter to hogwarts. it was addressed to dong sicheng of the basement, 8 yorkshire lane, and it floated to him in the breeze right outside of his mailbox when he went to collect the mail. that was before his family decided to move back to zhejiang, before he met all of his close friends, before he became one of hufflepuff’s most beloved students. if sicheng learned anything from his time at hogwarts, it’s that it is possible to find genuine relationships.

the relationships that keeps one talking until 4am in the morning, the relationships where friends would cry together over the same problems, the relationships that kept one together when they felt lost and broken inside. the difference between going to hogwarts and going to any regular high school is the real connections that one could make within their houses. sicheng feels like his house is his family. even though his parents are caring and completely supportive of him, hogwarts is truly his home.

with a blink of an eye, sicheng finds himself outside of the airport, looking around the tufts of hair for a certain brunette and a blonde. they must be here, he just knows it.

“sicheng!” a voice calls from behind him, and he spins to see yerim and baekhyun waving excitedly at him. yerim is wearing a calm smile, her hair still dyed blonde from the last time he saw her. she’s dressed in a brand name t-shirt with a casual trench coat, looking fashionable as ever. baekhyun sports a wide smile as he walks with a bit more pep in his step, his leather jacket and skinny jeans clashing with his bright aura. 

it’s been a while since he’s seen the both of them— a whole three months— and it finally hits him that he’s back home where he belongs. these two have been there for him since the beginning; if harry potter had ron and hermione, then sicheng has yerim and baekhyun. though they are close, the three didn’t all belong to the same house. yerim belonged to slytherin, while baekhyun belonged to hufflepuff with sicheng, causing the three of them to find the library or a quiet corridor more of their common rooms than their assigned ones.

“i’ve missed you guys! how’ve you been?” sicheng asks as he excitedly hugs the both of them tightly, “i heard that there’s a new influx of asian students at hogwarts, yet again?”

baekhyun nods his head, “yeah, changmin says that apparently, about a third of first years are asian! that’s almost as much as your year.”

close to half of the students in sicheng’s year are asian, and it was because of the influx of asian immigrants in england during the first half of his first year, which is an insane amount, considering that most wizards that go through hogwarts were generally white and natively british. the asian community in hogwarts had always been quite small until sicheng’s year showed up, and then after that, the numbers just kept growing.

being in a predominantly white school, sicheng knew pretty much every single asian student that attended hogwarts. he knew a good number of the other students as well, but he generally stayed within the asian group. they just related to him a bit more, and it was easier asking jongin to go out for raw skate and pickled daikon than ben from his potions class. he loved it though; it was like having a really tight knit community within such a big school with hoards of students. one could never escape the drama of it all, but sicheng prefers it that way. what’s family without drama, anyways?

“i hope they’ll be cool enough to hang out with. i’ve been looking for a new beater for our quidditch team and so far, i’ve been having no luck. it’s been hard not being in england to see the talent myself, but jess and oliver told me that if they didn’t match their standards, they definitely wouldn’t match mine,” sicheng sighs as he grips onto his suitcase handle a bit tighter out of frustration.

hufflepuff’s second beater took his owl exams and graduated last year, so now hufflepuff’s in a rush to find a new one, and the search hasn’t been all that simple. the hufflepuff house has never been super competitive; don’t get them wrong, they love quidditch. they’d watch it all day if they could. but playing the sport? they couldn’t be bothered. no one was strong enough, no one wanted to put in the time it took to train for quidditch, no one wanted to bear the injuries. the team truly lucked out when they found sicheng’s seeking skills during his second year, otherwise they would’ve had trouble replacing that position, too.

sicheng was hufflepuff’s star seeker. out of the four houses, sicheng had the quickest eye and the sharpest broom maneuvering. the only thing he’s lacking in is competitive drive. every now and then, he feels bad that the games only last for ten minutes, so he either pretends he can’t find the golden snitch, or he just lets the other team take it from him. after all, the hufflepuffs are leading by a very large margin lately, which angers the other houses quite a bit.

sicheng, yerim, and baekhyun head towards baekhyun’s car and they head to Au Lait, a quaint cafe where the coffee is smooth and there are magical treats hidden behind the counter. they spend the rest of the day catching up on each other’s summers (sicheng mostly just tells yerim and baekhyun about how boring zhejiang is without all of his friends, and they tell sicheng what he’s missed out on while he was gone), when a pair of hands cover yerim’s eyes from behind. sicheng looks up to see daniel, yerim’s boyfriend, grinning boyishly as he removes his hands and slides into the seat next to her.

“hey guys, i hope i’m not intruding,” daniel unapologetically greets them as he leans over to give yerim a quick kiss on her cheek. sicheng and baekhyun look at each other, before they playfully roll their eyes at the couple. sicheng grins in response, “a fellow hufflepuff could never intrude! what are you doing here, anyways? aren’t you from the other side of town?”

“he’s here because his little sister wanted to play with mine,” yerim shakes her head, slightly embarrassed at how bold daniel gets in front of her friends, “anyways, i think i need more slytherin friends. everyone around me is a hufflepuff and i’m afraid i’m going to get infected by your casualness.”

“i told you to be friends with kino and suho, baby,” daniel replies in protest, naming off his only slytherin friends in the hopes of making her feel better.

sicheng freezes in his spot.

“wait, kino? are you talking about… kang kino?” sicheng asks daniel in a tone that’s a bit too loud, a bit too eager, “you’re… friends with him?”

daniel nods his head, “yes, he joined my group recently. maybe… towards the end of last semester? suho studied with him in the library and apparently they hit it off pretty well. after that, kino’s been with us ever since. why do you ask? do you know him?”

as baekhyun snickers quietly off to the side, sicheng can feel his cheeks warming up, “oh, no. i’ve just… ran into him a couple of times and he seemed really mysterious to me. i didn’t think… he would be friends with you guys. not in a bad way, of course. it’s just that… you, jungwoo, and jaebum are so… loud? that’s not the right word… extroverted? talkative?”

“hey, i’m not that loud,” daniel pouts before he crosses his arms in protest, “besides, we have arin! doesn’t that tell you something? we can attract slytherins, too. i have yerim as proof.”

as yerim hits his arm and lectures him about how she’s exclusively attracted to his ‘non-hufflepuff’ features, sicheng sits in deep contemplation. the truth is… sicheng has been having a crush on kino for a while now. kang kino, the quiet slytherin boy that usually kept to himself and preferred to slip through secret passages and quiet corridors, the shy one who stutters a bit every time sicheng manages to catch him in a quick conversation, the one who matches his height and has the most plush lips he has ever laid his eyes on.

sicheng remembers his first transfigurations class where he knew no one, and since he was a half-blood with a mother who would never admit that she was a witch until sicheng got his letter, he also knew nothing about spells or how to conjure up his magical abilities. he recalls having trouble turning a toothpick into a needle, when a small voice next to him whispers, “you’re flicking your wrist wrong.” he turns to see the owner of the voice when he sees kino.

of course, sicheng’s crush didn’t develop because of one quietly mumbled tip. sicheng remembers the moment as clear as day: it was a bright september day. he was in his third year at hogwarts, and he was newly recruited onto the quidditch team for his excellent display of stealth and eyesight after he helped collect rogue woodland sprites in herbology the year before. he was on his way to his first quidditch practice, feeling quite uncharacteristically nervous, when he catches a glimpse of a boy holding what seemed to be an injured owl in his hands. sicheng remembers hiding behind a stone column as he watches the boy frantically calling his mother, asking for spells that can heal wounded animals. as he tried his best to heal the owl, sicheng caught a glimpse of his face. 

it was kino, the boy from his first year transfigurations class.

after seeing his big heart, sicheng’s been smitten ever since. sure, plenty of other students had huge hearts and loved animals and did everything in their natures to take care of others, but there was something about kino’s subtleness that really spoke to him. it was like kino wanted to be kind when no one was watching. it was like he didn’t need to be praised for his good deeds— something sicheng didn’t see very often. to sicheng, kino was beautiful inside and out. kino was someone on another league.

so he spent the rest of his third year and pretty much all of his fourth year hoping to get small glimpses of kino, yearning for an opening for him to get a chance to talk to kino. he remembers talking to kino a total of four times, and all four times, kino gave a miniscule response before slipping away. he remembers when he was selling bracelets for charity and he asked kino if he would like to purchase one, kino stuttered a small excuse about not having money on him before he scurried away like a mouse running away from a mousetrap (sicheng still held onto one last bracelet in the hopes that kino wasn’t lying, but kino never came back).

sicheng remembers mustering up the courage to finally ask kino to the yule ball last year, and every chance he would try to talk to kino, someone would distract him with an invitation of their own, and then kino would be gone within a blink of an eye. sicheng didn’t go to the ball after that. 

he didn’t want the chance of seeing kino there with someone else. he’s not a gryffindor; he wasn’t brave enough to go out and swoop kino off of his feet. he wasn’t a ravenclaw; he could never hold up a ‘i-couldn’t-care-less’ facade and just forget about kino. and he definitely wasn’t a slytherin; he didn’t have enough ability to devise a full-proof plan that would make kino his. in the end, sicheng was just a loyal, patient, and extroverted hufflepuff.

after the four of them finished conversing, yerim left with daniel and sicheng went home with baekhyun. tomorrow, they would be heading back to hogwarts together. as baekhyun pulls into his driveway, he nudges sicheng’s shoulder with his finger, “so daniel’s group has kino now, too? maybe now you won’t have to sneak around to see him so much.”

sicheng groans as his hand hits his forehead, rubbing his temples roughly, “i wished you never saw me that one day. i was perfectly fine privately liking kino.”

“well, think about it sicheng,” baekhyun ponders as he unclips his seatbelt and leans back comfortably on his seat, “now maybe you can actually have a real conversation with him? or at least find out your common interests? you don’t want to just date this guy blindly, do you? you’re dong sicheng for goodness sake! one of the only asian hufflepuffs to be known not only to the entire asian community, but to the entirety of hogwarts! you’re our golden seeker. you could be in love with anyone, but you chose kino.”

“i’m not really… looking to date right now anyways,” sicheng rebutes weakly, unable to come up with a valid reason, other than the fact that kino’s the only person that has the ability to make him go weak in the knees. he recalls during one quidditch match, he could almost swear kino was looking directly at him from the stands, and if sicheng wasn’t so careful, he would’ve fallen off his broomstick and tumbled onto the sandy field below.

“just think about it, sicheng. no pressure, i just hate seeing you so distraught all the time,” baekhyun shrugs, before he grabs his jacket from the back seat and heads out of his car.

sicheng stays put in the passenger seat as he contemplates on baekhyun’s last few words. maybe baekhyun’s right. maybe sicheng should do something about this.

sicheng grabs his luggage from the trunk and enters baekhyun’s house, greeting his parents politely before he stashes his suitcase with all of his other hogwarts stuff in baekhyun’s basement. he’ll be off to hogwarts tomorrow and it’ll be a new year, a new start to learning, and most importantly, a new opportunity to try and talk to kang kino, slytherin’s heart of gold.