Seungwan might be the superior student, but Joohyun still had one class where she knew she was better.

Defence Against the Dark Arts had always been her priority, from the moment she’d decided to become an Auror. She dedicated herself to memorizing every single jinx, hex and curse, as well as their counter-spells, and spent a significant amount of time studying the dark creatures and magic-users of the world and how best to protect oneself from each of them.

And she’d found the best place to practice her spells, as she suspected many students had found before her; a room that was as elusive as it was perfectly suited for her goals.

On this particular afternoon, she sat on a low bench not far from the training mats that lined the centre of the Room of Requirement, resting after a few hours of diligent spellcasting. Seungwan was still standing, practicing her form with several disarming and stunning spells.

“Your arm is too far off,” Joohyun called out to the slightly flushed girl, who straightened it at once before making her next attempt. “Not so rigid,” she added, and muffled a snort as Seungwan contorted and twisted to follow all of Joohyun’s instructions simultaneously.

She considered getting up to help her, but her aching arms convinced her otherwise. “You’ll get the hang of it,” she offered instead. “The first few times are the hardest, then it becomes instinct.”

Seungwan tried one more time, groaning as the bright green bolt went sailing off at a slight angle, then threw herself backwards, sprawling out on the mat.

“You’re doing well,” Joohyun eventually said, cutting the silence that seemed to be filled with Seungwan’s frustrated fuming. “All of these are just details. Even if you can’t hit a bullseye, you’ve still shown proficiency and technical prowess,” she said, enumerating the evaluation criteria that she’d long since memorized.

Seungwan blew a strand of hair off her forehead and it immediately fluttered back to its place over her eyes. “You do it better.”

“I practice more. Much more.”

Another moment of silence, this one a bit more tense. Joohyun wondered if Seungwan was going to apologize once again, or maybe suggest that she should also practice much more. Instead, she got up with a huff and stumbled her way to sit by Joohyun’s side.

“Sorry if I sounded a bit… ungrateful. I really am thankful for your help.”

“I know.”

Their hands rested on the bench, a few inches apart.

“Joohyun?”

“Yes?”

“Can I ask you something?”

She nodded silently, still looking ahead. Seungwan turned to study her, then faced ahead as well, fiddling with her wand.

“Can you… cast a Patronus?”

She nodded again. Seungwan turned back to her, equally apprehensive and excited. “Can I see it?”

Joohyun considered it, tapping her fingers on the bench. Casting a Patronus was a draining experience, requiring deep concentration. After the single-minded focus on one of her happiest memories, returning to reality could feel almost like deflating. Not to mention how sharing the shape of her Patronus with another person made her feel uncomfortably vulnerable, as if exposing a piece of herself that someone might just puzzle the meaning out of.

“Why do you want to see it?” she asked, instead of giving an answer. She kept her voice even, trying her best not to appear defensive.

Seungwan chewed on her bottom lip. Joohyun hadn’t brought it up yet, how she always did that. But she should at some point, try to stop her from splitting open the cracks on her lips again and again.

“I haven’t really managed it yet. Sometimes I muster up a little mist, but never anything solid enough to provide any protection.”

“It’s a good thing Dementors are a rare sight around these parts, then,” Joohyun joked lightly.

Seungwan kicked at the ground with furrowed brows, as though kicking herself. “It’s been on the NEWTs before.”

Joohyun knew it well, knew that the odds they’d be evaluated on it this year weren’t that low. But this was a difficult issue, not all that straightforward.

Not everyone could cast a Patronus. It required a certain degree of self-awareness, of self-acceptance. It required one to find and truly understand their happiest memories, to channel the strength of their happiness into their magic.

She could imagine how it would be difficult for someone like Seungwan, someone who still questioned her path in life, what she’d done right and wrong, what she truly wanted for herself.

But Seungwan was more than a good student, more than a hard worker. Joohyun had seen what she could do, how hard she tried to overcome her troubles, to balance her life and still provide support for her friends. If Seungwan couldn’t do something, well, she’d definitely try. She’d give it her best honest shot.

Joohyun wouldn’t be the one to step in her way. That was the opposite of what she wanted. And even if Seungwan’s Patronus didn’t improve, the simple exercise of centering herself, searching herself, could be of some benefit.

She brushed her hands against the front of her robe and got up with a grunt, Seungwan quickly following suit to accompany her to the mats. Without a word, she stood in position, wand poised carefully ahead of her.

Taking deep breaths, she receded into the depths of her memories. It would be easier with her eyes shut, but she wouldn’t have that luxury in the battlefield, so she wouldn’t use it here either. In her mind, faded images began to grow clearer. The sweet taste of candy in , the smile that sprung to her lips, the weight that lifted from her heart.

“Expecto Patronum!”

It had become clear and sharp as the point of a needle, every emotion of that moment converging into her very centre and imploding with a small painful pang. And then all she felt was awe, as a strand of silver light poured from her wand and slowly formed the shape of her Patronus.

A sleek fox settled its light paws on the ground, one by one, then turned its snout to Joohyun. For a moment, their gazes locked in wordless kinship, then it turned away to trot gracefully around the room, leaving a shimmering trail in its wake. It spun around Seungwan, who twisted and nearly lost her balance following the elegant curve drawn by its tail, then returned to Joohyun’s side, brushing against her leg affectionately before slowly disappearing into nothing.

She slumped against the sudden emptiness, taking a deep breath to fill the void, and straightened her back to push away the last of the aftermath.

“Wow,” Seungwan commented breathlessly, eyes wide in admiration. “It’s so beautiful.”

The compliment felt oddly personal, but Joohyun brushed it off and focused on the task ahead: doing her best to help Seungwan achieve the same result.

“Now you try it.”

Seungwan’s smile fell and she clutched her wand nervously. Slowly, she walked up to take Joohyun’s place, adjusting legs and arms to exactly the right angle. Joohyun watched critically, watchful for any mistake to point out, but Seungwan’s pose was perfect.

Wand raised, Seungwan drew in a quick breath, screwed her eyes shut as if in prayer, then waved her arm mechanically.

“Expecto Patronum!”

As she’d described, a light mist poured out to surround her, then disappeared as though struck by an invisible gust of wind. Seungwan opened her eyes, looking nothing short of dejected.

“It’s your focus,” Joohyun said simply, getting straight to the point.

“The memory?”

“Yes. Either it’s the wrong memory or you’re not concentrating on it enough.”

For a moment, Seungwan seemed close to tears. She blinked rapidly as Joohyun looked away, pretending not to notice.

“It’s the wrong memory. Or… I don’t know what the right memory even is.” She sat down on the mat, cross-legged, spinning her wand slowly in her hands. “I suppose you can’t tell me which memory you use.”

Joohyun followed suit, sitting in front of her. “It’s… private.”

Seungwan nodded, accepting it easily.

“I don’t know. It feels like there is no right memory. All the obvious things don’t work and I can’t find the not-obvious ones.”

Joohyun leaned, supporting herself on her arms as she thought. “It doesn’t have to be a big moment. Winning the House Cup or being named Prefect or something. It can just be… just a moment where everything felt right.”

Seungwan scrunched up her forehead in concentration. “Like doing well on a test when I thought it went terribly?”

Joohyun shook her head decisively. “Tests make you nervous,” she clarified, noticing Seungwan’s surprise at her immediate reaction. “Evaluations, academic things make you nervous. But you like magic.”

“I do?” Seungwan asked, seemingly more confused at Joohyun’s certainty than at the content of her words.

Joohyun hadn’t known it until she’d said it, but she knew it was true all the same. There was something about Seungwan, the way she was genuinely pleased when she learned a new spell or grasped a new concept. It was more than just the satisfaction of checking something off her list for the NEWTs, she genuinely loved learning and growing. And she loved magic.

“There were a couple of classes our Houses took together, before the NEWTs,” she began, unsure where she was going. Maybe if they could go back, before the pressure of tests and OWLs and everything. Back to just magic.

“Charms, Herbology and History of Magic,” Seungwan provided helpfully, smiling self-consciously at Joohyun.

“Right, right. I remember seeing you in Charms, it must have been our first year. We were learning the Levitation Charm and nobody in the class could manage it. We were still struggling with the basics back then, how to go beyond the words and the movement and actually channel the magic.”

They’d been so young, children in oversized robes gesturing helplessly and trying so hard to figure out what it was that the adults did so effortlessly. Joohyun remembered sitting there, next to Soojung and Hyojin and her other fellow Slytherins, flicking and swiping their wands and focusing with all their might on that stubborn feather in front of them.

And across the room was Seulgi, the person she always turned to for support, no matter how their Houses should separate them. She stared at her own feather so hard that her eyes almost went crooked and the sight made Joohyun crack a smile in spite of herself.

Next to Seulgi was Seungwan. Son Seungwan. Another pureblood, one who’d raised the gasps of most of the Great Hall as she’d been sorted into Hufflepuff, who’d walked to her own table as though oblivious to the attention she’d attracted, a bright smile on her flushed face.

It was the same everywhere she went, with everything she did. She was bright, happy, always smiling, always ready to help. She was the top of their class in a matter of weeks. There was no official tally, beyond the scores of each House, but everyone knew.

When Joohyun’s gaze her at that Charms lesson, she already knew what she’d see.

That feather, one in a row of entirely immobile feathers, shifted. Jittered, as though struck by a breath, a gust of laughter. Shook and stirred and spun, faster, preparing itself, and then lifted. Just an inch, just enough to separate from the shadow it cast on the desk. It levitated.

The teacher was already on her way to congratulate Seungwan, to hail her as an example, Seulgi was already clapping her on the back, happy to abandon her own efforts and simply celebrate.

Seungwan stared at her feather, slowly drifting back down, and she looked stunned. In awe. She smiled, her eyes almost glowing, as she watched it land. Her gaze followed the flow of magic, from the feather to her wand to her own hand. She smiled harder, so happy, just so happy.

By Joohyun’s side, Soojung muttered something and dropped her wand on the desk in defeat, slumping backwards. Joohyun still held her own wand tightly, in the correct position, but she didn’t try to focus, to say the words.

She looked at Seungwan, at her smile, and she felt angry. And she didn’t know why she felt angry. It only felt like the world was unfair, oh so unfair, and she’d just been taught this universal truth, and now she must sit there and clap and be fine with it.

“When you managed it for the first time, you smiled so hard. You seemed just happy to be doing magic, back then.” It felt hard to say the words at first, hard to shake off the way the old feelings dug their way into her bones at the memory. But she pushed through it, back to the present. “Maybe if everything is too much right now, you could focus on that. The beginnings. Your first spell, or the first time you did magic.”

Seungwan looked away, seemingly embarrassed by the memory. Did she remember that she’d been the first to manage casting it? Or did those kinds of details only stick to the minds of those watching?

“The happiness that magic brought me,” Seungwan said slowly, savouring the words, the concept. She got to her feet, wand in hand. “Not classes or exams, not coming first or getting an Outstanding. Just… magic. That feeling of it coursing through me, flowing into the world.”

Her speech drifted into nothing, her eyes grew unfocused as she drew her concentration inwards. She’d be picturing it, feeling it, like she’d been transported back to her childhood. Joohyun watched silently, followed the trace of the wand as it finally moved, the trace of her lips as they called out the words.

“Expecto Patronum!”

The hair-raising sensation at the back of her neck would have told her that the spell had been a success even if she hadn’t seen the silver light flow from Seungwan’s wand. It poured onto the ground, shapeless but solid, stable enough to withstand an attack.

A non-corporeal Patronus was still enough for the NEWTs. Seungwan must have known that, because she smiled at her shapeless protector in equal parts pride and relief. Then she turned to Joohyun with sparkling eyes, the same happiness that had been there almost seven years earlier.

“Do you think I’ll get a corporeal one if I practice enough? I’d like to know what it looks like.”

“I think it might not be the worth the effort. But yes,” Joohyun eventually added, smiling at Seungwan’s excited fist pump at the confirmation. “I’m glad it worked.”

Seungwan nodded fervently, clearly agreeing. A small nostalgic smile settled on her lips as she dwelled on those early memories.

“Everything was so different back then. All these things that took so long to learn, now we do them without even thinking.”

“Magic used to be a lot more magical, didn’t it?”

It started feeling like a tool after a while, or sometimes more like a chore than anything else. In the middle of all the cramming and stressing, there was less and less time to just sit and wonder.

Joohyun pictured how her younger self would have gasped at her fox Patronus, at her dabbling in nonverbal spells, at the myriad of aesthetic charms she’d picked up from Hyuna.

“The first time I lifted that feather, it felt like I was pulling up the whole world. Now I float library books every day and don’t even think about it.” Seungwan chuckled, swung her wand in lazy circles thoughtlessly. “Do you remember the first time you stepped into Hogwarts?”

They’d moved back to the benches, but instead of sitting, Joohyun lay down, eyes facing the ceiling. She murmured a few words and smiled as the stone and wood ahead of her became a dark backdrop against a million of little lights. It wasn’t the transparent ceiling of the Great Hall, just a modified light charm, but the sight soothed her all the same.

“It felt like a dream,” she said simply. She doubted she needed to elaborate. Seungwan would understand.

“I thought I’d never get used to all those stairs.”

“I’m still not a fan of the stairs, I have to be honest.”

They laughed, Seungwan lying down on the bench next Joohyun, also gazing up at the magical stars.

It felt like they could sit there forever. No concerns, no classes, no tomorrow. Just four walls and a few training mats and an enchanted ceiling.

“What was it like, the first time you did magic?” Joohyun asked, maybe just because she wanted to extend their conversation for a moment longer, make that bubble of safety last for a few minutes more.

“A narrowly-avoided embarrassment?” Seungwan offered, more question than statement.

“That makes sense,” Joohyun threw back, laughing as Seungwan half-heartedly swung her arm in her direction, trying to swat her but missing entirely.

“I must have been six or seven years old. It was the first time my parents allowed me to join one of their luncheons. You know how those are.” Joohyun nodded, although Seungwan probably couldn’t see it. “I was so happy and proud and I sat there next to my mother almost vibrating in my seat.”

“You weren’t nervous?”

“Terrified,” she admitted easily. “But back then it felt like all new things were equal parts scary and exciting. The feelings grew into one another and it was hard to tell which was which.”

Joohyun tried to picture Seungwan at that age, all arms and legs and probably already sporting that big, bright smile. Maybe with a few teeth missing, maybe not yet. But she wouldn’t smile that hard at a formal event, she’d be subdued and sober in her dress. Those missing teeth wouldn’t even show.

“Anyway, I was sitting there, tapping all the forks and knives and reciting in my head what each of them did, to make sure I wouldn’t forget. Fish fork, dinner fork, salad fork, seafood fork, and then back over, and then… one got caught on my sleeve.”

Joohyun gasped, imagining the situation. It was a bit silly, but the gravity in Seungwan’s tone made it impossible not to follow along just as seriously.

“It felt like everything was in slow motion. I watched the fork get dragged backwards and off the table. It started falling, and I just knew it was going to hit the ground and make the worst clatter and my parents would be horribly embarrassed and send me straight to my room.” Seungwan paused, took a deep breath. “I know, it sounds ridiculous. But it felt world-shattering at the time.”

“No, it absolutely was! Your first luncheon, ending in shame because of some accident? I would have been mortified.”

Seungwan twisted to study her, seeming suspicious. “Are you making fun of me?”

“No, I meant it.” Joohyun rolled her eyes self-deprecatingly. “Look, I get it. Pureblood family. We’re all about image and pointless outdated traditions.”

“Like seafood forks?”

“Like seafood forks,” she confirmed with a smile that Seungwan returned easily. She probably didn’t get many chances for pureblood chatter in Hufflepuff. Not that Joohyun much enjoyed the topic, but at least she could relate. “So, did it clatter to the floor and ruin the night?”

“Well, no. It stopped, just in time. Hovered there a bit, then dropped quietly. Instead of being the shame of the family, I was their pride. My first use of magic, right there in front of all the guests.”

“Nice job,” Joohyun offered teasingly.

“And you?”

“I’m not sure. I can’t really remember the very first time.” She shrugged against the bench, still watching the stars. They were beginning to fade, reminding her that it would be time to return to real life soon. “According to my mother, one day she walked in on me having one of my tea parties with my dollies, and the dollies were all sitting there and sipping their tea.”

“Oh, but animating dolls is such a good first use of magic. Much more impressive than levitating forks.”

“Who knows, maybe my first time was levitating the tea cup. Maybe I built up to the dollies.”

“No need to be modest, I know when I’ve been beaten.” Seungwan’s smile was easy, playful, her arm stretched out to the side as if offering a handshake.

“Let’s say I win for technique and you win for style.”

The last stars disappeared, and then the ceiling was just stone and wood again. Joohyun looked away reluctantly, tempted to simply cast the spell again and hide away for a bit longer, but time wouldn’t wait for them. Outside the quiet room, life went on.

She took Seungwan’s hand, shook it once in acknowledgment, then pulled her to her feet.

“Let’s go, we’ll be late for dinner if we don’t hurry,” she said. Seungwan brushed the wrinkles from her robe, ready to head off, but Joohyun stopped her. “I just have one question.”

Seungwan froze, confused by her suddenly serious tone.

“Was it the seafood fork?”

And then Seungwan actually smacked her arm. Not just the ineffectual pats that she usually managed, fighting her fear all the way, but a real smack that even stung a little. Joohyun laughed loudly as she watched the Hufflepuff begin to walk away with a smile pulling at the corner of her lips.

“Salad fork, then?”

The lack of response did nothing to dampen her amusement.