Detention was finally over. The past week had dragged by like treacle, each day seeming to last a month as the remainder of Joohyun’s willpower dwindled. The mornings were for classes, the afternoons to give Jennie her final quizzes and tips. Late into the night, she’d do her own work, the lines of her essays nearly blurring together as her eyes grew heavy.

About halfway through the week, she got the expected letter from her parents. The usual pleasantries, the money for the rest of the term in a small pouch, no word of when - if - they’d come to visit again. Joohyun pocketed everything with a sigh, glad that at least she was too busy to dwell on it.

Or maybe she’d just exhausted all her emotions on the subject already, between her anger at the world and the tears that had soaked the back of Seulgi’s robe. Either way, it left her with no more energy to spend on the letter, so she shoved it to the back of her mind and focused on staying awake in class.

On Thursday, she gave Jennie her very last tutoring session, and she couldn’t say which of the two of them was more relieved at the conclusion. It remained unsaid, because there was no way to say it nicely, but they would both be glad to spend at least one day without seeing each other’s face, or at least not at the library.

On Friday, she spent the morning in classes and the afternoon finishing up her work for the week. It was a terrible effort, one which she only managed through great discipline, but she knew it was worth it because the weekend would be all hers. No work, no studying, no detention, just a full 48 hours of absolutely no productive activity.

Her plans for Saturday felt almost like a mirage, too wonderful to be true. Sleeping in for as long as she wanted, grabbing a quick meal in the kitchens when she eventually woke up, dividing her afternoon between napping and taking a nice walk outside. Maybe combining the two and napping outside, if the sun made an appearance.

Mirage indeed. She was out of bed by 9 am, scarfing down a breakfast she barely tasted at half past, and standing breathless by the Quidditch changing rooms at a quarter to 10.

The door cracked open, Seulgi’s heading peeking through, then Joohyun was quickly pulled inside.

“You’re finally here! I was beginning to worry you wouldn’t come!”

“Wait, that was an option?”

Seulgi nearly pouted at the quip, offended even at the possibility of Joohyun not being there.

“You’ve been so busy, you already missed my last two games. And this one’s important, we need to win it to keep our lead, or Gryffindor will pull ahead.”

“And having me in the stands will give you that unmatched advantage?” she offered soullessly. Seulgi really was pouting now. “Alright, alright, I was only joking. Of course I’m here.”

Joohyun patted the high-strung girl on the shoulder, hoping to calm her down at least a bit. The team had been there probably since the early dawn, running through a few drills and reviewing their strategy, and Joohyun could see how the nerves had been mounting.

With some effort, Seulgi managed to negotiate a 15-minute break from Sunmi, and she sat with Joohyun while the other team members stepped outside for some fresh air or threw themselves on benches to rest up before the game.

“Hey, did you stop by the library this morning?”

Joohyun scoffed. “No, I didn’t happen to go to the library on my first free day in over a month. I also didn’t sign up for extra detention or request to be chained up in the dungeons for a few hours, curiously enough.”

“Right.” Seulgi laughed weakly, studying her broom. “And, uh, you didn’t see Seungwan at breakfast, did you?”

“The Hufflepuff table is all the way across the Great Hall, it isn’t the first place my eyes would land.”

“But if they did.”

Joohyun rolled her eyes, looking off as she answered. “No, I didn’t see Seungwan.”

Seulgi rolled the broom between her hands silently, looking more and more like she needed a favour that Joohyun wouldn’t be very happy to do.

“It’s just, Seungwan wasn’t at the dorm or at breakfast when I woke up. Sunmi would kill me if I was late, so I couldn’t look around for her, but I figured she was just getting some work done early. But she still hasn’t shown up...”

“Maybe she can’t make it,” Joohyun offered, already a bit defensive.

“No, she said she’d be here. She doesn’t usually miss the games, even if she’s busy.”

“Yes, she does it all.” Joohyun couldn’t help the hint of sarcasm that coloured her words.

“I’m glad she comes to the games. It’s a chance for her to spend a few hours away from work. She isn’t very good at taking time for herself, so even if she isn’t doing her favourite thing in the world, it’s still good that she’s taking a break.”

This time, Joohyun said nothing. She could tell that Seulgi was worried, and her own comments, more likely to be bitter quips than anything else, wouldn’t be of much help.

“Maybe she’s just distracted and didn’t notice how late it is,” Seulgi eventually carried on. “But she’s been burying herself in her work lately, even more than usual, and if this is intentional, then… Well, it isn’t a good sign.”

“Seulgi...”

The girl turned to her, eyes shining earnestly. “I know, I know, but I promise this isn’t some plot or plan or… I’m just worried about her. Can’t you just...” She trailed off, well aware of what Joohyun would think of her request. “Just check on her? I won’t ask you to run around the castle, but a quick peek in the library? And check the dorm again, just in case. Everyone’s left by now, maybe she’s gone back there.”

“Surely there’s someone else you can ask.”

Seulgi reached out a hand to sweep the room around her, pointing out how everyone in there would be competing in less than half an hour and evidently couldn’t go anywhere now.

“Someone else I can ask?” Joohyun tried again.

“You know Seungwan, she wouldn’t want people to worry. She’s good at making sure they don’t, too. I know you can see through it, you’d know how she really is.”

Joohyun sighed, very deeply. It was one thing to sacrifice her entire morning, hours and hours of uninterrupted sleep, to come attend her friend’s game. But this? Wasn’t this a bit too cruel of the world? Didn’t she deserve a single day of peace?

“I’ll see what I can do,” she relented unhappily, groaning as Seulgi attached herself to her in a grateful hug. Would people stop hugging her without warning? “But only the library and the dorm. And only a quick peek.”

“Alright, that’s enough resting!” Sunmi’s authoritative voice cut off whatever response Seulgi might have had, beyond the smile she still managed to send Joohyun’s way. “We’ve still got just enough time to review the game plan, so gather around.”

Happy to escape before Seulgi could rope her into anything else, Joohyun left with a silent wave at the Hufflepuff team, winking at a frazzled Sunmi. With any luck, she’d be back before the game began. If she were truly lucky, she wouldn’t even find Seungwan.

(…)

The library had been nearly empty, with most students already at the Quidditch Pitch waiting for the game to start, or out on the lawn enjoying the dry weather. As Joohyun tapped out the password to the Hufflepuff common room, she hoped it would be equally empty and she’d be free to return with a clean conscience.

She scanned the room quickly, then headed towards the dorms. Just a short glance and she’d be done.

Before she even opened the door to the seventh-year dorm room, the smell of baking brownies filled her senses, warm and delicious. It tugged her further on, towards the storage closet that some thoughtful Hufflepuff generations back had decided to outfit with an oven and some magical cooking utensils, and which clearly got a lot of use despite being a little cramped.

It almost made her want to laugh. So the reason for Seungwan’s delay, for all of Seulgi’s concern, wasn’t any studying or work after all. Seungwan had just lost track of time while baking. The situation should have frustrated her, annoyed her even, but somehow, she was just amused.

“Really? Baking again?” she quipped without malice as she pulled the door open. In the centre of the room, Seungwan nearly jumped in surprise, startling Joohyun in turn.

She wasn’t baking. In fact, despite the fact that the smell of her signature brownies had only grown stronger as Joohyun came closer, there was no sight of them anywhere. In front of Seungwan was instead a cauldron, filled with a potion that shone with a multitude of colours under the uneven lighting.

Joohyun couldn’t think of any potion that smelled of baked goods, or at least none with that colouring. But she did know of one that could potentially smell like that, to the right person.

Seungwan’s face as it rose to meet Joohyun wasn’t the mask of guilt, or even fear, that she’d expect from someone caught brewing an illegal potion. Instead, her eyes were indifferent, almost glazed over, and every line in her face seemed marked with exhaustion.

Seungwan blinked once, twice, and finally her attention focused on the student in front of her. Her lips tilted up in a smile.

“I did it,” she said simply, a hint of pride in her voice. “I talked to Sooyoung and she explained it to me and look! Amortentia! It looks right and it smells right and- I really think I understand now.”

“You’re a Head Girl,” Joohyun pointed out, her tone gentle despite herself. Seungwan looked a little too out of it, one wrong word away from losing her grip, and Joohyun only wished she knew how to talk her back to reality. “Should you really be making Amortentia?”

“Oh, it was just because… Well, it’s the only way to really understand the nuance, isn’t it? Reading can only get you so far.” Seungwan shrugged, slowing her stirring by degrees and finally stopping, apparently satisfied. “And I’ll throw it out once I’m done, anyway.”

“Will that be anytime soon? Because you’re going to be late.”

“To?” Seungwan paused, truly puzzled, then her eyes widened. “Seulgi! The game! It’s- Oh, it’s late!”

The film of exhaustion that had clouded her judgment seemed to finally lift, chased away by the sudden panic, and she fully understood the situation. Her gaze settled on Joohyun and as she finally recognized her, the panic only grew.

She was a mess. Joohyun doubted she’d slept at all that night, given how carefully Amortentia must be monitored and stirred for the last day of brewing.

“You came to get me for the game,” Seungwan narrated to herself as she caught up. “I’m late and Seulgi was worried and made you come get me. And now you’re late, because of me-”

“I didn’t know,” Joohyun began slowly, cutting off the speech that was quickly growing into rambling, “that Amortentia would smell like brownies.” She smiled slightly, eyes on the potion rather than the girl.

She hated herself for it, a little bit, because she now knew without the shadow of a doubt that she’d indeed be late for the game, and her painfully early awakening had been for nothing. But she still said it.

She didn’t feel like she had a choice, really. Seungwan seemed half-awake, half on the edge of a nervous breakdown, so far beyond exhausted that she didn’t even remember that they’d moved beyond Joohyun being angry at her. That now she was supposed to be angry at Joohyun as well. But instead, she cowered behind a potion that could get her expelled from Hogwarts.

The words took a while to sink in. Seungwan blinked, her tired mind slowly processing each of them, and finally all of them together, as a sentence. Then she returned the smile, a bit confused.

“Oh, don’t you know your Amortentia scents? I thought everybody did, we had that class last year...”

Yes, the class where Professor Youngbae had brought out the forbidden potion and shown it off with poorly-concealed self-satisfaction, and they’d done nothing for the entire duration of the lesson but gasp excitedly at the shining liquid and come forward, one at a time, to inhale deeply and giggle at the smells they discovered. Then everybody had gathered in groups, gossiping and debating what each student could have smelled. An utter waste of time.

“My nose was stuffed,” Joohyun admitted grudgingly. “It always is around the end of the first term.”

“Well, come on, then. Come smell it! If you want, of course.”

Joohyun stepped forward, mostly driven by curiosity at this point. She leaned closer, but not close enough for the spiralling steam to cloud her senses, and breathed in.

The scents seemed to layer over each other, all so different from one another but somehow combining seamlessly, each flowing into the other. If she focused, she could bring one to the forefront of her mind and let it fill her nostrils, the sensation so vivid that she could close her eyes and picture it, right there in front of her.

The first, and easiest to identify, was the one she’d felt by the door. Brownies, light and airy, the smell of dark chocolate thick enough to taste, and then a hint of walnuts, even the smell of warm metal as the pan heated in the oven.

She made an effort to let it float to the back of her mind and focused on the second, a lighter scent. Flowers, but not any flowers. The fresh and clean scent of lavender, not quite the real thing but the imitation that she treasured above all. The lavender-scented fabric softener that Seulgi always brought with her after visiting her parents.

Joohyun smiled at the realization, not surprised at all once she’d identified it. Her clothes were magically washed, of course, just like every other student at Hogwarts, but she’d found a way to add the fabric softener to the process and, for a few weeks, the small bottle that she treasured lent a wonderful, flowery scent to her clothes that seemed to soothe her wherever she went.

She kept her eyes closed as she moved to the final scent, the most subtle of them all. For a while, she only inhaled deeply, frowning as she tried to place it. It was familiar, surely. She’d lit up with recognition at the very first whiff. But still, the exact memory escaped her.

It was… the smell of ancient wood, of thick old curtains. The smell of dust, hidden behind flowers and varnishes and a dozen other pleasanter scents. The smell of vast, wide rooms, of endless rooms, too many rooms to keep clean and settled and in shape, not without a legion of maids.

Joohyun breathed in, again and again and again, breathed in the musty scent, filled her lungs with it, chased for its source, forgetting in that moment that it was only the potion.

“Joohyun,” a voice cut through the spell, and her eyes flew open in surprise. She saw her hands, settled on the edge of the cauldron, and found herself much closer to the potion than she’d been before.

It was Seungwan calling her, her voice oddly concerned. Had she been worried that Joohyun would plunge in the Amortentia, possibly get her in endless trouble?

“You’re crying,” she carried on, and Joohyun laughed because that didn’t make any sense.

But was tight as she laughed, her eyes warm, and as she stood facing Seungwan she felt the wet trails that her tears had left running down her cheeks.

And she knew what she’d been smelling.

Her hands flew up to wipe the tears as she backed away, as far away as she could from the scents that still filled her head. Her vision was blurred, but she saw Seungwan come closer, and so she backed away faster, away towards the door.

“No, I’m not,” she croaked unconvincingly, throwing out another watery chuckle.

“Joohyun...”

“No, it’s… We have to go to the game. We’re late.”

“Joohyun, wait!”

She fumbled against the doorknob, still facing Seungwan and the cauldron, as if afraid of what they might do if she turned her back on them.

“I just have to do a- I just remembered I have a thing. You go on ahead.”

Seungwan said something else, probably calling her name yet again, but Joohyun didn’t register it as she walked off down the corridor, nearly at a run, and tumbled her way out of the Hufflepuff room.

The tears still fell from her eyes, no matter how much she tried to push them back, to brush them off, and she knew that she couldn’t go back to the game. She couldn’t see anyone, not now, and especially not Seulgi.

At the entrance of the castle, she gazed once towards the lawn outside, then turned back to the stairs and began to climb.

(…)

Joohyun's tears had dried on the climb up the Northern Tower. She sat, back resting against the wall and knees hugged to her chest, and gazed blindly at the wide view that spread in every direction.

The Quidditch Pitch was a small spot in the distance, full of colour and movement as the game took place. Joohyun wondered if Seulgi's team was winning.

It wasn't long before she heard the sound of heavy steps ascending the endless stairs of the tower. She'd known that Seungwan would look for her, wouldn't just walk away after what had happened, but she'd hoped that the girl wouldn't remember to look up here.

Because if she couldn't find her, if she gave up and walked away, then maybe things could stay the way they were. Maybe they could even pretend that nothing had ever happened.

But the steps drew closer and now Joohyun could hear Seungwan's laboured breathing as she dragged herself up the last few flights, and Seulgi was right.

She cared.

Despite everything Joohyun had put her through, she cared. And somehow, that was enough to break her resolve.

Seungwan entered the small balcony and sat down by her side, saying nothing. For a while, they remained silent, Joohyun's chin still resting on her knees, Seungwan facing the grounds below them rather than seeking out eye contact.

"How are you feeling?" she finally asked in a quiet voice.

"Fine," Joohyun murmured, hating the way the single word was enough to set her eyes watering all over again. She blinked hard until the tears receded.

"Right." Seungwan's tone was neutral, diplomatically accepting the clear lie. "It's just, you said you came up here when you needed a break."

Joohyun shrugged, arm brushing against Seungwan's in the movement. "I'm watching the game." She nodded towards the colourful spot she'd been watching, just as it erupted in cheers. Someone must have scored.

Seungwan laughed, a small chuckle that carried no judgment. “Well, then your eyesight is much better than mine. I think I’d need omnioculars just to tell which teams were playing.”

“Gryffindor vs Hufflepuff,” Joohyun replied absently, instead of coming up with any more excuses.

Seungwan didn’t push. The silence returned. Up there, so far from the ground that they might as well be floating among the clouds, things felt strangely safe. Like a bubble in time, solid but light. Seungwan was Seungwan and Joohyun was Joohyun, but it also felt like… like they were just two people. Just two girls, overwhelmed, taking a break from the world at the very edge of it.

Joohyun felt her resolve break, wither away, fade like the steam off a potion, carried off by a gust of wind.

“I used omnioculars once. At the World Cup Final between China and France, do you remember that?”

If Seungwan was surprised, she didn’t show it. “I think so. A couple of years ago, right?”

She nodded. “You must know how much Seulgi loves Song Qian. The-”

“Chinese Chaser. Yeah, I know,” Seungwan finished for her, a smile on her lips.

“Well, Mr. Kang found out about it and decided to take us all, as a surprise. He almost bought plane tickets, before Seulgi’s mother managed to explain to him about Portkeys, and Apparating. Plane tickets, can you imagine that?”

The two girls, born and raised in magical households, laughed at the notion. Joohyun stretched out her legs and leaned backwards, still gazing at the fields below.

“Have you ever met Seulgi’s parents?”

Seungwan shook her head, but said nothing. Joohyun was glad that she wasn’t interrupting, asking her to get to the point. It might have made it all end faster, but it felt easier to do it this way, slowly, circling round and round until she reached her conclusion.

“Well, her father is as Muggle as it gets. Completely clueless about magic, but he makes an effort. He’s a nice man.” Joohyun smiled slightly at her own words, picturing Mr. Kang in her mind as she spoke.

“And her mother, I suppose you already know that she was from a pureblood family. An old one. Strict, traditional. They weren’t pleased at all when she married beneath her station. Nobody wrote her out of the will, or cursed her household, or anything quite so dramatic. She was just pushed away, slowly but surely. They stopped contacting her, inviting her to social events, and then one day she found herself completely cut off from her family.

“She didn’t even hear from her own sister, for years and years. She never knew whether she had nephews or nieces, never had a chance to tell her about her own children.”

The words were painful to say, sticking to her tongue like she could simply choke them back, end it there, walk away. As she neared the truth, the secret she’d worked so hard to keep, every instinct in her seemed to come to life and warn her. But Seungwan just sat there, just listened. She owed it to her, didn’t she?

“And then one day, there the sister was at her doorstep. With her husband, and her daughter. Because no matter how estranged, how outraged, how disgraced, at the end of the day family is family. And when you need help, and you don’t know where else to get it, you turn to family.”

She her lips, suddenly dry. Her chin began to tremble, but she forced it still.

“They’d lost the family fortune, or what little there was left of it by the time it reached their hands. Debts piled up until they had to let go of the staff, to sell whatever they could bear to part with. And then they had to give up the manor. The family home. They were penniless, homeless, forced to depend on the good will of distant relatives to put a roof over their heads, food in their stomachs.

“But they could still shield their daughter from all that. They could leave her there, with Seulgi’s mother, with her half-Muggle family, and none of the pureblood families would know who she was. Who her parents were. None of the students at Hogwarts, none of their parents at home, would connect the dots. She’d keep her dignity, her honour, and all she had to do was lie.”

She could no longer see the trees in the ground down below, vision blurred by tears that she wasn’t sure she could stop from falling. She clenched her fingers tightly together, forming small fists by her sides.

“That was the first time I met my aunt,” she said in a weak voice, that nearly broke as she let out the words. “That was the first time I knew I had cousins.”