“Next question: what is the danger classification of a bowtruckle?”

“Two.”

“Hmm. Of a basilisk?”

“Five.”

“Despite the fact that…”

“It can be tamed, by a Parselmouth.”

“Correct. This is the case for one more category-five creature, which one?”

“Dragons. Arguably. Through very barbarous practices.”

“Correct again.”

Hyuna leaned back in her chair, lips widened in a smug grin. Seungwan seemed to be done with her pop quiz and she had passed it with flying colours.

It wasn’t the most efficient way for Seungwan to get in some studying, admittedly, but it was about the least disruptive thing that Hyuna could be doing. Before they’d started with the questions, she’d been trying to magically clean an ink spill off her notes and had almost set the table on fire.

“Wow,” Joohyun said, not much amazement entering her voice.

“I told you I was good at Care of Magical Creatures,” Hyuna gloated regardless.

“No, I meant that there’s someone in this realm that can make you actually study when you’re in the library.”

“Very funny.”

“It’s not a joke,” Sunmi cut in. “I don’t think I've ever seen you crack a book in here.”

“A magazine, maybe,” Joohyun offered.

“A pocket mirror,” Sunmi added.

“Oh, shut it.”

“Hyojong’s skull, that one time.”

Joohyun left the bickering to her friends and turned to Seungwan, a small smile instantly forming on her lips. She raised her eyebrows in silent communication, sharing her hopes that Sunmi and Hyuna might distract each other for long enough that the two of them could actually get some work done. Otherwise, Joohyun might have to do something drastic, like sacrifice herself to be the Gryffindor's entertainment, or send Seungwan away to safety, staying behind to weather the interruptions and the loneliness.

She let her gaze flicker distractedly across Seungwan’s face, lingering here and there until it fell on her unruly hair, particularly dishevelled after her adventure in the Greenhouse.

“What are you staring at me for?” Seungwan asked with a shy voice, although making no move to avoid the attention.

“You’ve got something in your hair.”

“Seriously?” The tentative smile twisted into an exasperated frown. “Oh, I thought I got all of them.”

Joohyun reached in wordlessly and pulled free a small twig, which Seungwan took with a defeated sigh. Her hand lingered to pat a few errant strands of hair into place, though at this point nothing short of magic would really fix it.

“I’m going to be picking out plant bits all day, aren’t I?” Seungwan’s pout was small, but cute all the same. “It’s the last time I’m helping the fifth-years, I swear, they are far too trigger-happy. One tendril wrapped around an ankle and they’re firing off hexes.”

“Scaredy-cats. I bet it wasn’t even cutting off circulation yet.”

“Oh, you know what I mean. Professor Haeri must have drilled them on proper procedure some twenty times. And now that poor specimen is…”

“Your new shampoo?”

“It’s not funny!” Seungwan protested, although her words were punctuated by something that sounded a lot like laughter.

“It’s a little bit funny.”

Seungwan rolled her eyes. “Okay, well, sorry to cut short this very productive conversation, but I have to go get my notes from Yongsun so I can get started on my essay.”

She got up to leave, but Joohyun quickly tugged at her sleeve to pull her a bit closer, lowering her voice. “Look, if it’s too distracting with Sunmi and Hyuna, I can ask them to go. They really wouldn’t mind, they’re just killing time here anyway.”

“Oh, it’s fine,” Seungwan quickly assured her, the smile on her face looking genuine enough. “You know me, I can tune out anything if I try. I was just having fun with the quiz.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah, don’t worry.”

With another smile, Seungwan walked off, waving her goodbyes at the rest of the table. Joohyun watched her leave, already anticipating the teasing that was no doubt in store for her now that polite company had left them.

As if on cue, two mismatched voices rose up in protest, one groaning while the other fake-vomitted.

“Well, at least you waited,” she sighed out, turning reluctantly back to her friends.

“Is this how it feels to third-wheel?” Hyuna asked. “Because I’m almost starting to feel bad for all the times I brought Hyojong along.”

“You should,” Sunmi deadpanned.

“You really should,” Joohyun agreed.

“Don’t change the subject, we’re ganging up on you right now. You and your little secretive whispers.”

“I refuse to tone down my whispering while Hyuna gets away with groping her boyfriend in public.”

“Not this again. I’ve said it a million times, I didn’t notice you were there.”

“You were talking to me.”

“Well, I didn’t notice you could see my hand.”

“So what, you and Seungwan are done pretending to be casual acquaintances?” Sunmi cut in, clearly not interested in reviving the age-old debate of Hyuna’s PDA. “No longer keeping a safety distance and making googly eyes at each other from across the classroom?”

“We weren’t… making googly eyes. They were normal eyes. And it was a reasonable decision at the time.”

“Sure, sure,” Hyuna steamrolled, probably ignoring every word Joohyun had just said. She leaned on Sunmi’s side, eyeing Joohyun up and down. “It was probably the Ball, right? All dressed up, and the dancing… Even someone as dense as Joohyun had to figure it out by that point.”

Sunmi hummed in agreement. For a moment there, Joohyun had thought they could all wordlessly accept the change and move on like adults, but of course she should have known better.

“Yes, even Joohyun couldn’t deny her obvious feelings after the way she followed Seungwan around like a lovesick puppy all night, and then left early to do homework.”

“And didn’t even mind that she missed Park Chanyeol taking a broom-rack to the face.”

“Indeed, indeed.”

Both girls nodded sagely.

“Surely not even Joohyun would be so stubborn that she would continue to pretend they have nothing but platonic feelings for each other after all that.”

They paused then, faces matching in their annoying smugness. Joohyun sighed.

“Yes, I suppose it went something like that.”

Hyuna blinked.

“What’s that, again?”

“Just… You’re right, I guess. Congratulations. I’m very predictable and you were right all along.”

“Joohyun, are you kidding me right now?”

“What?” she asked, genuinely at a loss. “Is this not what we’re talking about?”

“You and Seungwan are together?”

“Actually together? Romantically? Dating? Each other?”

“Well… Yes.”

“Joohyun,” Hyuna began slowly. “I say this with all the love in my heart, but I am going to sneak into the Slytherin dorms and murder you in your sleep.”

“You- you didn’t know?”

“How would we know?” Sunmi let out in an anguished half-whisper. “How would we possibly know?”

“I thought it was obvious,” Joohyun said, now feeling a bit self-conscious. Hyuna let out a sound like a deflating balloon, if balloons could deflate angrily. “I did say something, earlier.”

“You said, and I quote, ‘Seungwan’s sitting with us, can you not be weird about it?’ That is just…”

“Vague,” Hyuna finished, with the look of someone who was using the most charitable word they could think of for it.

“Very vague,” Sunmi quickly agreed. “I thought you meant her hair.”

“The hair did make it a bit misleading, didn’t it?” Joohyun mused.

“The problem is not the hair!”

“Look, I really don’t understand how it’s so hard to tell,” Joohyun defended herself, a bit offended by such a shocked reaction. “We’re clearly behaving differently.”

“No, you’ve been like that for a while now,” Sunmi said, dismissing her without much pause.

“Well, I don’t know what to say, here. We’re together. Sorry I didn’t make it more obvious, but not all of us are as eager as Hyuna to publicly engage in private behaviour.”

“Prude,” Hyuna retorted lightly.

“I get being private, but still, not even a kiss goodbye?”

“And in the honeymoon phase, too.”

“I didn’t exactly send her off to war, she’s three stacks away from us.”

“Poor Seungwan, so young and already in a loveless marriage,” Sunmi mused darkly, eliciting a snort from Hyuna.

“She probably thinks you’re trying to keep it a secret.”

“She does not-”

“Considering how much you love being the topic of school gossip, I wouldn’t blame her. I’d keep things secret too if the alternative was risking another gossip-induced panic.”

“You’d have her in sunglasses and a trenchcoat. All your communication would be through letters.”

“In code.”

“Alright, get it all out of your system,” Joohyun said wearily, giving up on shutting it down. She could tell when she’d been outnumbered, and at least making spy jokes was better than recriminating her for not exposing her relationship earlier.

But… was it more than jokes? Were her friends right?

She wanted to argue that she and Seungwan were on the same page, that they both knew what the other wanted, but the truth was that they’d never discussed it. They’d kissed after her confession, and ever since then they’d been… Well, nothing defined, but definitely not friends. She was fairly certain they were in agreement that far.

It was the rest that she suddenly realized still sat murky and unprodded. Whom they wanted to tell, how public they wanted to be, what was alright to do, in public or in private.

They hadn’t kissed since that day. It hadn’t been that long, and they hadn’t had much time just for themselves, but also Joohyun still couldn’t quite conceive of the thought that she could just… kiss Seungwan, now. If she wanted to. If Seungwan wanted to as well, of course.

Did Seungwan think she couldn’t? Did she think, like Hyuna had suggested, that they were a secret? Was she giving Joohyun space? Was she worried about them?

Seungwan returned to the table at last. When she sat down, her hand rested on Joohyun’s as if by instinct, stilling their sudden nervous tapping as she threw her a questioning glance. Joohyun did her best to soothe her sudden worries and offer an easy smile. Seungwan’s hand slipped from hers to shuffle through her notes and prepare her inkwell, the moment of contact impossibly brief.

It had felt easy before, the quick touches like a second language. But now, Joohyun couldn’t help but wonder.

(…)

It was always strange when the days began to get hot enough that there was no cold to dispel even at the top of the Northern tower. Most of the year, it felt like the heat could never reach it, too high up, too exposed to the elements.

Joohyun took in the sun absently, eyes closed against the brightness. Every once in a while, she’d squint at her Defence Against the Dark Arts textbook, propped open by her side and displaying a long list of curses and counter-curses that she’d more or less committed to memory by now. It was a lazy excuse for studying, she knew, but she didn’t feel focused enough for anything more. Her thoughts were scattered, a little lost.

“Oh, here you are,” a voice suddenly spoke, startling her so hard she almost jumped. Her eyes snapped open as she turned to find Seungwan, watching her with a grin.

“You- I thought your Muggle Studies class didn’t end for another 20 minutes.”

“We got out early, Yongsun blew up another monitor. I went to the library first, but you weren’t there, so I thought I’d try up here.”

“Oh, sorry, I didn’t know- I was going to go meet you after class, but- You could have just waited for me at the library, you didn’t need to come up all this way.”

“You’re nervous,” Seungwan said simply as she settled down by her side. “What’s the matter? Are you going to confess to me again?”

That got a laugh out of Joohyun before she could stop herself. “No, thank you very much, once was more than enough.”

She felt Seungwan’s fingers wrap around hers, fitting their hands perfectly together. It wasn’t a fleeting touch, like at the library. Their hands rested in the small space between them, Seungwan’s thumb occasionally brushing against the back of Joohyun’s knuckles.

Were her friends right?

“Is it something you want to talk about? Anything I can help with?” Seungwan tilted her head, smile still in place. “If it’s got anything to do with that Transfiguration homework, it would be very understandable, and I’d be happy to panic with you.”

“Are we… a secret?”

“Sorry?”

“Us.” Joohyun lifted their joined hands like clear evidence. “Are we a secret thing? Are we… We’re together, right? The kiss, that was… We both agree that we’re together.”

“I thought we did,” Seungwan said slowly, looking more confused than worried. Joohyun supposed she looked too much like a deer caught in the headlights to cause any fear. “And I don’t know about secret. Do you want us to be?”

“No, I don’t- I just worry, you know, are we doing that again?”

“Doing what?”

She took a deep breath, suddenly nervous to keep going. Seungwan seemed comfortable with their situation, genuinely so, but… Well, she’d seemed fine with things before, and then Joohyun had discovered that she’d spent their whole friendship waiting for the other shoe to drop.

“When we were arguing before, at the library, you said that… that we’re always whatever I want us to be, and you just have to follow along. And you were right, but I don’t want do that anymore. But maybe I still am, I don’t know. I didn’t even think of it, I was just happy, but now I don’t know. Is this not what you want? Are you just following along again?”

Seungwan seemed at a loss for words for a moment. “I mean, I kissed you first,” she finally said, with a confused laugh.

“Not that part,” Joohyun quickly replied, willing herself not to blush. “I mean holding hands. Or kissing. Or telling people, or not telling them. We never talked about it. I don’t even know what you want.”

“Honestly? I don’t mind, either way. I don’t particularly want to be sneaking around, because I don’t think I have the time for it, but… I like just being around you. I’m happy doing whatever makes you comfortable.”

The reassurances seemed honest, but they didn’t do much about the guilt that Joohyun realized had been building up inside her, gnawing at her stomach. She pulled in her legs and wrapped her hands around her knees, Seungwan’s hand fluttering free in the process.

“I’m sorry,” she said hesitantly.

“For what?”

“For all of it. For pushing you around. For not giving you any answers. For cutting you off whenever I got upset.” She clung to her knees a little tighter. “I don’t understand how you can just move past that. Be fine with how things are. I was upset you didn’t trust me once, but if I were you, I… I think I still wouldn’t.”

“I didn’t trust you because I didn’t understand it. Why you hated me, and then why you didn’t. Now I do.”

“Still, I…” She shrugged, uncomfortable under Seungwan’s scrutiny. “I don’t understand how you can forgive me, either.”

“Don’t you think you’re being a little unfair on yourself?” She felt Seungwan shift closer, until their sides were brushing together, but she didn’t turn her way. “You think the only thing that changed between us is that you told me your secret. But I think a lot more has changed. I think you’ve changed. The Joohyun that I knew a few months ago wouldn’t have told me. And she wouldn’t have apologized either, or sat up here all alone worrying that I wasn’t happy with our relationship.”

“But it was still me. I’m still the person who hurt you, even if I wouldn’t do it again.”

“I hurt you too. You said so yourself.”

“That’s not the same.”

She felt a hand curve slowly around her chin, tugging ever-so-slightly until Joohyun was finally facing Seungwan. She was still smiling, very softly, and for a beat Joohyun forgot about all her worries and just fell into her eyes.

“You can’t go back and change it. I can’t either. So all we can really control is what we do next. I can choose whether or not to be with you. You can choose how you want to treat me, from now on. Very nicely, I hope,” she added with a wink.

“I want to,” Joohyun admitted, struggling to put her thoughts together now that she was suddenly so close to Seungwan, to her warm smile and soft touch and gaze that reassured her despite her best efforts to remain sullen and worried.

“I’m looking forward to it,” Seungwan said, smile growing.

“I still haven’t- Can I kiss you?”

“Right now?” Seungwan asked, playful.

Not right now, or at least Joohyun hadn’t meant it that way. She meant in general, in public, she wanted to ask again about Seungwan’s boundaries, or if they were secret after all, or about holding hands, but Seungwan had said ‘right now’ and now Joohyun was thinking it too and-

“Um.”

“Because you can. By the way. If that’s what you were asking.”

Seungwan was looking distracted herself, which was somewhat of a consolation. Joohyun struggled a moment longer, trying to summon back the questions, the arguments, but she was having trouble even remembering why it was so important to keep talking. And Seungwan was so close already.

She hummed as she leant forward, quietly against the back of , then all the breath left her at once when she felt the brush of Seungwan’s lips. It was dizzying, maybe it would be every time, but somehow she managed not to freeze at the touch, managed to reach a hand across the space between them and land on Seungwan’s waist, to lean in even further and brush her tongue against lips that had that tell-tale metallic taste. One day she’d get Seungwan to stop biting them.

She remembered to take in another breath, losing her composure all over again as Seungwan’s scent flooded her lungs. Seungwan’s lips had already parted and Joohyun let out something akin to a whimper, so high-pitched and embarrassing that she nearly bit Seungwan’s tongue in her haste to retreat.

They parted, both breathing heavily, and Seungwan let out an unsteady hum that somehow made Joohyun even dizzier than the kiss.

Maybe they shouldn’t kiss in public.

Joohyun let her gaze wander back to the sky, where the sun began to hang lower and lower, and held Seungwan’s hand, silently letting her heartbeat settle. She thought about other times on this balcony, about asking Seungwan to the Ball before she even knew how she really felt. If she hadn’t made that sudden decision, would she have ever realized it?

And Seungwan… She wondered when she’d realized how she felt. According to Sooyoung, she’d been interested for a long time, but how much could that Ravenclaw really be trusted? And, well, if somebody had asked Hyuna or Sunmi, Joohyun was sure they’d have said something similar about herself.

“When did you…” she began uncertainly, not sure she would ask it up until the words left her lips. She waited for a beat, letting Seungwan’s attention focus on her. “When did you, um, start liking me? Or, I don’t know, realize it?”

“Oh,” Seungwan said, before a thoughtful pause. Joohyun waited, pushing aside embarrassment at her own childish question. “I’m not sure. It’s not… something that I was keeping in mind. Feelings like that. I always thought you were pretty, obviously,” she carried on, although Joohyun would argue that it wasn’t obvious. She was fairly certain Seungwan had never said it before. “And, you know, interesting. I thought we could have things in common, if you didn’t, um, hate me.”

“I didn’t hate you,” Joohyun said, instinct taking over. Seungwan didn’t bother to argue the semantics.

“Maybe that was part of why it bothered me so much that we couldn’t be friends. The fact that I did want it. But, honestly, I don’t know when it became more than that. I always liked spending time with you, right from the start, even when half of me was just trying to puzzle out what had happened to change things. I guess at some point, I more or less knew that I had feelings. But right now, I couldn’t tell you when. Or how long it took between the feelings and realizing it. There was just always so much on my mind, school mostly. I never took much time for… introspection.”

Joohyun wanted to probe, to get the details, to put into perspective all the moments she’d already considered. Did Seungwan know at the Ball? Did she know when she’d talked about Jennie’s crush? Did she know when they’d argued in the fallout of Park Chanyeol?

But Joohyun hadn’t known either, right up until it had struck her, suddenly glaringly obvious. She supposed some things weren’t clear-cut like that.

“Even when I knew, I didn’t really dwell on it. It didn’t matter, really. I was happy to be with you, in any capacity, and after you told me about your family, I started to feel like I didn’t have to keep waiting to lose you again. Like I could let myself be happy with you, trust that you’d be there. That would have been enough for me.”

Seungwan shifted, settling herself more comfortably. The sky was beginning to darken and the unusual warmth that Joohyun had felt earlier had definitely vanished, replaced by a growing cold that would soon drive them back indoors. In the meantime, though, Joohyun was enjoying their solitude.

“I did think there might be something there, after the Ball,” Seungwan eventually said, and Joohyun was jolted by an inexplicable thrill. A piece of the puzzle, an answer to her vague question. “You asked me as friends but then you were… Well, impressively date-like. So, either you were very devoted to the role, or we weren’t really going as friends.”

“We-we weren’t. I think that’s when I figured it out, my feelings for you.”

“Oh.” Seungwan smiled at that, and Joohyun suspected that she was putting together a puzzle of her own. It was nice, to not be the only one eager to decipher the timeline, the possible hidden meaning in their past words and glances. “I was first, then. I think. I can’t pinpoint it like you.”

“Did you know when you were jealous of Jennie?” Joohyun finally asked, unable to hang on to the question for another moment, when it had been building up inside of her with irresistible curiosity for what felt like ages.

“I wasn’t-” Seungwan immediately stuttered out, then fell silent, and Joohyun could swear that her cheeks had darkened, although it was getting harder to tell as the sunlight continued to fade. “I just- It was so obvious and you were clearly pretending not to notice, it was honestly embarrassing to watch.”

“Oh, was it? Was it embarrassing? Is that what you felt when you were watching?”

“Yep. Very embarrassed for you.”

“That’s why you needed to make sure I knew, right? To end the embarrassment,” Joohyun couldn’t help but tease, too amused by Seungwan’s vague and clearly very false justifications. “You know, I might have asked Jennie to the Ball. Once I was made aware that I had a shot with her,” she added, a playful quirk to her voice.

“You wouldn’t have. You never liked her like that.”

“How are you so sure?”

“Because, you were way too confident,” Seungwan said, leaning in closer until Joohyun was blinking very rapidly in alarm as her mind went blank. “When you like someone, you’re more of a rambling mess.”

“Well,” Joohyun began, well aware that she couldn’t deny the accusation, “you were still jealous.”

Seungwan snorted, unconvinced by the misdirection, and Joohyun gave up with a shrug. She knew when she’d been beaten and, honestly, she didn’t much mind it.