The wind blew harshly against Joohyun’s hair, sending it flying in all directions, a lock of it falling straight across her face no matter how much she shifted and shook her head to dislodge it. She tightened her white-knuckled grip on her broom but her sweaty palms still slipped along the handle with each jolt, so that she had no choice but to keep readjusting her hold.

Her eyes remained fixed on the horizon ahead, making sure not to drop to the ground. Increasing her speed, which was becoming a little difficult on the poor-quality school broom, she tensed her muscles and prepared for a barrel roll. She recalled Seulgi’s movements on all the Quidditch practices she’d watched and tried her best to emulate them. A slight tilt to the right, then throwing all of her weight to her left as her limbs loosened their grip slightly and swung around the broom’s handle.

All the breath seemed to fly out of her as she felt the world spin around its axis, the sky and the ground shifting to take each other’s place in a blur of blue and green and grey that seemed to hang in place for an eternity and for an instant, and then she was back upright, dizzy and shaky. And… still turning, she realized a moment later as the horizon spun yet again and she finally found herself coming to a stop upside down. Not the outcome she had hoped for, she thought, as gravity caught up with her and her legs lost their grip on the broom, dropping down heavily and leaving her hanging by her arms.

Weakened by the strain and still out of breath, it wasn’t long before Joohyun’s shoulders were aching in protest at every attempt to pull herself up. One hand slipped from the handle, fingers stiff and unhelpful, and the other followed quickly. And then Joohyun was falling.

The ground rose up to meet her at a dizzying speed, then yielded easily under her weight like a giant pool of gelatine, its harsh nature tamed by her Cushioning Charm. She lay on her back, arms spread at her sides, staring up at the sky and the small speck in its centre that she knew to be her broom, still hovering stubbornly where it had dropped her. All around her, the shockwaves of her impact sent ripples through the dirt and grass, growing weaker with each passing moment.

Another broom drifted into her field of view, this one much closer to the ground. Its occupant was grinning unabashedly, not even bothering to conceal her amusement. There was a slight flush to her cheeks from all the exercise, but she was being far too careful for Joohyun’s liking.

“Are you laughing at my misfortune?” Joohyun called out into the sky, a teasing edge to her voice.

“Am I?”

Seungwan’s reply was as dripping with innocence as her wide eyes, and neither of them were anywhere near convincing. Joohyun laughed at the sight and Seungwan quickly joined her, flying down a little lower.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Joohyun asked lazily, watching the Hufflepuff drift closer and closer to the ground.

“Uh, landing?”

“I don’t think so. You haven’t done anything remotely reckless yet.”

“Why would I?” Seungwan asked with genuine confusion, but she stopped her descent nevertheless.

“Because I asked?” Joohyun shrugged, still lying on her back. The cold moisture that covered the lawn was beginning to seep into her clothes, but she still wasn’t uncomfortable enough to reach for her wand and magic it away. “Because it’s fun. Because you can.”

Seungwan hovered uncertainly. Her brows dug deeper together in concentration, eyes running searchingly over Joohyun’s features, then she relented with a slight upturn of her lips. “What would be something reckless, then?”

Joohyun’s smile came easily. She finally pushed herself off of the damp grass, stretching her arms out behind her to steady her body as she gazed upwards. “Do a loop.”

“A loop?” Seungwan’s eyes grew a little wider. “As in, go upside down?”

“And then right-side up again, yes. Although I suppose you could stay upside down, if you really wanted to. Personally, I wouldn’t recommend it.” She finished her comment with a smirk, cocking her head in a silent challenge.

The Hufflepuff sat wordlessly, her broom twitching to one side and the other, impatient at the long wait. Finally, she nodded with such a look of determination that Joohyun would have been taken aback if it hadn’t come from a flushed, frightened girl even tinier than herself. Seungwan slowly moved away, clearing a path to pick up speed, then took one final deep breath and leaned forward on her broom.

She sped up, tensed her arms and pulled the end of the handle sharply towards the sky.

She failed even more spectacularly than Joohyun had, drawing a good laugh from the Slytherin as she slipped cleanly off the polished wood halfway down her backwards descent, leaving the flying object somewhere behind her and plummeting down unassisted. She landed on her stomach, face plunging into the undulating ground and coming up covered in streaks of mud which she didn’t quite manage to wipe off.

After Joohyun had finally stopped laughing and Seungwan had groaned away all her embarrassment, they called over their wandering brooms and returned them to their shed, but didn’t leave right away. Instead, they sat side by side on the bleachers, watching the clouds above them grow thicker and darker, taking over every inch of blue sky.

Seungwan hadn’t asked again why Joohyun had brought them here. Maybe because she’d accepted Joohyun’s wisdom, maybe because she’d given up on questioning the Slytherin’s motives. Maybe because she was still smiling, eyes still a little brighter, and like Joohyun, she had learned not to pry too deeply into the things that made her happy, lest they fall apart in her hands.

“I come here when I get too stuck in my head,” Joohyun spoke up, breaking the silence that had fallen over them. She toyed with the hilt of her wand, still held in her grip. “When everything feels like too much.” She could feel Seungwan’s gaze drop down to her face, but she kept her own eyes on the sky.

“Why here?” the girl asked softly.

“Well, you might have noticed that I’m not very good at flying.” From the corner of her eye, she swore she saw Seungwan nodding in agreement. “Don’t be in such a rush to deny it,” she called out accusingly, drawing a chortle from the Hufflepuff.

“You spent every summer with Seulgi, you’d think she’d give you some pointers,” Seungwan said playfully.

“Trust me, this is with pointers.”

Seungwan’s amusement only grew, her laughter clear and light, and Joohyun marvelled at it for a moment. It was impressive, she mused, how there was not an ounce of judgment, not an ounce of mockery to that laugh. How did Seungwan make it sound like that? Like it was just a joke they were sharing. Like there was nothing to defend, nothing to justify.

“Shut up,” she said nevertheless, shoving her shoulder against Seungwan even as she joined in her contagious laughter.

For a while, there was only that shared moment of happiness. A lightness that neither of them was much accustomed to feeling. Then Joohyun began again.

“Doing this,” she enunciated carefully, trying to hold on to that lightness, “and being terrible at it… It reminds me that you can’t be good at everything. And that there’s nothing wrong with that.”

She kept the smile on her face, kept her eyes on the horizon. By her side, Seungwan’s gaze was questioning, curious, and Joohyun willed her to understand. “And if I do fail, it isn’t the end of the world.” She nodded at the ground where they’d crashed, no sign of their presence aside from a few crumpled blades of glass. “There won’t always be a Cushioning Charm, sure, but I won’t end up in some… inescapable pit of failure either.”

She couldn’t help the dramatic lilt that took over her voice as she finished her sentence. It wasn’t really something that could be said in any other tone.

“Pit of Failure,” Seungwan repeated with a snort, and Joohyun’s smile grew a little firmer.

“Sounds like some ancient torture device,” she joined in easily.

“Existential torture, maybe.”

This time it was Joohyun who snorted. She bumped her shoulder into Seungwan once more, but there was barely any force to it. It was just a silent communication, an acknowledgement of her presence.

Joohyun had nothing more to say and Seungwan had grown quiet after her teasing comments, mulling over the Slytherin’s words as her teeth dug into her lower lip. It was an infuriating habit. Maybe one day Joohyun would point it out. But it did mean Seungwan was thinking about it, didn’t it? That she was considering the truth to Joohyun’s message.

Like the ripples of her Cushioning Charm, their carefree mood ebbed and faded in waves after that. The silence returned, a deep and sobering silence, and once more Seungwan’s gaze flickered to Joohyun’s profile uncertainly. Joohyun knew that, just like in the tower, Seungwan wanted to ask something. But she knew what she’d ask.

Seungwan would want to know why. Not just the flying, or the falling, or the speech, but everything. Seungwan would want to know why and Joohyun wouldn’t know how to answer, because she wasn’t sure herself.

So she pretended not to notice. She kept her eyes firmly on the last sliver of blue sky, watching it wither away to nothing, and trusted Seungwan’s uncertainty to keep the uncomfortable question at bay a little longer.

(…)

Seated on the first step of the large central staircase, Joohyun took one last glance at the empty Entrance Hall. It wouldn’t look like this again for quite a while, not until the next break. The vast space was too central to ever be vacant during the term.

She’d been sitting there alone for nearly an hour. Seungwan wouldn’t leave her studies until she must and the fourth-years were probably off somewhere making trouble, so it had been just Joohyun, enjoying the silence.

It was only when the bell rang, announcing the arrival of the Hogwarts Express, that Seungwan made her way up from the dungeons. She stood at the corner of the hall where she’d emerged and exchanged an unsure look with Joohyun. Her hands came up to fiddle with her ink-stained sleeves, which she eventually cleaned with an absent-minded flick of her wand, but she came no closer to the staircase where Joohyun still sat.

“Why are you standing there?” the Slytherin finally resorted to asking, in a tone of calculated boredom.

Seungwan’s eyes swept the hall and she blinked nervously before responding. “I’m… waiting for everyone. They should be here soon,” she added shyly.

“Yes, I deduced as much. I meant why are you all the way over there?”

“Oh!” Seungwan exclaimed with genuine surprise. She seemed even odder than usual today, much more like her past timid self. “I just thought, everyone will be back, and you might not want to be…”

“To be seen with you?” Joohyun concluded for her, once she’d finally understood what the Hufflepuff had tried to say before trailing off into nothing. It could possibly be the opposite, that Seungwan was the one that wouldn’t want to be associated with her once her actual friends returned, but something about the way she looked back down at her sleeves with an uncertain half-frown told Joohyun it wasn’t likely. “Yes, because it would surely be social suicide to publicly interact with the most popular girl in my year.”

“I’m- I’m not-“ Seungwan rushed to deny, cheeks growing rosy. “I just thought…” she repeated, and once more let the sentence linger unfinished.

Joohyun got up and quickly brushed the dust off of her robe before she walked down the single step and over to Seungwan’s corner. “You should consider thinking a little less,” she said simply, poking the side of Seungwan’s head.

Anything else the Hufflepuff might have had to say was cut short as the sound of hooves overtook them, seconds before the first carriages full of students arrived outside the main doors. Dozens of young men and women in their school’s dark robes made their way inside the castle, their luggage following them obediently. Joohyun began to scan the crowd at once, a task that was made no easier by her diminutive height.

Finally, a pair of familiar faces broke through the confusion, both lit up with bright smiles of recognition. Yerim raced ahead, leaving Seulgi to handle their bags, and nearly crashed against Joohyun’s frame in a clumsy hug.

“How was your break?” she called out excitedly before she had even pulled away. Joohyun patted her back, gently trying to disentangle herself. “Mine was great! We had the wedding, and also Sooyoung and I owled each other the whole-“ Yerim abruptly paused, finally noticing Seungwan’s presence by Joohyun’s side. “...time,” she concluded slowly.

“Hey,” Seungwan greeted her tentatively, hand raised in an awkward wave.

Yerim blinked at the Hufflepuff. Without looking away, she reached out an arm to poke her sister in the side. “Seulgi?”

“Yeah, I see it too,” Seulgi said cautiously. Her arms were wrapped around her broom case and she seemed to cling to it for comfort amidst the sudden strangeness. Joohyun rolled her eyes at the exaggerated reaction.

“What’s going on here?” Yerim gestured at the two girls while Seulgi only continued to stare. “Why are you two not your usual safety distance apart?”

“We take classes together, there is no safety distance,” Joohyun countered. Yerim raised a sceptical brow and Joohyun resisted the urge to roll her eyes yet again. Instead, she turned to Seulgi. “And why are you surprised? I talked about this in my letters!”

“I thought you were being sarcastic,” Seulgi admitted with an apologetic grimace. During all this, Seungwan remained silent, but Joohyun could see her eyes swivel between all three girls as each spoke.

“Excuse me, hello,” Yerim cut in once more, waving her arms like anyone had forgotten her presence. “How did this happen? You hate her!”

“First of all, I don’t hate her.”

Seulgi hummed dubiously while Yerim scoffed openly. Joohyun could swear even Seungwan had tilted her head uncertainly.

“Second,” Joohyun continued a little louder, “as the only human beings in the castle who were neither teachers nor children…” She paused to nod towards Yerim, who grumbled at the insinuation. “We… hung out together. And grew closer.”

To be honest, she wasn’t sure what more to say. The transformation from open animosity to reluctant interaction to an actual non-temporary, mostly positive relationship, was hard for even herself to understand. It was like one day they’d been irrevocably at odds and then they just… weren’t.

“And now you’re… friends?” Seulgi attempted amidst the awkward silence that followed Joohyun’s explanation. She looked at Seungwan, who hadn’t said a word yet.

“Y-yes?” the Hufflepuff replied slowly. She glanced at Joohyun for confirmation, but the Slytherin only offered a non-committal shrug. Were they friends? She’d never reached a final conclusion on that and she didn’t particularly feel like dissecting it at that moment, with the Kang sisters looking at her like she’d been brainwashed in the few weeks they’d been away.

“And you’re okay with this?” Yerim asked Seungwan, who seemed caught by surprise.

“I- uh, yes?”

Joohyun began to feel like she should be offended.

“Did she cast the Imperius Curse on you?” Yes, Joohyun should definitely be offended. “You’re legally obligated to tell me if she did.” Now she was just worried for Yerim’s grade in Defence Against the Dark Arts.

“No, I’m not,” Seungwan pointed out, looking extremely confused.

“She really isn’t. And neither would I be, in this scenario where a student cast an Unforgivable Curse inside Hogwarts and apparently nobody noticed,” Joohyun cut in. Yerim seemed to be coming up with some other equally ludicrous scenario, so Joohyun quickly carried on. “Look, there is no mystery here, so can we drop it? Don’t you want to go unpack?”

“The only thing I want to unpack is what’s going on with-“

“Okay, that’s enough,” Seulgi finally intervened, after Joohyun’s exasperated glance that was definitely not a silent plea. “Go leave your bags in your room, you can interrogate Joohyun at dinner.” She winked at her sister, ignoring Joohyun’s look of betrayal.

Yerim finally relented and walked off down the stairs to the dungeon, while Seungwan made her goodbyes and went to greet the rest of her friends. Once it was just the two of them, Seulgi turned to Joohyun with a smug grin.

“I know what happened,” she said teasingly and, well, that made one of them because Joohyun was still struggling to disentangle just that. “You realized she wasn’t what you thought she was and that you’ve been misjudging her all this time. Like I told you,” she added pointedly.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Joohyun immediately replied, the action more an instinct than anything. “I didn’t misjudge her. I never thought about her enough to make a judgment in the first place.”

“You’re a terrible liar.”

“No, I’m not.”

“Then you’re just not making much of an effort. Because you know I’m right.”

“Whatever,” she sighed out, pretending not to see Seulgi’s victorious smile. She thought back to that night in the kitchen, to everything that Seungwan had said. “This entire break, she’s done nothing but work. She’s always so stressed out and on edge, I doubt she even sleeps. How does everyone not see it?”

“You didn’t see it either.” Seulgi shrugged, but Joohyun could see the worry lining her limbs. “I’m glad you did what I asked, checked up on her.” It was only then that Joohyun remembered the request in Seulgi’s letter and the memory struck her with a flash of guilt. She wouldn’t have checked on Seungwan at all, if the girl hadn’t walked into the kitchen that night.

“To be honest, I’m kind of surprised she let you help her. She won’t ever talk about it, let anyone in.” Seulgi’s voice sounded a little hollow, a little tight. “She must be worse than I thought. No offense, it’s just that you’re the last person I’d expect her to…” Joohyun nodded, well aware of what Seulgi meant.

“Joohyun!” a distinctly loud voice called out a second before its owner escaped the slowly dwindling crowd. It was Hyuna, followed closely by Sunmi. “You survived!” she added dramatically, bounding towards her.

Taking it as her cue to leave, Seulgi nodded towards the two girls then tapped Joohyun’s shoulder in goodbye, walking off towards the Hufflepuff rooms. Joohyun stayed behind to talk with her friends, but her mind was on Seulgi’s words.

She didn’t know why Seungwan had let her in like that, if she really had just hit rock bottom, been too low to guard herself. But whatever the reason, she knew that she couldn’t just leave it up to Seulgi to help the girl. Whether or not she liked it, whether or not she’d been aware of how much she was signing herself up for, she’d done it. And now she wouldn’t back down.

(…)

Nobody in the Slytherin common room batted an eyelid when a small paper plane slid through the gap under the door and fluttered up to land on Joohyun’s desk. All Hogwarts students found, sooner or later, that in order for one to communicate across the endless floors and towers that made up the castle, a little creative thinking would be necessary. A paper plane, charmed to fly its way to the intended recipient, was the simplest and most common solution.

Joohyun opened the message curiously, unsure of who would be contacting her. Sunmi and Seulgi were off at Quidditch practice, Hyuna was with her boyfriend, and all her other friends were Slytherins and could just come to the common room to talk to her in person.

“I’m at the library working on the Chiromancy homework. I thought we could do it together, if you want.”

Joohyun didn’t need to read the signature to know who’d written the message. After weeks of looking at Seungwan’s hastily scribbled notes, she would recognize her handwriting anywhere.

That didn’t mean it wasn’t unexpected, of course. Since the term had started, Joohyun had barely seen Seungwan outside of class and meals. She’d assumed the girl was simply overwhelmed by the sudden workload and, quite busy herself, Joohyun had decided to wait for Seungwan to organize herself and reach out rather than push for anything that might stress her further.

Still, more than the fact that they’d had no contact since the end of winter break, what was really surprising was the note itself, Joohyun considered distractedly as she packed away her books and shouldered her bag, ready to head to the library.

When she sat down by Seungwan’s side, the Hufflepuff quickly drew her head up to offer her a shy smile, shifting the Divination book to rest between them. Instead of pulling out her parchment, Joohyun dragged the somewhat crumpled airplane from her bag and flattened it on the table. Seungwan looked at it with furrowed brows.

“Why did you send me a note?” Joohyun eventually asked, faced with Seungwan’s confusion, then tried again as the question did nothing to clear it. “I saw you at lunch. And on the three classes that we had together. You could have just walked up and said something.”

“Oh.” Seungwan fiddled with the quill she was holding and Joohyun noticed that the tips of her fingers were already stained by ink, as they always seemed to become during their study sessions. “Well, you were with your friends. I didn’t want to bother or… intrude.”

“Why would you do either of those things?” Seungwan shrugged guiltily but didn’t answer Joohyun’s question. Was this why she hadn’t said anything for a week? Had Joohyun been afraid of pushing while, all along, Seungwan was afraid of overstepping? She sighed, willing herself away from the usual impatience that arose at Seungwan’s insecurity. “What did I tell you at the end of break?”

Seungwan looked off, as if trying to remember. “That I should think less?”

“That’s still good advice, but I meant the other bit.” Seungwan studied her blankly and she rolled her eyes. “I’m not embarrassed of you,” she clarified with purposely slow words. “You’re not my shameful secret. If you approach me in public, I’ll even acknowledge your existence.”

Seungwan’s eyes drew down to the open pages of the book, following the informative lines that had been drawn in different colours over the illustration of an open palm. One line for life, one line for love, one line for… Honestly, Joohyun wasn’t sure what else. She hadn’t studied this part yet.

“During the break, it was just us. But now your friends are here. I’ll understand if you don’t want to study with me anymore. I know you do your Potions work with Soojung and you share classes with Sunmi and Hyuna.”

“Please,” Joohyun scoffed openly. “Those two are the worst to study with. Half the time, they get distracted talking about Quidditch manoeuvres, and the other half isn’t much better. At least when it’s Quidditch I can just tune them out.”

Seungwan’s gaze was still on the book. Fate, Joohyun suddenly remembered. That was another line of the palm.

She was going to make her say it, wasn’t she? Make her spell it all out. Joohyun hated how Seungwan always made her spell it out. It made her feel open, vulnerable. It was easier with her friends, for whom a half-hearted insult and an elbow to the ribs was considered a show of affection.

“I’m actually glad you suggested this,” she said lightly, trying to channel all of her frustration into their chiromancy homework. “I was dreading doing it alone. I’m hopeless at palm reading.”

Seungwan’s face finally lit up. “Oh, great! Well, not great,” she added, backtracking apologetically. “But I can help you! We’ll work on it together.”

“Great,” Joohyun echoed. She leaned down to get her things out of her bag, then quickly put quill to parchment as Seungwan began to explain the basics of chiromancy.

On her walk back to the Slytherin common room after dinner, something small and light bumped against the back of her head before wobbling its way to her front and gratefully landing on her outstretched palms. It was another paper plane, its nose slightly bent from the collision.

“Do you want to sit together in Divination class tomorrow?”

She crumpled the note into a ball, smiling at the ridiculous situation. She felt like a fourth-year, getting an invitation to the school ball from a suitor too nervous to ask her in person. All that was missing were the two small boxes under the question; one for yes, one for no. Joohyun had used to crumple those notes as well.

It wasn’t quite what she’d asked Seungwan for, but it was a start.